Sean Frank named eight emerging DTC brands to watch. On 30 August 2026 I captured the live Meta creative and the page it clicks through to for every one of them, and rated whether the ad's promise survives the click. Two arrive intact, five arrive damaged, one is covered by a quiz wall before the reader sees a product. That 2 of 8 is the library average, so being worth watching predicts nothing about what happens after the click.
- Two of eight arrive intact. BoomBoom Naturals and LeLick. 25% against a library base rate of 23.9%, which is 54 Continuous ratings across 226 assessed pairs. A brand good enough to be named is no more likely to hand off cleanly than any other.
- The discount modal is the common failure. Four of the eight open behind one, and in all four the number in the modal is not the number in the ad. ALLDAY promised 40% off and served a 51% off quiz that filled the whole viewport.
- Landing on a homepage decides nothing. Three of the eight do, and they score one Continuous, one Partial and one Break. LeLick's homepage is the funnel and it works. ALLDAY's is a modal with a site behind it.
- Two brands lose the offer between the ad and the page. Quit With Jones names code QUITTER10 in the creative and the string appears nowhere in the destination's source. Feetures sells a bundle saving and serves an email-signup saving at the same 15%.
- The two that work share one habit. Nothing covers the first view. BoomBoom shows the same five flavours the ad lined up, at $17.47 from $24.95, and LeLick's headline is the ad's line in a different register.
Source: The Handoff, 8 pairs captured 30 August 2026, rated against 226 assessed pairs in the library
Where this list came from, and what I did to it.
The list is not mine. Sean Frank, CEO of Ridge, named eight DTC brands worth watching in a video titled 8 new brands that are crushing (that you havent heard of), and re-shared it on X on 3 September 2026. Quit With Jones, Sun Powder, Feetures, ALLDAY, Magna, BoomBoom, Lockset, LeLick.
What I added is the part a brand list never covers. On 30 August I pulled a live creative for each of the eight from Meta's active set, followed the click, captured the page it landed on the same day, and rated whether the promise survived the trip. That is the standing method behind The Handoff, now 253 published teardowns, and all eight entries carry the video in their sources field.
| Brand | What the ad promised | Where the click landed | Rating |
|---|---|---|---|
BoomBoom Naturals | Five nasal stick flavours, FREE YOUR NOSE | The 4-pack product page, all five flavours, $17.47 from $24.95 | Continuous |
LeLick | Hydration, but make it candy | Homepage, INTRODUCING ELECTROLYTE LOLLIPOPS | Continuous |
Quit With Jones | Nicotine mints, code QUITTER10 for $10 off | Lozenge product page, behind an age gate, no QUITTER10 | Partial |
Sun Powder | One Stick. Real Skin Changes. | Matching lander, under a 15% OFF quiz on the CTA | Partial |
Feetures | Save up to 15% when you bundle | Right 3-pack page, under a 15% email-signup modal | Partial |
Magna | BLUE ICE IS HERE, sold out 4x | /pages/try-blue-ice, showing Watermelon Lime behind a 38% gate | Partial |
Lockset | Sweatproof. Waterproof. Hardwearing goods. | Homepage, leading on DROP 02, no durability claim | Partial |
ALLDAY | try now 40% off | Homepage, entirely covered by a 51% off goal quiz | Break |
Two intact out of eight is 25%. The library base rate is 23.9%, 54 Continuous ratings across 226 assessed pairs. Whatever earns a brand a place on a watch list, it is not the thing that gets the click home. That is the same finding as the 55 clean handoffs, arrived at from the opposite direction.
BoomBoom shows five flavours and then sells five flavours.
The cleanest handoff of the eight, and the least clever. The creative lines up five sticks labelled tropical, mint, spearmint, wintermint and lavender under FREE YOUR NOSE. The click lands on the NASAL STICK (4 PACK) page whose flavour selector carries VARIETY 4PK plus those same five names. Read the teardown.
Price is visible and specific in the first view, $17.47 struck from $24.95, with Subscribe & Save and One Time Purchase both exposed. The only overlay is a FREE U.S. SHIPPING ON ORDERS $39+ strip in the standard top position, which covers nothing. A reader who clicked because they wanted to know what spearmint does can find out without dismissing anything.
