Why Your Meta Ads Are Failing (And How AI Fixes It) - Tiago Costa, Raphael Tomé | How AI Cuts Ad Costs, Why Scaling Ad Spend Fails, What Metrics Fix Brand Growth, How AI Find Audiences, Why Audiences Beat Ad Creative, What Drives Profitable Scale (#482)

00;00;00;00 - 00;00;24;07 Hello. Welcome to another episode of the eCommerce Coffee Break podcast. 00;00;24;10 - 00;00;46;21 Unknown Today, building and scaling an e-commerce brand is harder than ever. Customer acquisition costs are rising, paid channels are crowded, and many brands are sitting on customer data.

They still don't know how to use. At the same time, a new generation of ecommerce brands is finding smarter ways to grow not by spending more money, but by making smart up decisions, understanding their customers better, and using AI and first party data to improve performance. 00;00;46;24 - 00;01;09;00 Unknown So today we're talking about how smart eCommerce brands are winning in today's market. To break this down, I'm joined by Tiago Costa and provided to me.

Tiago is the CEO of full venue and clustie.ai platform, helping e-commerce brands predict higher value buyers and improve its performance through AI driven audience intelligence. Raphael Tomé is the founder of Tomé Distribution and the Brands Newtrino and QuickGrow. 00;01;09;01 - 00;01;29;00 Unknown He brings the operator perspective and shares what it takes to build and scale a modern e-commerce business in 2026.

Great to have you on the show. People get into this space and they don't actually understand what to sell or help to sell it. You've got to have your aves correct, which is your average order values. You've got to have your life order value correct.

00;01;29;01 - 00;01;52;09 Unknown Like all of these little nuances have to be in place before someone actually starts guiding. Hello. Welcome to another episode of the eCommerce Coffee Break podcast. Today, building and scaling an e-commerce brand is harder than ever.

Customer acquisition costs are rising, paid channels are crowded, and many brands are sitting on customer data. They still don't know how to use. 00;01;52;11 - 00;02;12;00 Unknown At the same time, a new generation of ecommerce brands is finding smarter ways to grow, not by spending more money, but by making smart up decisions, understanding their customers better, and using AI and first party data to improve performance. So today we're talking about how smart eCommerce brands are winning in today's market.

To break this down, I'm joined by Diego Costa and provided to me. 00;02;12;02 - 00;02;33;23 Unknown Tiago is the CEO of Full venue and clustered AI platform, helping e-commerce brands predict higher value buyers and improve its performance through AI driven audience intelligence. Rafael is the founder of Tomy Distribution and the Brands Neutrino and Quick Grow. He brings the operator perspective and shares what it takes to build and scale a modern e-commerce business in 2026.

00;02;33;25 - 00;02;59;11 Unknown Rafael, great to have you on the show. Thank you for having me. So let's jump into what has changed the most in ecommerce over the last two years. Everything I would say.

So the main change, the main change and the major change is obviously the capabilities that exist today. That is that is making this process of creating a new brand, launching in eCommerce much simpler than it was in the past. 00;02;59;14 - 00;03;22;28 Unknown I remember the phrase when you needed to hire a consultancy company or a consultant to to build your website or to build out your e-commerce. Do they wait a couple of months?

You can build a Shopify store and this is a huge change that leads to another. There is the amount of new shops selling single products. So today you have an idea. 00;03;22;29 - 00;03;46;20 Unknown You have a vision.

You create a business and you can build an e-commerce platform to sell all over the world. We then, with a unique product and this is this is growing a lot mainly on the US, we are we are watching this behavior. So a lot of differences. But the main one, I would say it's the the facility that that you have to create all of this in a much simpler way.

00;03;46;26 - 00;04;06;15 Unknown Yeah, a lot has changed in a very short time. We want to touch on a couple of things there. So to start with, Rafael, you're a successful e-commerce entrepreneur. Where would you start your brand today if you would start today?

