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The Top Three 🏆

The industry’s most important stories today.

🥇 GOOGLE AD SPEND UP

Google Search ad spend climbed 10% year-over-year in Q4 2024, despite changes driven by AI. Clicks remained steady at 3%, but cost per click (CPC) increased by 7%, per Tinuiti. Advertisers are paying more per click as they adjust to Google’s new AI tools, like Performance Max (PMax) and AI Overviews. more

• PMax dominates Google’s shopping ads, with more than 95% of retailers using the format by year-end 2024. It now generates two-thirds of Google shopping ad revenue for retailers.

• Google’s push for automation has had mixed results. While PMax outperforms standard shopping campaigns, AI Overviews initially hurt click-through rates for text ads before rebounding in Q4.

• 🎯 As Google continues to push AI-driven ad formats, advertisers will have to manage rising costs while adapting to new automated tools.

🥈 LINKEDIN UPDATES AD MEASUREMENT

LinkedIn has updated its advertising attribution models by combining two methods: Multi-Touch Attribution (MTA) and Marketing Mix Modeling (MMM). This new system uses more data points to track user responses across the customer journey, from awareness to conversion. more

• By incorporating elements from both MTA and MMM, the updated approach relies on a broader set of data points to improve the measurement of user response, moving beyond limited sampling.

• LinkedIn is rolling out this new methodology to all advertisers.

🥉 TIKTOK SHOP’S GOT STAYING POWER

Shutdown who?: The TikTok brief shutdown didn’t phase TikTok Shop sales. In fact, it boosted them. Despite the January 18-19 outage, TikTok Shop sales spiked in the days before the ban, as well as on the day that the ban was lifted. more

• When users returned to the app, sales continued to climb before settling back to pre-shutdown levels for some brands.

• On January 19, sales surged to $32M —up $500K from the day before and nearly $5M more than the week prior.

• This uptick reflects the growing momentum of the e-commerce platform, which had been gaining steam in the lead-up to the potential ban.

Today’s Other News ☑︎

Everything else that matters.

Google Ads: PMax Updates 🆕 

• Brand exclusions can now be applied to just Search text ads, leaving branded Shopping ads unaffected. Previously, exclusions applied to both Search and Shopping ads.

  • This is useful if you want to show Shopping ads for brand terms while managing Search text ads for brand terms in separate campaigns.

• “URL contains” rules, previously available for standard Performance Max campaigns, are now expanding to campaigns with product feeds. For instance, an athletic apparel store can target all pages with “shoes” in the URL.

• Two new betas are coming soon:

  1. Age-based demographic exclusions: Exclude age brackets like “18-24” or “65+.”

  2. Devices targeting: Customize targeting for computer, mobile, or tablet traffic.

• Asset group performance segmentation is now available across all Performance Max campaigns, letting advertisers break down results by device, time and more. Additionally, asset group performance data is now downloadable.

• Read Google’s full announcement here.

Advertising 📣

• Brand 🤝 Creator partnerships: Snapchat’s new report shows creator ads outperform standard brand ads with 12% longer attention spans and 8% longer playtimes. The study also found that when consumers were exposed to a Creator ad followed by a product, ad brands appeared more trustworthy. more

• Pinterest is vying for your ad dollars with a new mini-site promoting its evolving ad tools. It shows user shopping habits and growing engagement with Gen Z. more

• Google Analytics now lets you copy reports and explorations across properties. more

• Digital audio's ad business reaching maturity: After a decade of double-digit growth, 2023 marked a sharp slowdown, shifting the landscape. While 2024 showed signs of recovery, eMarketer forecasts audio ad growth will continue to decelerate, reaching just 4.5% YoY by 2028. more

• Snap and Reddit are sweetening the ad pot as TikTok faces Uncertainty. more

  • Snap’s offering 20% back in free ad spend for brands dropping more than $100K.

  • Reddit is offering 10% in ad credits for brands spending between $150K and $1M-- ramping up to 15% for $1M+.snap

Social Media 📱

• Reddit users are boycotting X after Elon Musk's gesture during President Trump’s inauguration was compared to a Nazi salute. More than 50 subreddit communities have now banned X links in new posts and comments, according to NBC News. more

• With TikTok still absent from U.S. app stores, opportunistic sellers are capitalizing on the shortage... As a result, the "TikTok phone" black market is thriving on eBay, with used devices preloaded with the app selling for thousands—some even listed for $50K. more

Opinion 🤔

Marketers Will Need to Double Down Against Divisiveness

Meta's new fact-checking policy, plus changes to data privacy laws, will have a ripple effect through the industry

Everyone was left a little shaken following Mark Zuckerberg’s announcement that Meta will be eliminating its fact-checking policies....

If opinion can be taken as fact or misconstrued, whether deliberate or not, it undermines the reliability of the data we depend on to inform marketing strategies.

This is compounded by recent developments in state privacy laws affecting the data we aggregate… ethnicity, race, and related attributes are now being treated as sensitive personal information that must be redacted…

Without this context, we’re hindered from recognizing nuanced insights necessary for creating equitable and effective campaigns.

The fundamental problem with these two developments…

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