The Top Three

🏆 THE INDUSTRY’S MOST IMPORTANT STORIES TODAY

🥇 MARKETERS PUSH BACK ON AI AD TOOLS

🚀 Performance Maxed Out: AI’s role in media buying is undeniable, but Digiday reports today that marketers are growing increasingly wary of tools like Google’s Performance Max and Meta’s Advantage+, which promised efficiency but have raised concerns about transparency and control. Now, advertisers are pushing back, reallocating budgets to more traditional methods as they face diminishing returns and unclear ad placements.

• Some media buyers report cutting Google spend by half, particularly on Performance Max, and shifting some of that budget to the open web.

• Despite the growing skepticism, these platforms are still thriving, with Meta’s Advantage+ generating $20B in revenue in Q4 2024 alone.

• While marketers are seeking more control, it remains to be seen whether this will result in a significant shift or just a temporary reaction to growing frustration.

🥈 TIKTOK’S NEW E-COMMERCE FEATURES

TikTok announced some new updates for in-stream shopping ads, including an update to Smart+ campaigns, automated ad creation, improvements to search ads, and more. more

• Smart+ Expansion: The platform is expanding its Smart+ catalog ads to include both website and app conversions in a single campaign. Smart+ is also now available for the Traffic objective.

• GMV Max Campaigns: New features include "Affiliate Creative for Ads," letting TikTok Shop merchants automatically use affiliate content within their GMV Max campaigns, and LIVE formats for GMV Max.

• Search Ads Expansion: TikTok is extending its search ads to the Shop tab.

• Symphony AI Tools: A new product-to-video tool automates ad creation from brand or product details and assets, or by importing them directly from a URL.

🥉 LINKEDIN UPDATES CAMPAIGN MANAGER

LinkedIn announced some new updates to its Campaign Manager app yesterday. more

• Media Planner: A new tool that forecasts campaign results before launch, offering insights into expected ROI with a simple overview and graph.

• Ad Duplication: Campaigns and accounts can now duplicate ads.

• Dynamic UTMs: Automates UTM generation, letting you track responses to your promotions.

• AI-Driven Campaign Digest: A new feature on the Campaign Summary Page, providing plain text explainers of how to understand results.

Today’s Other News

📰 EVERYTHING ELSE THAT MATTERS

Advertising 📣

• 😨 Ad survival mode: Magna $MGA ( ▼ 2.77% ) released its U.S. 2025 Ad Forecast today, signalling a challenging year ahead, as economic uncertainty reshapes marketing budgets. While total ad spend is still expected to grow in the mid-single digits, traditional media faces stagnation while digital continues its upward trajectory. ADWEEK has a great breakdown today called “3 Things Marketers Should Know About Magna’s 2025 Ad Forecast Update”:

  1. Lack of visibility could slow down the ad market.

  2. Traditional media owners are the most at risk.

  3. The economy remains resilient despite headwinds.

• Google Ads $GOOGL ( ▼ 4.88% ) has a new support option called "Get a call," available to some advertisers. With "Get a call," it seems a Google Ads support representative will initiate the call, rather than the advertiser having to reach out. The company is also experimenting with text-based support for assistance. more

• Google said today that the ongoing double serving experiment could lead to shifts in Top/Absolute Top Impression rates and/or overall CTR. The experiment lets advertisers compete in the bottom auction, even if their ad showed in the top ad location. more

  • A spokesperson clarified that while the experiment may affect these metrics, the definition of an impression remains unchanged: it’s still counted each time your ad is shown on a search result page or other site on the Google Network.

Ad Tech 🧑‍💻 

• Meta $META ( ▼ 4.29% ) expanded Marketing API support for partnership ads yesterday, which let advertisers run ads with creators, brands and other businesses. Advertisers can now use existing Instagram posts for partnership ads in both Placement Asset Customization and Advantage+ Creative via API. Partnership ads can also be used for click-to-message destinations. more

  • Creators need professional accounts and must meet eligibility requirements to participate.

• 👀 Data watchdog cracking down on ad tech: The UK’s Information Commissioner’s Office has set its sights on online tracking as a key priority this year, alongside children’s privacy and AI regulations. With the ICO making online tracking a major focus, AdExchanger reports that advertisers, publishers, and ad tech partners should do the same... especially when it comes to compliance and user consent.

Social Media 📱

• A few updates from YouTube:

  • New Subscriber Overview: Channel managers can now view who’s subscribed to their channel directly from the app. Previously available only on Studio Desktop, this feature is rolling out to users with more than four subscribers. Tapping “See your subscribers” will show a list of subscribers sorted by recency, but only those who’ve publicly subscribed.

  • Live Stream “Take a Break” Feature: Streamers can now schedule breaks during their broadcast in 1, 3, or 5-minute increments. Creators can display a default away slate or a video from their playlist, while eligible viewers will see mid-roll ads during the break.

  • Thumbnail Display in Analytics: YouTube is adding a new video thumbnail display in the YouTube Studio mobile app, which will help differentiate between video-specific data and overall channel performance.

• 🙏 TikTok Notes, We Hardly Knew Ye: TikTok is shutting down its standalone photo-sharing app, Notes, less than a year after its launch. Users are being notified that the app will be discontinued on May 8th, with the prompt pushing them to explore Lemon8 instead. more

AI 🤖 

• 🍳 Google is cooking: Three months after releasing Gemini 2.0, Google launched Gemini 2.5 Pro yesterday. The new model can process multimodal input from text, audio, images, videos, and large datasets, plus it can analyze entire code repositories for coding projects. more

  • It’s available now in AI Studio (experimental) and for Gemini Advanced users, with a Vertex AI rollout coming soon. Pricing details are still TBD.

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