And what would you focus on first? Sure. So I think that the most important thing for me is is exactly what Tiago does as audiences. 00;04;06;16 - 00;04;40;25 Unknown If if I were to give anyone advice around how to start their own e-commerce, I think that the first thing would be is to understand the metrics behind your your platform.

I think people get into this, this, this, the space and they don't actually understand what to sell or help to sell it. And so, you know, you've got a really good idea and the ideas brilliant, but you're not getting it out there because, number one, no one knows who you are, what you are, what you selling. 00;04;40;28 - 00;05;04;03 Unknown And number two, the metrics are completely flawed. So you've got to have your views correct, which is your average order values.

You've got to have your life order value. Correct. Like all of these little nuances have to be in place before someone actually starts scaling. And that's the big thing for me.

Like for me, when I met Tiago and his team, you know, they make it very easy. 00;05;04;03 - 00;05;36;07 Unknown By the way, they meet up with me every week, which is a fantastic thing. That support structure is something that you don't generally get out of any app that's on Shopify. So even though you put you plug in apps into your your Shopify doesn't mean that you're going to be successful.

You know, there's always issues with the app and that type of thing, but for me, I think the big thing is that when you first start a business, I think look at the metrics, look at what you're selling, and then sort of go out there and try and sell it. 00;05;36;09 - 00;06;07;12 Unknown But that's like it's easy to say, but when you get on to like sort of Facebook and Google and these type of of platforms, you know, it's difficult to actually scale that up. So, number one, the audience.

Number two, the scaling is the most important thing for me. So before I met Tiago and his team at capacity, I went through many different agencies to try and sort of scale up what we were doing and try and get a better OS Which is your return on ad spend. 00;06;07;15 - 00;06;31;28 Unknown And I must tell you, I think I must have gone through about five or six different agencies and my is because I go to different brands like you mentioned of a run neutrino, it's Hickey products.

They sought after because they solving problems and that's the one thing that people don't realize is that if you've got a problem solving product, it's a lot easier to sell and to scale through the likes of Facebook and those type of things. 00;06;32;00 - 00;06;59;13 Unknown That's still where your audience lies is Facebook. Facebook is still the gold golden key for, you know, for those type of things. But what I found is that, you know, doing all of these things with these agencies like my my, my scalability was muted.

And not only was it muted, but it was also like there was like almost like a restriction on how much I could actually get in terms of a process. 00;06;59;15 - 00;07;24;17 Unknown And that was a roundabout sort of 2.8. Whereas on my stores when I met these guys, I mean I took that 2.

8 rows and we took it to the first month. It was just it was over five already. And so like I was really scaling to that level. And then I decided to bring my other brand, which is even more successful brand, which is Neutrino, which is for hair loss.

00;07;24;19 - 00;07;46;04 Unknown And I decided to do to do that with these guys as well and went over team. So I've never seen those type of numbers before. And that to me was the biggest thing. As an entrepreneur, you want to be able to spend less, you know, and you want to be able to make more.

That's the bottom line. There is no there is nothing else. 00;07;46;04 - 00;08;05;22 Unknown Yeah, it's nice to help people and it's nice to do those type of things. But in terms of the business matrix, man, if you just don't have those things in place, you're never going to go anywhere and you're just going to die.

Yeah, I think it's a good example that you can grow if you know how and you have the right data on hand. 00;08;05;24 - 00;08;27;24 Unknown Now, Tiago, question to you is what usually breaks first when a brand starts to scale on meta ads in general, what do you see? Why is it not working as they intend to do? So I think that's and I failed told about the agencies.

So there is there is there are different pieces of work that needs to be done when you are scaling a brand. 00;08;27;26 - 00;08;48;29 Unknown And I think that the companies needs to be focused on what they know exactly on how to do it. Okay. So and this is this is why List is so niche.