The flavour row is doing product education that a mechanism diagram would do worse. Nasal sticks are an unfamiliar format, and five legible flavour names teach the reader what they would be choosing between, which is the question a new format has to answer first. The account behind it runs no landing pages at all: 37 of 40 sampled ads go straight to a Shopify product page.
The ad's caption claims 25,000+ 5-Star Reviews. The page shows 4782 reviews on this SKU. Both are almost certainly true, at different scopes, brand-wide against one product. It does not break the handoff.
It is still the one figure a reader could stumble on, because a number that shrinks after the click reads as a correction whether or not it is one. Scope the review count to the thing being sold.
LeLick lands on a homepage and it works anyway.
The creative is a mirror selfie with no production gloss, and the copy is the whole argument: Hydration, but make it candy. The page opens on [ INTRODUCING ] ELECTROLYTE LOLLIPOPS with the line Better-for-you candy with less sugar, fancy flavors, and premium ingredients perfect for your next workout, and the aside (Not your average lollipop, is it?). Same idea, two registers. Read the teardown.
A SHOP NOW button sits in the first view and nothing covers it. The only overlay is a BUNDLE UP, BUTTERCUP announcement strip in the standard top position, which occupies a strip and hides nothing. The ad carries no offer, so the page's bundle saving has no promise to contradict.
In a category where every brand lists the same three electrolytes, the delivery mechanism is the only defensible ground, and the creative spends its whole frame on what the thing physically is rather than on formulation. That is the correct order for a product whose novelty is the format, and it is why one homepage can carry the argument.
Quit With Jones names a code the page has never heard of.
The best creative of the eight. A simulated iMessage thread whose punchline sits in the compose field, typed but never sent: Yes I want to quit nic w Jones. Putting the decision in an unsent message makes it feel like the reader's own, which is the one move this format has that a testimonial does not. Read the teardown.
The product does arrive. The destination is the nicotine lozenge product page and it carries real prices, $69.00 among them. Two things sit between the click and it. The first is an age gate reading Hey, Quitter. and Are You Over The Age Of 18?, which is legally required for nicotine, sits in a predictable place and clears in one click, so it weighs here the way a cookie bar weighs.
The second is what costs the rating. The creative says Use code QUITTER10 for $10 off, and the string QUITTER10 appears nowhere in the destination page's source. Whether it still applies at checkout was not tested, so the claim is only that the page does not restate it. A reader who did not memorise the code from a video has no way to recover it.
A discount that lives only in the creative is invisible to every reader who scrolled past it, and on a page already fronted by an age gate it is the second thing standing between the click and the cart.
Sun Powder covers its own CTA with a question the ad never raised.
The page keeps the argument. Its H1 reads A daily supplement for sun damaged skin. against the creative's One Stick. Real Skin Changes., the body credits the same dermatologist provenance, and a proof line under the CTA reads Developed & recommended by board-certified dermatologists. Read the teardown.
What the reader does not get is a clean first view. A 15% OFF quiz interstitial fades in over the hero on load, and its four answer buttons, Reduce Skin Aging, Sun Protection, Skin Health and Sun Damage, land directly on top of the primary CTA. The packs stay visible to the right, so the promise is identifiable rather than hidden, which is what keeps this off a Break.
The creative carries no offer at all and the page opens on a discount, which is drift in the reader's favour but a register the ad did not set up. The ad itself is the best-written of the batch: it opens You wear SPF every day. You reapply. You do everything right. and then names what still goes wrong, conceding the reader's existing behaviour before selling past it.
Feetures serves the right product and the wrong fifteen percent.
The ad offers Save up to 15% when you bundle with Feetures and points at the correct three-pack product page. The first view of that page is a full-screen email capture reading Sign up to get 15% off your first order, which attaches the same number to a different mechanism. Read the teardown.
The ad's saving is earned by buying more. The page's is earned by handing over an email. Behind the modal the correct socks are present but ghosted, and the visible hero image is a pastel crew sock rather than the black no-show pack the ad photographed. The page's own source carries no Save up to 15 and no 15% off string at all, so the ad's framing is never restated in words a reader can match.
That is the frustrating part, because the routing discipline here is the best in the batch. Feetures runs roughly 630 active US ads and 24 of the 28 sampled land on a specific product or collection page rather than a homepage. The account does the hard part correctly and then hands the click to a modal that was written for a different campaign.
