For years, marketers (especially DTC advertisers) have relied on platforms like Meta and Google for their brand’s advertising, but rising costs and lousy support have them searching for fresh options.

AppLovin, a mobile gaming giant, has been gaining traction over the last couple of months, and The Information has a solid breakdown of the platform today.

AppLovin lets retailers advertise inside games. Instead of seeing another game ad between levels, gamers might catch an ad for wallets, skincare, or even workout gear.

It’s new, it’s shiny, and—so far—it works.

Why gamers are paying attention

AppLovin’s ads are unskippable and pop up between game levels—a sweet spot for undivided attention.

And for now, for players used to seeing ads for other apps, these retail ads feel like a welcome change, making them more memorable.

Early success stories

Brands like Athletic Greens, Jones Road Beauty and Oura, and Ridge Wallet hopped onto AppLovin’s pilot program this fall.

By Black Friday, Ridge noticed their AppLovin ads outperformed Meta’s. Ridge shifted half of their usual Meta budget, spending over $100,000 daily on AppLovin during the holiday shopping spree.

But can it scale?

While early results are impressive, there’s skepticism.

AppLovin’s costs are climbing as more brands join, echoing past ad platforms like Snapchat, where early success faded as competition drove up prices.

Meta and Google still dominate because they offer powerful targeting tools and access to billions of users. AppLovin doesn’t yet let brands filter out repeat customers or tweak ad audiences as precisely.

The Top Three 🥉

The industry’s most important stories today.

🥇 HAPPY WORDS BOOST AD CLICKS

Positive words in search queries drive more clicks on paid ads, a new study reveals. When people search with happy words, like "joyful" or "delightful," they are more likely to click on related advertisements. Researchers found that these emotional words trigger interest in products, especially hedonic items like clothes or dining experiences. More

• Ad clicks using positive keywords increase during holidays and weekends. Advertisers may want to consider a day or holiday-based scheme for bidding on positive emotion keywords.

🥈 GOOGLE PLANS MORE FREQUENT UPDATES

Google says it will increase the frequency of its core search updates. At a recent event, representatives said they want to make updates feel more routine and continuous rather than isolated major events. While of course Google hopes this will enhance search result quality, it may challenge businesses that rely on predictable update schedules. More

• Has the shift already started? The December 2024 core update followed just weeks after the November update.

🥉TEENS SPEND HOURS ON SOCIAL MEDIA

A Pew Research study finds U.S. teens are highly active on social media, with 46% online almost constantly. YouTube is the most used platform, followed by TikTok, Instagram, and Snapchat. Gender differences show girls favor TikTok while boys prefer YouTube. Smartphones dominate as their primary access tool. More

• 90% of teens use YouTube, while 60% use TikTok and Instagram regularly.

• Platforms like Facebook and X (formerly Twitter) continue to lose teen users.

Today’s Other News ☑︎

Everything else that matters.

Social Media 📱

• Threads is testing its own version of Starter Packs — curated lists of accounts that help new users find people to follow based on topics like pop culture and recipes. more

  • 🤦🏻 Gee, where have I heard this before? Oh yeah! Meta copied it from Bluesky. (Here’s our Bluesky Starter Pack for digital marketers)

• Tumblr has launched Communities, a new feature that lets users create topic-based groups similar to Reddit or Facebook groups. Users can join public or private communities about interests like gaming, film photography, and LGBTQ topics, with dedicated landing pages and comment sections. more

  • 🎯 In case you’re curious, yes you can run ads on Tumblr — if you dare.

• X is testing file attachments for direct messages (DMs), which would allow users to send files through the platform. This feature appears in both iOS and Android code. more

  • 🧘🏻 What Elon thinks is feature growth, I think everyone else in the industry considers a problematic lack of focus and product direction.

• WhatsApp is upgrading its calling features for the holidays, letting users select specific group chat participants for calls, improve video call quality, add fun video effects, and make the desktop calling experience a little easier. more

• LinkedIn is now showing public video view counts. This is similar to the other major video platforms (Instagram, TikTok & YouTube). “It may seem minor, but can actually impact user behavior,” says Lindsay Gamble. “High view counts serve as social proof, signaling that content is worth watching.” more 

• An interesting piece in eMarketer today (“Why marketers should pay attention to Bluesky—even if they’re not ready to make the jump”) talks about where Bluesky sits right now in the marketing space. The platform crossed 25 million users yesterday. more

• California may require social media platforms to display warning labels about mental health risks for users of all ages. The bill would force platforms to show a black box warning for at least 90 seconds initially and weekly thereafter. More.

  • Follow us on Bluesky • Follow Tod on Bluesky

• A few tiny updates:

  • Snapchat+ has added Christmas-themed app icons.

  • TikTok has added an end-of-year feature for templates.

  • Instagram is testing letting you schedule DMs (for now, only being tested on some Android phones)

  • You can now add a birthday or founding date to your Facebook brand page

  • CapCut now allows you to hide or show the watermark on your videos.

SEO 🌐

• Google launched its December 2024 core search algorithm update, which will take two weeks to complete. As usual, Google has declined to say what the update changes, other than improving multiple ranking systems. See our story about these updates in the Big Three (above). more

Advertising 🎯

• Google is testing campaign-level negative keywords for Performance Max ads, letting advertisers exclude specific search terms at the campaign level. more.

• Nearly half of American consumers feel ignored by advertisers, with 44% reporting brands do not understand their values or priorities. White, suburban, high-income consumers feel most overlooked. Most consumers who feel ignored say they would prefer shopping with brands that share their beliefs and are willing to pay more for such alignment more.

Agencies 🏢

• A glitch in Omnicom's planned acquisition of IPG? Adstra sued IPG's Kinesso and Acxiom, alleging they misused data from a master supply agreement to build a competing identity-resolution product. The lawsuit could impact the acquisition by raising questions about Acxiom's data practices. more

Video and Streaming 📺

• YouTube TV will raise its monthly price to USD$82.99 in January after streaming over 1 billion hours daily on TV sets. The platform saw significant growth in sports, podcasts, and creator content, with channel subscriptions jumping 40%. more

  • 📈 BTW: It generated almost $9 billion in ad revenues in Q3, its second-best quarter ever. 

AI & Data 🤖

• Google's Gemini AI now lets users summarize entire Google Drive folders with a single click. You can ask things like “What in this folder” or “What’s the theme of this folder.” It works on text documents, PDFs, spreadsheets, and presentations, and is available to Google One AI Premium and some enterprise users. more

  • 😩 I just want AI that will remove the 6,481 Google Doc documents in my drive that are titled “Untitled document.”

Internet Trends 📈

• Cloudflare reports global internet traffic grew 17% in 2024, with Google dominating web services. The United States generated 34% of bot traffic, and mobile devices accounted for 41% of total internet usage. Chrome led browser usage at 65%. more

Marketing Tool of the Day 🔨

Best kept secrets of the digital marketing world¹

Today’s Trivia Question 🧠

Tap your guess and you could win!

Spotted on Social 🔍

The social web’s best posts in the last 24 hours.

In partnership with