And that in the world is seductive because I speak with investors, I speak with a lot of brands. We are consistently hearing our customers because it's the most important feedback that we have. 00;08;49;01 - 00;09;12;11 Unknown And we have a lot of ideas, ideas to generate creative ideas to automate the budgets, ideas to deep down on the on the creation and automatic amp creation. We have a vision internally that is shared by my person to the whole team.

There is we need to be the best company working on the audience side because you have a lot of pillars on the on the outside. 00;09;12;14 - 00;09;28;17 Unknown You have you have the message. You have the creative, you have the offer, you have the budget and you have the the audience if you want to do everything. And I think that's a little bit of what the agencies wants to do.

They want to do everything. In the end, you are not you are not specialist in anything. 00;09;28;24 - 00;09;48;09 Unknown You can do the things, but you are not looking into a problem with the right type. So we are looking into it and what we are seeing and asking your question is that there is a lot of confusion when we answer to the brand.

So we are finding brands that have more than 50 active campaigns spending budget worldwide. 00;09;48;12 - 00;10;29;07 Unknown Most of the campaigns with the same creatives changing budgets every day depending on the trends from from different different mindset metrics like CPMs. So costs per per visualization, cost per click click through rate. The agencies are consistently looking into this and making changes every day.

So a lot of things being then without thinking about what you need to do and what we are seeing, of course, that we we see brands that are working really well already with the agencies and we make a perfect fit because what we want is to work with the agency and the brands together, because we we are not doing the agency work. 00;10;29;07 - 00;10;57;05 Unknown We are just generating audiences for the brands or the agencies to utilize on their paid campaigns in matter. But in the end, what we see is this is that if you have if you are struggling with scaling, probably you need to rethink all the setup that you have on your advertising platforms And keep it simple.

Start simple. You don't have to you don't have to to use 50 campaigns for 50 countries to grow. 00;10;57;08 - 00;11;23;14 Unknown Probably if you have one or two properly target just for the countries where you can sell better where ICP resides, you will love the numbers. So yeah.

Okay. Question for you, Tiago was just mentioning KPI is there for an entrepreneur that might look different. What's the customer data that matters most for you? I understand clarity as well as that.

00;11;23;14 - 00;11;49;15 Unknown They choose metrics from your actual shop and then they teach Facebook what their audience should look like, right? So I think that's the most important thing for me. I think that, you know, if you've already got people shopping on your website, those are people that are actually interested in your product. So you're not you're not asking me to go out and sort of learn the audience, learn how to pick and choose that person.

00;11;49;15 - 00;12;13;06 Unknown That should be purchasing from you. You've actually got a little tool that I bought that basically tells me to what who that person should be. I think that's the most important thing for me. It made sense to me.

It's a very clever concept. Now I would agree better notices on platform, the best and obviously they are sort of transparent by now on what's happening there. 00;12;13;08 - 00;12;39;20 Unknown Now, General, question for you. The cost customer acquisition costs keep rising.

Our paid channels are becoming for smaller brands too crowded. Of course they are, because if you think about the paid channels landscape, it's the same for the last ten years. Probably. You have a new player, TikTok ads and you can use it, but you have Matta, you have Google, you have TikTok and a couple of other channels.

00;12;39;22 - 00;13;05;17 Unknown And if you think on the number of e-commerce platforms that are active today, investing money based media, you have a huge growth. I don't know the exact numbers, but probably more than 1,000%. So it's it's crazy. So of course, this is getting crowded in the last five years on average, the cost that customer acquisition cost is growing for about 20 to 30% in matter.

00;13;05;19 - 00;13;30;18 Unknown Okay. So so this is a number that impacts all the businesses. You have other things, political questions also that are that are rising every day, taxes that the brands needs to pay, that they were not paying before, and to have this kind of solution that we created that is lowering down the customer acquisition costs. So I think it's exactly where we want to be.

