2026 trends are in: here’s what marketers should steal.

Today’s Social Media advertising rates are holly and jolly:

↘️ META: $12.27 | ↗️ TIKTOK: $3.10 CPM | ↘️ SNAPCHAT: $7.31 CPM

In this week’s edition: 

• 📊 New Meta dashboard: what’s stale, what’s scaling

• Now dropping in TikTok ads…🎁

• 📺 YouTube Shorts just got louder

But first…

📌 2026 trends are in. Here’s what marketers should steal.

Pinterest just released its 2026 “Pinterest Predicts” report, outlining 21 emerging trends based on in-app search and behavior signals. With an 88% accuracy rate in past forecasts (!!), the report and accompanying brand guide offer valuable insight into rising cultural shifts and practical ways marketers can incorporate these trends into their 2026 planning. Some interesting trends: 

• 🧸 Gummy Aesthetics: soft, squishy, ASMR-style textures, like bendy phone cases, elastic makeup, rubberized nail art, and 3D jewelry.

• 👃 Scent Stacking: people are mixing perfumes and oils to create personalized scents.

• ✒️ Pen Pals: turning mail into a creative hobby with decorated envelopes, special stationery, and lots of stamps.

The Inside Scoop🍦: Now trending in performance media

♾️ Meta will roll out a new Creative Insights Dashboard by January 2026 (and half of accounts may have access already). To access creative insights, navigate to the Account insights tab in Ads Reporting. You may also be able to see them in the Performance Summary and within the Ads Manager campaign table. The Creative Insights Dashboard aggregates creative performance metrics in a single interface, providing insights, such as:

• Creative Fatigue: Identify your account’s top ad sets that include fatigued creative.

• Creative Similarity: Identify your account’s top ads that are too similar.

• Ad Format Insights: Understand your account’s mix of image, video, mixed, and other ad formats. 

• Theme Insights: Offers thematic insights on performance with inspiration from actual example creatives in your own accounts and from other advertisers in your industry.

💅Pro tip: One more detail about the new automated-carousel feature in Meta Ads Manager. If you build a carousel using different headlines or links per card, when automated the carousels will drive only to the first headline and link. 

• Reminder that carousels will not be automated for every user. So when you create carousels, make sure the first card’s headline and link makes sense with the content of the entire carousel.

📺 YouTube rolled out new ad features for Shorts, including the ability for advertisers to turn on comments for eligible Shorts ads. The platform is pushing Shorts deeper into the holiday performance mix with three upgrades: real-time comments on ads, creator link-outs straight to brand sites, and expanded Shorts ad placements on the mobile web. The pitch to marketers: more interactivity, and more conversion paths at the exact moment shoppers are scrolling across screens.

⏰ TikTok reps shared some intriguing new add-ons (these are included at no extra cost with minimum buys, but below-minimum buys can still access them for a flat fee per add-on): 

🎁 Lucky Box: This is a timed animation that drops gift boxes from the top of the screen during the ad. After a quick countdown, one box pops up and users can tap it to go to the landing page.

🎈Motion Lift: Rising branded balloons/bubbles float up from the screen. It provides a fun new clickable zone on the ads to drive users to your landing page.

🎞️ Multi-Video: Run 2 to 4 video segments in a single ad spot, with the ability to link each video to a different landing page.

🎧 Spotify is rolling out music videos in beta to Premium subscribers in the U.S. and Canada. The catalog is starting small but will expand quickly, giving users access to official videos, live performances, and covers. The new feature works much like YouTube Music, letting users switch between audio and video with one tap.

👻 Snapchat has launched a new Wix integration that lets businesses create Snap ads directly from the Wix dashboard, making it much easier for SMBs to access Snap’s young, high-intent audience.

🎯 Nielsen has announced that its audience segments will now be available across Amazon DSP, giving marketers access to more nuanced consumer profiles and richer targeting options.

💼 LinkedIn has announced new ad options to capitalize on the platform’s growing popularity:

• Reserved Ads: Similar to TikTok Top-Feed, Reserved Ads guarantee your ad appears in the first slot on a user’s LinkedIn feed.

• Flexible ad creation: Advertisers can upload multiple assets of images, videos, and copy versions, and LinkedIn will automatically create and optimize different ad variants to deliver the most effective combinations.

• Enhanced Ad Personalization (see below): LinkedIn can dynamically insert details like a viewer’s name, job title, industry, etc., to tailor ad copy and make it more relevant and personalized for each individual.

🧪 In the lab: Pinterest Trend Badge

For a holiday campaign, we’re testing out Pinterest’s Trend Badge: you get full share of voice on your Pinterest trend of choice, and a special badge that can be overlaid across your paid ads to help stand out in-feed.

Thanks for reading! We’ll be back next week to fill your inbox with more tips, tricks, and treats from the addressable universe.

In the meantime, stay up to date with the latest performance marketing intelligence by following us on Linkedin, Instagram, and X.

This week’s edition of the Thread was created by Jess Dashner, Anoushka Madan, Mariya Samardzhieva, Lara Spijkerman, and Carly Carioli.