Meta Ads Are So Broken People Are Pulling Their Campaigns

In Today’s Issue:

📉 Meta’s ads are showing up without images and glitched copy

📹 TikTok explores extending video uploads to 15 minutes

📺 Samsung finds smart TV shoppable ads gain traction

🛒 Instacart shares data with The Trade Desk for targeted ads

📸 Instagram trials feed exclusively for Meta Verified users

Meta Ads Are So Broken Right Now, Marketers Are Halting Their Campaigns

It’s never good when ad campaigns break, worse when that happens in the leadup to Black Friday. And even worse when the platform this has been happening on has not acknowledged the issue at all.

The platform we’re talking about is, of course, Meta — known for the instability of its ad platform.

But this bug is a big deal — big enough that major media buyers are pulling back on their Meta spend.

The issue is images. Many people are reporting that their ads are being displayed without the associated media. That’s a huge deal, of course, but at the time of our production today, Meta had not said anything about it, and media buyers on social media also report radio silence from their reps.

And other bugs too — some, even on Meta’s own ads. One example circulating around social media is an ad for Meta but where the body copy usually is, it just barfs out the variable “product.brand"

Andrew Foxwell is our Meta ads correspondent.

Andrew, what is going on here?

Yes, this is a thing that started to happen on Friday. We’ve heard zero from Meta about it. Our rep said there's currently no bug that's been filed, which I think is insane because it's literally affecting thousands of accounts. So I wanted to just validate that if you've seen this, it's not showing images, it is a glitch. It's also somebody screenshotted, been a glitch in Meta's own ads.

It's not happening everywhere in the world. It certainly seems to be happening now within the United States. I've seen reports out of Europe that it's been fine. So unclear how, when this is going to get resolved, but it's still happening in certain accounts.

And we don't know which ads showed with an image and which ones did not. So, you know, clear as mud per usual from Meta, which is really frustrating, especially.

How to Get Refunds from Meta If You’re Affected [✨ Premium Exclusive]

Andrew Foxwell is our Meta ads correspondent. He joins us every Friday, exclusively in the Premium Newsletter and Premium Podcast.

This week, Andrew and I discussed:

• How to get a full refund if you’re impacted by the big bug in ads happening now

• Tightening up your conversion reporting to make sure all parts of the funnel are captured

• What is worth testing for campaign structure in Q4

• With everything going broad+AI, are there even funnels any more?

Be sure to check out Andrew’s Foxwell Founders community of digital ad buyers and his extensive training in the digital ad space.

TikTok Videos Going to 15 Minutes Soon?

TiKTok is testing letting brands and creators upload even longer videos than they can now.

When TikTok started, videos were only 15 seconds long. Then, they went to a minute. Then 3 minutes. Then 10. Now, they’re trying out 15-minutes for some accounts.

Nobody should be surprised, really. All the apps want to keep eyeballs on their content as long as possible. And longer videos means more opportunity for advertising like midrolls.

Will we see this grow even beyond 15 minutes? Probably. Douyin, the Chinese clone of TikTok, now lets people upload 30 minute videos — and has for a year now.

No word yet on when this will roll out more widely.

Consumers Are Buying From Smart TV Shoppable Ads

One of the quiet digital ad formats is starting to get some solid results.

Shoppable ads on smart TVs are standing out among consumers — a new survey of 1,000 smart TV owners found that 55% recall seeing shoppable ads and half say they’ve interacted with them.

A few more data points:

• 51% say they’ve scanned QR codes to get more product information.

• 26% said they had scanned QR codes to make a purchase.

• The most popular products purchased through shoppable ads were clothing, electronics, food and food delivery.

• But smartphones are still way out in front, with 82% saying they purchase through shoppable ads on mobile devices.

I should note the survey was paid for by Samsung ads and its video ads partner, so it’s not like they don’t have a dog in this race.

But still interesting to see these numbers slowly tick up over time.

Instacart Selling Consumer Purchase Data

Instacart, the food delivery app, is becoming more of a consumer data repository, with a small side gig delivering groceries.

Now, purchase data sorted by product category will be licenced through the adtech firm The Trade Desk for marketers to use to reach consumers interested in or loyal to a specific product.

The Trade Desk offers a variety of placements, but has some particularly strong bench strength across connected TV and display.

This opens up targeting like reaching people who bought your category, but not your brand. Or people who did buy your brand, but you want to stay top of mind. It also can help you reach people who used to buy a lot of your brand but have lapsed recently.

It was only this past May when Instacart released shoppable video ads and enhanced shoppable display ads.

Instacart says it picks up from more than 80,000 stores across North America.

Instagram Testing “Verified Only” Stream

Instagram is leaning even more into pay-for-reach — the company now testing a fourth feed in the app.

Currently, there’s the main feed, then a feed of just your followers, then a feed of just your favourites — and now, they’re testing a Meta Verified feed where only people who pay for the blue checkmark will be shown.

That costs $15 a month if you buy it through the app (a little cheaper on the web).

Since it’s hidden underneath a tap which probably not a lot of people even use to access the other special feeds, it’s not clear what significant benefit this gets people who pay for verification.

Most likely, this just provides a bullet point on the marketing materials for verification, even if it’s not actually that overwhelming in practice.

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