A first-order email discount served over a bundle ad puts two different fifteen percents on one screen and makes the shopper adjudicate. The product page audit finds this pattern by name.
Magna built a flavour URL that does not open on the flavour.
The creative is built around BLUE ICE IS HERE against a blue bottle, with SEE WHY WE'VE SOLD OUT 4X! above it, and it points at a flavour-specific URL, /pages/try-blue-ice. The first view of that page delivers neither. Read the teardown.
An Unlock 38% OFF + FREE GIFTS email capture fills the screen, and the product visible behind it is a yellow WATERMELON LIME pack beside a Water Bottle and a 2-Pack, both flagged FREE. Blue Ice is genuinely on the page, appearing 29 times in that page's source against 17 on the generic /pages/try, so the promise is obtainable rather than absent. That is what keeps this off a Break.
But a reader who clicked a blue ad for a blue flavour has to dismiss an email gate and then go looking. The most specific thing this brand did, sending a flavour launch to its own page, is undone in the first view. The 38% off is also an offer the ad never made.
The creative deserves better. Framing repeat stock-outs as demand evidence rather than as an apology is a real move, and the three mechanisms underneath it get one line each, Salt + Potassium for cellular hydration, Triple Magnesium for recovery, sleep and energy, and Natural Flavor closing on with zero sugar. It stays readable at feed size while still naming why the formulation differs.
Lockset argues durability and lands on a seasonal drop.
The ad sells durability: Most jewelry has limits. Ours doesn't. Sweatproof. Waterproof. Lockset is built to keep up. over a close crop of a chain, a signet ring and two bracelets. The crop is the proof, tight enough to read the clasp and the ring face, which is what a durability claim needs to be believable. Read the teardown.
The destination is the homepage, which opens on a full-width campaign image captioned DROP 02 with a SHOP ALL button and a product grid below it. Same brand, same street register, jewellery clearly for sale, and the top strip carries FREE SHIPPING ON ORDERS OVER $100. Nothing covers the page, which is why this is not worse than Partial.
What is missing is the argument. Nothing in the first view mentions sweatproof, waterproof, or anything about durability, so the specific reason to prefer this chain over any other chain is dropped at the door. This is a followed click that genuinely lands on a homepage rather than a destination nobody checked: 23 of 25 sampled ads point at lockset.com with no path.
A durability ad arriving on a drop campaign spends its differentiator in the feed and then abandons it.
ALLDAY promises 40% off and shows a 51% off quiz instead.
The ad burns try now 40% off across the bottom of the frame above a four-product lineup. The destination serves a modal that fills the entire viewport: TAKE 51% OFF YOUR FIRST ORDER over the question WHAT'S YOUR #1 GOAL? and four buttons, BOOST MY ENERGY, STAY FOCUSED, SUPPORT MY WELLNESS and IMPROVE MY SLEEP, with No thanks, I'll pass underneath. Read the teardown.
Nothing else is on screen. No product, no price, no 40 percent, not even the brand's own hero behind it. Both tests in the rating boundary fail at once: the promise is covered entirely rather than partly, and the ad's offer is not renamed or renumbered but replaced by a larger discount on different terms.
The larger number is the trap. A 51% off quiz reads like an upgrade on a 40% off ad, and it is not, because the reader who clicked a specific price now has to answer a survey before finding out whether that price exists. The generous version of the offer is unreachable without first telling the brand what your goal is.
The creative had earned the click. Three failure words run across the top, jitteriness, crashes and brain fog, before the question still crashing at 2 pm?, with 600,000+ sprays delivered and five stars directly underneath, and the caption carries the dose, 32 mg natural caffeine + 44 mg science backed nootropics. That number is what separates a spray from an energy drink, and none of it survives to the page.
Never let an acquisition quiz be the whole first view of a paid landing. Suppress it for ad traffic, or at minimum honour the number the creative promised before asking for a goal.
This is the most expensive failure in the library because it happens after the money is spent. The click is paid for, the reader is qualified and willing, and the page asks them to work for the thing they were already sold.
The discount modal is what these eight brands have in common.
Four of the eight open behind a modal offering a discount, and in all four the number in the modal is not the number in the ad. Sun Powder and Magna ran creatives carrying no offer at all and landed on 15% and 38%. Feetures ran a bundle saving and landed on an email saving at the same 15%. ALLDAY ran 40% and landed on 51%.
