DTC’s Daily Digest brings you the latest news on the world’s fastest growing direct-to-consumer brands. In today’s edition: YouTube creates DTC council; Amazon and Adobe launch Branded Stores; The Cheeky Panda smashes funding target.

YouTube creates DTC council

YouTube has reportedly formed a ‘DTC council’ to communicate with top direct-to-consumer brands, and attract more advertising in the space. With DTC brands allocating the majority of their advertising budgets to Facebook and Instagram, it is no surprise that YouTube wants to take a bigger share of this (increasingly lucrative) pie.

Last month, execs from roughly 20 top DTC brands convened at YouTube’s offices for the inaugural DTC council meeting. The meeting was led by YouTube’s director of performance advertising, Nicky Rettke, who wanted to hear from companies about their audience targeting, ad priorities (be it raising awareness or driving sales), and what type of ad products they would like to see.

Rettke told Digiday that “ these brands are focused on performance metrics — they care about perception of their brands, but it ultimately comes down to driving new customer acquisitions, subscriptions and purchases.”

With many DTC brands looking to diversify their marketing portfolio away from Facebook and Instagram, now is a good time for YouTube to be holding these meetings. DTCs are looking into new channels, such as OOH and TV, it makes sense that video will also be on their radars.

Amazon and Adobe launch Branded Stores

Amazon is partnering with Adobe to step up its efforts to play a role in transactions beyond Amazon.com.

Adobe has announced that it is working with Amazon on a new program called ‘Branded Stores’ for Amazon Sellers, to create what they are describing as “branded storefronts” (not described specifically as websites) aimed at smaller merchants that have already been selling through Amazon (and possibly other marketplace platforms) to build their own first-party commerce experiences — while still using some of the transaction and fulfilment tools of the Amazon ecosystem. For now, these tools include Amazon Pay, fulfilment, and hosting on AWS.

The Branded Stores offering is rolling out first in North America, with plans to expand to Europe in the coming months. It is a good move for Amazon, as it tries to get in on the DTC trend, which has seen brands looking to develop one-to-one relationships with their customers through owned platforms, rather than through Amazon. However, by offering these owned platforms to DTC brands, Amazon has carved out a niche for itself in the DTC ecosystem.

The Cheeky Panda smashes funding target

The Cheeky Panda has completed its latest Seedrs round. The brand, which makes ultra sustainable, low-carbon, bamboo tissue products, reached over £1.4m in funding. The campaign originally sought to raise a minimum of £750,000.

The Cheeky Panda revealed that the latest Seedrs round’s funds will be used to support purchasing of stock, marketing to raise the brand awareness and internationalisation of the brand.

It’s easy to see why The Cheeky Panda has seen such success here. Direct-to-consumer brands are taking a growing share of consumer spend in traditional industries, and we are seeing big DTC investments all over the place these days. So, when investors see a brand that is disrupting the way a particular product is being sold, it is no surprise that they want to get involved.

What’s more, The Cheeky Panda is an environmentally-focused business. Like DTC brands, products with an eco-friendly core, are also taking a greater share of consumer spend. So a DTC brand with an environmentally friendly proposition is a sound investment in anyone’s book.