Beyond the Basket - 13/08/25

Wednesday 13th August | Join Free

Welcome to Wednesday’s issue of Beyond the Basket.

In today’s beyond the basket:
🖥️ Frasers Group acquires ebuyer from administration
🛏️ Bearaby Pauses Production Amid 50% India Tariffs
▶️ YouTube adds new CTAs, and improved dubbing tools
🧠 Google Deploys AI to Fight Invalid Ad Traffic
💬 Threads surpasses 400M monthly users, gains on X
+plus four deep reads, and one tool that could help supercharge your social media presence.

TL;DR: Frasers Group has acquired UK online tech retailer Ebuyer out of administration after years of declining sales, unpaid rent, and operating losses, restoring its site with an expanded product range.

Why It Matters: Once generating £174.2m in annual sales, Ebuyer saw revenue fall to £136.5m by 2023, sliding to a £1.8m operating loss. The company faced a winding-up petition from its landlord before entering administration on 11 August. Frasers, which already partnered with Ebuyer through its Frasers Plus credit and loyalty programme, quickly moved to secure the brand in a pre-pack deal. The acquisition folds Ebuyer into Frasers’ growing multi-category retail network, alongside Game, Studio, and Sports Direct, with immediate integration into its payment flexibility ecosystem. By widening the range to cover gaming, computing, TVs, audio, and home electricals, Frasers is aiming to leverage Ebuyer’s brand recognition while boosting cross-selling potential and customer lifetime value across its portfolio. This continues Frasers’ opportunistic strategy of acquiring distressed but recognisable brands and reviving them via its combined retail and finance infrastructure.

Your Move: If you operate in consumer tech or electronics, watch how Frasers uses its financing, loyalty, and cross-brand promotions to revitalise Ebuyer. Assess whether partnering with multi-brand platforms or offering embedded finance options could help you capture customers from legacy brands undergoing reinvention.

TL;DR: Weighted blanket startup Bearaby is pausing production after the U.S. announced 50% tariffs on imports from India, effective Aug. 27, where all its blankets are made.

Why It Matters: The sudden tariff hike, among the steepest in U.S. trade history, has left brands importing from India scrambling to adjust. For Bearaby, the impact is severe: its blankets are hand-knit, requiring months of artisan training, making supply chain shifts slow and costly. August is typically Bearaby’s critical inventory build-up period ahead of Q4, which drives the bulk of annual sales. Founder Kathrin Hamm opted to pause production rather than raise prices, while exploring lower-cost materials and process changes. Bearaby’s European operations will continue, but the uncertainty underscores the risk for small, craft-focused brands in a volatile tariff environment, especially when manufacturing diversification is complex.

Your Move: With Q4 looming, assess how new tariffs or trade barriers could disrupt your supply chain, not just pricing, but availability. Run scenarios now for potential inventory gaps, and build buffer stock or alternate supplier options to avoid last-minute fulfillment failures during peak season.

TL;DR: YouTube is rolling out updates to Community Posts, Promote campaigns, and auto-dubbing, including doubling image limits in posts and adding granular call-to-action buttons for promotions.

Why It Matters: Creators can now upload up to 10 images per Community Post (up from five), offering richer storytelling and engagement potential. Auto-dubbed videos can now be edited in Studio, with dubbing automatically reprocessed to match changes, a boost for multi-language accessibility. Later this year, editing for videos with manually uploaded multi-language captions will also be supported. For monetisation, YouTube’s Promote tool now lets creators choose more specific CTAs, like Book Now, Get Quote, or Contact Us, when running campaigns aimed at website visits. This adds finer control for driving conversions directly from YouTube without going through Google Ads.

Your Move: If YouTube is part of your acquisition mix, test the new CTA options to better align creative with conversion goals. For brands producing global content, explore auto-dubbing edits to keep multilingual videos fresh without full retranslation.

TL;DR: Google is now using AI models to detect and block non-genuine ad traffic, claiming a 40% drop in invalid activity tied to deceptive placements.

Why It Matters: Invalid traffic (IVT), from bots, click farms, or misleading ad placements, remains a major drag on digital ad ROI. Google’s new AI-driven system analyses app content, web pages, user behaviour, and ad placements to spot IVT more precisely. The result: a reported 40% reduction in bad traffic linked to disruptive practices. For advertisers, this could mean better audience targeting and less budget leakage. For publishers, however, it raises the stakes on ad placement compliance and content quality, as automated systems become more nuanced and aggressive in flagging violations.

Your Move: If you rely on programmatic ads, either as a buyer or seller, review your traffic quality audits and ad placement practices now. Make sure your pages and creatives align with Google’s updated policies, or risk reduced delivery and monetization.

TL;DR: Meta’s Threads now has 400M monthly active users, adding 50M in the past quarter, and is rapidly closing the mobile engagement gap with X.

Why It Matters: While X still leads in total users (600M MAUs) and dominates web traffic, Threads’ mobile daily active users reached 115.1M in June, just 13% shy of X’s, marking 127.8% YoY growth. For brands, Threads is becoming a viable alternative for real-time engagement, aided by feature rollouts like DMs, custom feeds, and fediverse integration. With X’s daily active users on mobile down 15.2% YoY, Threads is drawing attention from marketers seeking less volatile ad environments and fresh organic reach opportunities. Early-mover brands on Threads may find lower CPMs and less competition for attention, especially on mobile where usage is surging.

Your Move: Audit your short-form social strategy to ensure Threads is part of your test-and-learn budget. Focus on mobile-first creative and community engagement, and measure cost-per-engagement against X to identify the better ROI channel for your audience.

Flick — Flick is an AI-assisted social media content planner that generates post ideas, captions, and hashtag suggestions tailored to your niche. It streamlines content creation, boosts engagement, and helps maintain a consistent posting schedule. (Free trial)

Wunderkind — An AI-powered performance marketing platform that uses identity resolution to recognise more site visitors, deliver hyper-personalised email and SMS campaigns, and optimise messaging in real time. Now available on Shopify it can help merchants capture more first-party data, scale revenue, and increase customer lifetime value, all without complex setup. (Free trial available via Shopify App Store)

Curated deep dives, longer reads and analysis shaping the future of ecommerce, retail and digital marketing.

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Confessions of a Marketer on Leaving Google’s PMAX Read here →
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Five Marketing Lessons from Taylor Swift Read here →
From fan engagement to cultural resonance, Swift’s approach offers marketers a blueprint for deepening brand loyalty.