The Pop-Up Box No Advertiser Wants

In This Issue:

🛠️ Andrew Foxwell on this week’s changes to the META ADS platform

🌍 META proposes asking European users directly for consent to use targeted ads.

🛡️ META enhances its platform with new brand safety tools.

📊 MICROSOFT introduces Performance Max (PMAX) in open beta.

🛍️ AMAZON emerges as the major player in the US retail media search ad spend.

🎥 YOUTUBE experiments with AI to provide brief video content overviews.

📹 YOUTUBE highlights the latest trends in its Shorts feature.

💰 A surge in marketing budgets observed among publishers, but slower spending anticipated.

🌏 Follow on Social 🎙 Listen to the Podcast 👔 Join Our Slack

This Week in Meta Ads: Product Tags... Without the Meta Shop!

Every Tuesday, our Meta ads correspondent Andrew Foxwell walks us through the latest platform changes.

✅ This week: Meta has decided that you no longer need to be locked into its "Shop" platform to use Product Tags — it's quite a big deal.

📺 WATCH NOW

Andrew runs the Foxwell Founders community of digital ad buyers and offers training in the digital ad space. [affiliate links]

How Meta’s New Proposal Could Cripple Its EU Ad Business

One of the things that made the iOS 14.5 changes to devastating to the ad business, was that Apple devices started requiring apps to put a question directly in front of their users — can we use your personal data for ad targeting, or no? Most people, of course, said no.

Now, The Wall Street Journal is reporting today that Meta is considering a similar nuclear option, proposing it asks European users for consent to use their on-app behaviour for ad targeting.

It's a move some say could break its ad business.

☑️ Ad-Targeting Consent

This is part of a proposal — a concession, really — to European privacy regulators. Meta said it could set up their systems to ask users by the end of October. The idea is to help resolve an ongoing legal battle over such ads in the region.

Unlike its current approach, where users in Europe can only opt out of activity-based ads through the completion of a lengthy form, this new proposal takes it a step further. Rather, a consent-based approach would mean asking users to say "yes" or "no" before showing them personalized ads, and EU law mandates that users must still have access to the service even if they say no.

💰 Impact on Ad Revenue

As the Journal report points out, ad revenue could suffer big time.

"If a large number of users decline ads based on their activity on Instagram or Facebook, Meta’s systems would end up with fewer signals to infer interests and build audiences for ads that make up the bulk of its revenue. That could make its ads less effective, which could weigh on prices."

Meta plans to proceed with the change following discussions with Ireland’s Data Protection Commission. The company added that advertisers will still be able to run personalized ad campaigns in Europe if the proposal goes forward, but only to users who opt in.

Brand Safety Tools Come to the Instagram Feed

As Meta grapples with personalized ads in Europe, it also introduced new brand safety features yesterday.

First, Zefr’s third-party brand suitability verification tool is now available for Instagram Feed. This tool measures industry-recognized brand safety and suitability across Instagram and Facebook Feed placements.

Until now, Meta only offered Zefr's verification tech for its Facebook Feed.

The company also added four new languages to its inventory filters and third-party brand suitability verification for Facebook and Instagram:

• Arabic

• Chinese

• French

• Portuguese

Finally, the tech giant is currently testing a new inventory filter option on Reels.

Image: Zefr

Microsoft's PMax is Now Available to All Advertisers (in Beta)

Microsoft's August updates to its ad platform are here.

🌐 PMax in Open Beta

The big one is that Performance Max campaigns are now in open beta for all advertisers worldwide.

💻 Code-Free Conversions for Smart Campaigns

The company also rolled out code-free conversions for all Smart Campaigns globally. This update lets marketers set up conversion goals without manually adding code snippets to their websites.

🔄 Change of Plans for UET Rollout

Microsoft also made changes to its plans regarding the Universal Event Tracking (UET) web insights rollout. The original plan was to automatically roll this feature out to advertisers using UET starting a couple of weeks ago. Now the company has decided to pilot this feature. Advertisers can now opt-in manually to participate in the test.

Media Buyers Stick to Retail Search

Search ad revenues on retail sites like Amazon are projected to grow almost 20% this year, nearly four times faster than the growth rate of other search advertising.

🛒 Amazon's Dominance

According to new data from Insider Intelligence, Amazon is dominating that growth, as it is expected to account for $24 billion of the total $30 billion U.S. spend this year.

Other players like Walmart and Instacart also contribute to retail media's share of search ad spend, but their role is smaller.

🚀 What’s Driving Growth?

The report notes that economic uncertainty fuels retail media ad spend, as advertisers recognize the value of reaching consumers close to the point of purchase. The loss of third-party data also pushes advertisers to rely on first-party information from retail media networks, driving ad spend in this sector.

Despite some signs of an economic rebound, total U.S. ad spending is still down. As a result, Insider Intelligence suggests advertisers will continue investing in performance-oriented channels, which is good news for retail media search.

YouTube's AI Will Summarize Your Brand's Uploaded Videos

YouTube's latest AI feature is like "CliffsNotes" for your brand's videos. The platform has started testing generative AI video summaries, which will be displayed on its watch and search pages.

These summaries will give a brief overview of a video’s contents without replacing existing human-written descriptions.

YouTube says the experiment is currently running with a limited selection of English-language videos and viewers.

What’s Trending on YouTube Shorts

From AI-powered summaries to "Skibidi Toilet," YouTube recently launched its latest "Go Viral with These Trends" video that looks at what is trending in the app.

This month's top trends include:

'Popular Media as Muse,' also known as ‘trendjacking’ or ‘newsjacking’. This is when brands and creators use key news events and pop culture trends, like Barbie, to boost views.

‘Permission to Flex’ revolves around personality types. This trend invites other creators to participate by sharing their own personality types, and what that means to them.

'Chess' is also cool again. But this trend includes new takes on the game like "Chess Boxing," where competitors fight between moves, and comedians cracking jokes during chess live streams.

Finally, a more unusual trend on YouTube is ‘Skibidi Toilet,’ based around a character who sings a Biser King song from a toilet. While YouTube sees it as a reflection of Shorts' trend-driving power, it mostly reflects Gen Z's fondness for absurd humor, which may not work for every brand.

Publishers Buck the Ad Slowdown

Ad slowdown? Not for publishers.

New research from Digiday published today found that half of publishers actually increased their marketing spend in the last year, with online marketing driving ad spend, rather than offline methods.

• 4 out of 5 publisher pros said their companies invested in online marketing in the last 12 months

• Only 3 out of 5 invested in offline strategies

However, this surge in spend is not expected to continue into the next year, as only a fifth of publishers expect an increase in marketing spending.

That said, publishers will continue to prioritize online marketing over offline, with more than 80% of publishers expecting their companies to invest the most in online marketing in the next 12 months.

🗣️ JOIN US! Follow our social channels or join our Slack community

🎧 Listen to the free daily podcast

📈 Reach thousands of digital marketers! Check out our ad options.