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All Your Ads Are Belong to Us
He finally said the quiet thing out loud: Zuckerberg wants to remove almost all ad campaign control from your meddling little hands.
All Your Ads Are Belong to Us
He finally said the quiet thing out loud: Zuckerberg wants to remove almost all ad campaign control from your meddling little hands.
by Tod Maffin (email • LinkedIn • social media)
Today's News
Quarterlies: Ad Spend Slows on Major Platforms
This week, most of the major platforms released their Q2 reports. We analyzed them to look at whether ad spend was growing or slowing. And in almost all cases, Q2 was slower in terms of growth.
Meta
Investment in Meta properties rose by 10% year-over-year in Q2, down from 16% in Q1.
Facebook still dominates Meta's ad spend at 68%, while Instagram's share increased to 32%. Facebook CPMs decreased by just 1% year-over-year, partly due to the increasing share of cheaper Reels and overlay ads.
Instagram's ad spend growth rate cooled to 24% year-over-year in Q2.
Google Search
Google search advertisers increased their budgets by 14% year-over-year in Q2, down from 17% in the previous quarter. Shopping ads rose by 16%, while text ads saw a drop in click-through rates.
Amazon
Amazon Sponsored Products spending growth decelerated to 8% year-over-year in Q2. However, sales generated through Sponsored Product ads increased by 11%, resulting in improved ROI for advertisers.
YouTube
YouTube was the only major platform that saw an increase in ad spend growth last quarter, with a 28% year-over-year growth. This was driven by a 74% increase in impression volume, despite a 26% decline in average CPM.
Emerging platforms
Walmart Sponsored Products, TikTok, Snapchat, and Pinterest all experienced significant growth last quarter, with Walmart leading at 45% year-over-year growth.
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Zuckerberg Wants to Control Your Brand’s Ads
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg took the quarterly report to chat about his vision for advertising on the platform in the years ahead — and it’s exactly what you think it is: AI is coming for your control.
Over the long term, advertisers will basically just be able to tell us a business objective and a budget, and we’re going to go do the rest for them.
We’re going to get there incrementally over time, but I think this is going to be a very big deal.
Has the backlash begun?
A very big deal indeed, since most attempts at this level of AI control, by definition, remove human oversight from the process. You only need to look at how Google’s Performance Max started to see this model in action. Limited creative control and certainly no level of reporting that advertisers had been used to.
It’s possible the industry did quietly clap back at the trend, since we’ve watched several of these AI products trickle some of that control — or at least some reporting — back.
But Zuckerberg is clear: He sees a future where:
AI will be able to generate creative for advertisers as well, and will also be able to personalize it as people see it.
Creative generation is already here, of course, in the form of image enhancements, text options, and so on. But clearly Zuckerberg sees a much deeper “Daddy knows best” approach — an approach not everyone thinks is realistic.
Let’s be clear that it’s a ways off, if ever, before CMOs will simply hand over the keys to an AI agent that will autonomously generate ad creative on their behalf.
While genAI’s technical capabilities meaningfully mature at an accelerated pace, Meta cannot lose sight of the responsibility and importance of the human touch in the advertising process.
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TikTok Launches New App Marketplace for SMBs
TikTok launched a new App marketplace for small business users this week. It features a collection of TikTok tools, built by third-party developers, that can help small brands maximize their performance in the app.
Meant for SMBs
The App Center includes listings of apps in different functional categories; these offer "lightweight solutions," as opposed to more comprehensive tools that are better suited to bigger brands.
Free trials available
Most of the apps listed offer free trials, so you can try them out before signing up for their service.
X’s App is Suspending User Accounts (lol)
X has removed its Mac app from the App Store.
The app hadn’t really been updated since the rebranding from Twitter last year. But one big benefit to it is that it didn’t display any ads. So, of course, it had to die.
Instead, the company suggested users just use its iPad app instead. If you’re not familiar, newer Macs with Apple’s silicon can use iPad apps on their Macs, though they tend to be less functional than Mac-specific apps.
Houston, we have a problem
And, oh yeah, one other small note — if you do decide to use the iPad app on your Mac, your X account might be suspended.
Some people on Reddit are reporting that as soon as they logged in using the iOS version, their account was shut down.
It’s probably a bug. We don’t know for sure because X doesn’t respond to media inquiries any more.
The workaround
If you still have the old school Twitter for Mac app on your computer, it does appear that you can still use it.
Just don’t delete it, because apparently you’ll never be able to get it back again.
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