00;13;30;20 - 00;14;06;13 Unknown And that metric is the North Star metric for us, because ROAS is important, but ROAS is related with how much it costs for you as a brand to acquire a new client that will buy in your store. And if we are able to reduce this number, we are doing what we need for the brands. And this is something that we like to put on on our our partners, and that is you can use Shopify, you can use your agency, you can use I don't know, I will say MailChimp, Klaviyo, Salesforce, whatever it is, you can use all these platforms.

00;14;06;13 - 00;14;34;21 Unknown We are not asking you to quit those platforms. You can have a solution that is only focused on audience intelligence to reduce the money that you will spend to acquire, acquire a new customer. And this is so important today and this is exactly what is making this free to play ratio that we have, because in our list we have a 30 day trial to all the brands that want to test our solution. 00;14;34;23 - 00;14;57;12 Unknown And last month we had a 90% free to pay ratio.

That is insane. At the same time, we know that if we are not able to generate good results, we will lose the clients. So we need to be focused in delivering the best audiences to our client clients to have the best results. Mm hmm.

Now it's important. Audience, I think, is the most important thing. 00;14;57;12 - 00;15;18;13 Unknown Interestingly enough, I just had a chat yesterday. We were laughing about that.

Still a lot of friends and I have a vague idea of who their audience is, but actually I don't. So I can definitely help there. I wanted to have a little bit more in class to get into clarity from your perspective, Give us a quick rundown What cluster does in detail so that our listeners get an idea. 00;15;18;13 - 00;15;40;26 Unknown And then I want to ask Rafael from what his experience is with clarity.

Okay, perfect. And that will start exactly from from what you were saying regarding most brands, they don't know exactly who their customers are, and all the companies needs to know exactly where their customers are. If you are selling something, you need to know to who you are selling. 00;15;40;29 - 00;16;09;04 Unknown So and this is something that we defined really well.

We are selling to Shopify retailers. There are spending money matters. So everyone in our company knows the customer persona that we need to reach. Of course, that you have different channels.

We can speak with Rafael that owns the brands, or we can go directly to a Shopify agency or a marketing agency that owns more than more brands than than one brand that can help us. 00;16;09;07 - 00;16;40;18 Unknown But what we are doing with Cluster is simply connecting to Shopify, bringing all the information from products or and customers, connecting to the matter accounts of the brands and generating audiences, different types of audiences. Right now we are generating audiences based on the best DNA from the store, the propensity buying audience, and we are generating an LTV audience from the people that we believe that will buy on the next 30 days based on our models.

00;16;40;21 - 00;17;08;16 Unknown This is the focus that we have so generate audiences. We, the single click automates and integrates the audiences in matter. At the same time, we have the capability of creating an automatic campaign that will read all the campaigns that the customer as on Facebook and on matter. And we'll duplicate and use our structure with our campaign, our audience, and the creatives that are performing better on the brand side in matter.

00;17;08;18 - 00;17;33;00 Unknown So this is mainly what we do. We are doing this research of going for new or new audiences, and what is coming next is audiences that are relating products and people. So we call this product audience match. So if Rafael wants to sell a specific product, we will be able to deliver the right audience for the products.

At the same time, new geographies. 00;17;33;00 - 00;17;54;17 Unknown We are studying a lot because imagine and let's focus on on on these brands that's that's Rafael owns neutrino and Greek grow. You are selling in South Africa and you want to scale to another country if you don't have the clients in other countries. I worry I will not be able to generate a new audience.

We can tell you and this is gamification for the product. 00;17;54;17 - 00;18;15;29 Unknown We can tell you how much it takes to generate the first audience. So like giving up progress. So you are 78% of having an audience to the unit, to the United States, or we can work on the audience that we have on South Africa and eventually creates a new audience for the country.

