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The Top Three

🏆 THE INDUSTRY’S MOST IMPORTANT STORIES TODAY

🥇 META’S AD MUKBANG

Meta $META ( ▼ 0.92% ) announced several new ad updates yesterday:

• Trending Reels Ads: Instagram is testing ads placed alongside top-performing or category-specific Reels (e.g., beauty, sports), similar to TikTok’s Pulse.

• Creator Marketplace Trends Display: New in-stream trend listings sortable by region, topic, and timeframe, with links to relevant clips.

• Updated Creator Metrics: Creator profiles will now show past brand collaboration stats like hook-rate and interaction rate.

Other updates:

• Meta also confirmed that it’s testing a Creator Marketplace API.

• An update to Partnership Ads that will let brands display their brand handle or not on Partnership promotions.

• Facebook Live Partnership ads with the ability to boost creator-led livestreams

• It’s also testing Threads video ads that will autoplay when displayed in-stream, expand when clicked, and include a CTA button.

🥈 NEW REDDIT PRO TOOLS

Reddit has announced updates to its free Reddit Pro suite of business tools:

• The platform will now generate suggested profile bios for businesses during Reddit Pro sign-up, using the business’s website URL to create descriptions.

• Reddit also now lets brands re-share relevant community posts and comments on their profiles.

• Reddit Pro is available in all English-speaking regions where Reddit operates, and is free... for now.

🥉 EDIT, BUT NOT QUITE IT

Building on last week’s updates, Instagram's video editing app, Edits, rolled out more features yesterday… But it’s still no CapCut:

• Meta added 50 new text animations to make captions stand out, with effects like stretch and slide away.

• Safe zone and alignment guides are now available, ensuring your content stays visible even with playback buttons overlaid.

• A new timeframe frame rate selector lets you adjust video playback for smoother viewing, along with auto-generated captions and more filters.

Today’s Other News

📰 EVERYTHING ELSE THAT MATTERS

Advertising 📣

• In honor of Small Business Month (and possibly survival), TikTok is dropping $1M in ad credits to U.S. small businesses. Starting May 15, it’ll also host weekly webinars with campaign tips and launch educational and mentorship programs nationwide. AKA PLEASE GOD DON'T BAN US. 🙏 more

• Google is now testing follower counts for Facebook and TikTok profiles directly in sponsored search ads. While this feature was previously spotted in organic results, it’s now appearing in paid listings. more

• Google Ads $GOOGL ( ▼ 0.99% ) launched new charts for reporting, adding several visualization options:

  • Bar Charts: 100% Stacked Bar for one or two dimensions with multiple metrics.

  • Column Charts: 100% Stacked Column and Combo Charts for up to 5 column and 5 line metrics.

  • Time-Series Charts: Stacked Area and 100% Stacked Area Charts

Streaming 🎧️ 

• How do you measure a podcast? Spotify $SPOT ( ▼ 1.07% ) is counting the plays. Spotify's new metric, “plays,” only tracks when a user “actively listened to or watched any episode” of a podcast. Play counts will be public and rounded to the nearest thousand, letting listeners and viewers also see what’s trending on the platform. more

Social Media 📱

• Pinterest $PINS ( ▲ 4.88% ) posted a strong Q1, adding 17 million users and reaching 570 million MAUs. Revenue increased 16% YoY to $855 million, but growth in its core markets, the U.S. and EU, remained relatively flat. more

• Snapchat $SNAP ( ▲ 0.37% ) says more than 400 million users are now using Snap Map, a real-time location feature that tracks and shows where users are and what’s happening nearby. Brands are jumping in, too, with Snapchat launching Promoted Places, letting businesses showcase their locations or events. more

• Threads is experimenting with new features:

  • Spoiler tags: Users can hide parts of a post behind a black overlay to avoid spoilers.

  • Interest prompts: Some posts in the “For You” feed now show “Interested in this post” messages, helping train the algorithm.

  • Account status: Users can now check their account status on Threads, like on Facebook and IG.

The Ticker

📈 HOW DIGITAL MARKETING STOCKS ARE DOING

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