None of those modals is a mistake in isolation. Each one was almost certainly built for organic traffic, where a first-time visitor with no context is worth interrupting. The failure is that it fires on paid traffic too, where the visitor arrived with a specific promise in mind and the interruption overwrites it. That is the pattern across 65 landing pages in the wider library, not something these eight invented.
It is worth being exact about how common that is, because the temptation is to overstate it. A popup standing in for the landing page is the second most common failure shape in the library, 40 of 169 classified failures, behind the page dropping the ad's argument at 44. So the modal is not the biggest problem in DTC advertising. It is simply the biggest one in this particular eight, where a popup is implicated in five of the six failures and Lockset is the only brand that fails for a different reason.
| Measure | These eight | Full library |
|---|---|---|
Arrive intact | 2 of 8, 25.0% | 54 of 226, 23.9% |
Arrive damaged | 5 of 8, 62.5% | 128 of 226, 56.6% |
Do not arrive | 1 of 8, 12.5% | 44 of 226, 19.5% |
Opens behind a discount modal | 4 of 8 | 40 of 169, the second most common failure shape |
The second finding is the one that surprised me. Three of the eight land on a bare homepage, ALLDAY, Lockset and LeLick, and they score one Break, one Partial and one Continuous. The destination shape did not decide any of them. LeLick's homepage is the funnel, so the ad's line is the page's headline and the buy box is one anchor away. ALLDAY's homepage is a modal with a site behind it. Same shape, opposite outcome, which is the argument the five destination shapes makes at scale.
The third is that creative quality and handoff quality are unrelated here. Quit With Jones and ALLDAY wrote the two best ads in the batch and finished Partial and Break. BoomBoom shot a row of five sticks on a plain background and finished Continuous. Whoever built the creative and whoever owns the page are, in six of these eight cases, clearly not talking to each other. The six ways handoffs break covers the mechanics.
If you want to run this on your own account: open the Meta Ad Library for your brand, pick the creative with the most spend behind it, click it the way a stranger would, and screenshot what loads before you scroll. Then read the ad and the screenshot side by side and ask what the ad promised that the screenshot does not pay back. Most of what I find is visible in that one comparison. Benchmarks for the creative side are in the Meta creative benchmarks, and the format counts are in what DTC brands actually run.
Questions about
this list and how
the eight were rated.
Did you pick these eight brands?
No. Sean Frank named all eight in his video 8 new brands that are crushing (that you havent heard of), re-shared on X on 3 September 2026. The captures were made on 30 August 2026 because he named them, and the video is recorded in the sources field of all eight entries in The Handoff. What is mine is the capture, the rating and the read, not the discovery.
What does a Continuous, Partial or Break rating actually mean?
Continuous means the page pays back what the ad promised and nothing covers it. Partial means the promise is obtainable but the reader has to reconcile something the creative did not warn them about, such as a different discount or a missing claim. Break means the promise is covered outright or replaced with something else. Two cases decide most verdicts: an overlay sitting over the promise, and an offer the ad never made appearing in place of the one it did.
Is landing an ad on your homepage always a mistake?
No, and these eight are the cleanest evidence I have. Three of them land on a bare homepage and they score one Continuous, one Partial and one Break. LeLick works because the homepage is the funnel: the ad's line is the page headline and every CTA anchors to the buy box. Lockset loses the durability claim it spent the whole ad making. ALLDAY covers the homepage with a quiz. The shape is not the variable, what is in the first view is.
Why is a bigger discount on the page still a failure?
Because the reader clicked on a specific number and has to work to find out whether it exists. ALLDAY's ad promised 40% off and its page opened on a 51% off quiz filling the whole viewport, with no product, no price and no 40 percent anywhere on screen. The larger figure is not honoured, it is offered on different terms in exchange for answering a survey. A reader who wanted the thing they were sold now has to negotiate for it.
How current are these captures?
The ads and the pages were captured on 30 August 2026, four days before the list was re-shared. Paid creative rotates and landing pages change, so any of these can be fixed or made worse without notice. Every entry in The Handoff records both dates, the ad observed date and the landing page observed date, so a reader can tell how old the evidence is rather than assuming it is current.
Want this read on your own funnel?
The audit runs the same comparison on your store: what the creative promises, what the first view pays back, and what is sitting on top of the click you already paid for.
Audit my store free