And this is also a feedback that the customers are giving to our team. 00;18;15;29 - 00;18;52;09 Unknown Rafael also also spoke about it. So we are we are making this approach to new audiences and the last one, so product audience match new geographies and the last one focused on the season. So Black Friday, Greece also 12 season focused audiences, but glitzy is an audience agents that integrates with matter and Shopify okay know Rafa from the operator's site when you started working with clarity and we heard that you had huge success, was it what any surprises for you in regards of audiences that were new to you or expanding audiences?

00;18;52;09 - 00;19;20;21 Unknown Tell the experience? Not necessarily. I think that they explained themselves very well. I think that they said to me like, it's going to take like 3 to 4 weeks for the capacity to teach meter what the audience should look like and actually intrigued to to learn about more about what you guys are working on at the moment because we've only got the LTV and HPV and then we've got one thing that that that entrepreneur hates doing is leaving money on the table as well.

00;19;20;21 - 00;19;40;15 Unknown And that's one thing that people do, you know, abandoned cards and those type of things. And the remarketing is something that you guys, you know, we didn't have a remarketing campaign, not the way that you guys have chosen that or worked it, and that's bringing money in as well. It has its own ROI as it has its own cost of acquisition as well. 00;19;40;18 - 00;20;13;21 Unknown So it's a it's a facility that's completely separate, but it works for us as well.

And that's something that is extra money that's just lying there. But yeah, look, my experience with these guys in this team has been good. I mean, I honestly it is you are quite a can complain about really anything you know if there is a little bit of a drop in the metrics you know that basically message the guys because I've got them on WhatsApp, I message them and they sort of respond to me and then they basically see me either that day or the next day. 00;20;13;23 - 00;20;42;06 Unknown And so the service has been incredible.

I think that one of the big things with regards to the cost acquisition that you mentioned as well just now is that, you know, bringing that down is one thing, but if you can't bring that down, you know, you've got to have certain other metrics like your AV app because like what Tiago said, like there's so many people in the space now, everyone's paying, you know, everyone's paying for ads, the ads on getting cheaper. 00;20;42;08 - 00;21;01;25 Unknown What's happening is you've got to make more money.

Your profits are going to be higher in order for you to basically get a bigger piece of the puzzle. That's all it is. So at the end of the day, what they've done and what's left is actually assisted my company is exactly that. The cost of this year has come down, my profits have gone up.

00;21;01;25 - 00;21;28;17 Unknown So now I can throw more money at it. When the last minute I was throwing more money and I was just, you know, momma metrics were nowhere. They were non-existent. So, look, my my experience with these guys have been really good.

I would definitely recommend them to anyone that wants to kind of scale their business. I know that perhaps my my business is different because I am solving problems from a cosmetic and a here perspective. 00;21;28;19 - 00;21;53;13 Unknown But I'm sure I'm sure Tiago has got other, you know, other sort of examples of what they've done, and that's the reason why he's got a 90 to a 90% success rate in terms of, you know, 2 to 3. It makes sense, you know, and I think that everyone's going this route, but everyone's going the route of it, but they also failing because it is not the end all and be all it is.

00;21;53;13 - 00;22;15;00 Unknown I mean, even when you chat to chat and stuff, it gets things wrong all the time, you know? So especially if you know the topic that you obviously discussing with chat, if it gets something wrong, it is. Oh, you pointed that out. Yes.

You correct. And then it corrects itself and people are finding that with is still in its infancy. 00;22;15;00 - 00;22;41;21 Unknown So, you know, having people like Tiago and his team actually coach you through this whole process is exactly what you need. And that's what makes their company special, you know?

So even though they got a nice little tool, I think what makes them special is the team. Mm hmm. I think a lot of our listeners can relate to what you just said, Rafael, working with number a number of different agencies, no one was delivering it, looking at the numbers of ripping your hair out. 00;22;41;21 - 00;23;00;18 Unknown I think that's a bit of on figuring it out and not making success there.

I want to do a question a little bit on the technical side. You mentioned already a little bit on the tech stack. How does capacity fit into an existing ecommerce tech stack? Because everyone has sort of a different set up there.

How does it fit in? 00;23;00;21 - 00;23;21;11 Unknown Yeah, so I imagine a pure tech stack with the ecommerce solution, you have a tool to send emails and SMS. Let's say that you have Shopify for ecommerce, you have glaive, you to send this kind of communications, then you are investing in paid media. Probably in Google and Metta.

So you are spending some money to to bring new people to your websites. 00;23;21;13 - 00;23;53;06 Unknown You are trying some other ways with partners, with other kind of advertising, also outdoor online advertising. And at the same time, you can introduce a simple tool that is only focused on audience intelligence, intelligence that will deliver new audiences to your matter account when most of the brands are spending most of their budget and you don't have to worry with it because we are doing weekly updates, the audience is constantly, consistently being updated.

00;23;53;08 - 00;24;16;27 Unknown At the same time, we are launching insights. We have a team focused on speaking with a client because all this a craziness that we are leaving. We need to have human skills on the companies. Of course that too.

They we are managing 40 clients. Probably tomorrow will be managing 300 and the day after tomorrow 3000 of course that we need to optimize this part. 00;24;16;27 - 00;24;47;07 Unknown But at the same time, this kind of connection between the brand our the agency and our team is super important for us to build the best product for our customer. So in terms of tech stack, imagine list is the upside, the upside tool that will allow you to have intelligence on your matter.

Campaigns not only using meta intelligence, but using your own data intelligence, the intelligence that resides on your Shopify store. 00;24;47;09 - 00;25;07;23 Unknown Okay, Rafael, final question to you before we come to an end today, what should e-commerce founders focus in the next couple of months to stay competitive? You're in the business day to day. Is there anything in your planning that you really want to focus on?

Sure. That's an interesting question. You know, I think the scalability of businesses is where everything lies. 00;25;07;26 - 00;25;39;10 Unknown For me in particular.

I think that over the last many years, I think I've been in business not for 21 years doing this. And I think that that's been my biggest sort of problem has been the scalability. So I think, you know, I feel like I is definitely opening up the, you know, because there's an AI tool now for all sorts of stuff, you know, and there's and I don't know how good they are because I haven't really tried them. 00;25;39;12 - 00;26;14;20 Unknown All I can say is that my experience with these guys is what has gotten me from quadrupling five times in my my, you know, my my income.

And it's, you know, still selling the same product. So I don't know, like I think it's a very good question from my perspective, it's it's really just going to be how do I sort of evolve in in this whole new market of, you know, I you know, because I think that as these guys evolve, you know, they've got to stay. 00;26;14;25 - 00;26;35;13 Unknown I think they've got to say on, on, on, on, on par with regards to what's actually happening out there for me. You know, I mean, we innovating all the time.

But if people don't don't know about it, I mean, it's going to go nowhere. And I'm just going to say this here and it's it's very exciting. I had I've got my patent filed yesterday. 00;26;35;13 - 00;26;58;03 Unknown I've got something that's going to revolutionize sales across the world.

But no one will no one will know about it If I don't actually have a team like this supporting me. So from my perspective, it's probably just the scalability and that the partnerships that you that you get involved with. Okay. You know, and makes perfect sense to Google before our coffee break comes to an end.

00;26;58;04 - 00;27;20;01 Unknown Anything you want to share with our listeners that we haven't covered yet? No. Essentially is that this conversation is probably the most interesting one that I had in this to in this type of content doing this kind of of of episodes, because I have a partner with me that is using our solution and there is no more important thing for me and for all my team that's to have advocates that are using the solution. 00;27;20;01 - 00;27;42;26 Unknown So this is the main message that I have.

And the other is again, three days trial use it. You don't need to do everything really well. You need to the specific things super well and do them well with the right tools. Focus on what you have and the best things that you have in terms of ecommerce.

Focus on the products that you are selling. 00;27;42;26 - 00;27;43;27 Unknown Focusing on focus.