7 unreal Meta AI updates from Advertising Week

Today’s Social Media advertising rates are fall, y’all::

↘️ META: $6.24 CPM | ↗️ TIKTOK: $4.30 CPM | ↘️ SNAPCHAT: $11.77 CPM

In this week’s edition: 

• 🎞️ Is your Instagram just Reels now?

• Credit cards want in on your media plan 💳

• 🔊 Spotify + ChatGPT = your next playlist

But first…

⏰  How addictive is TikTok?

Can you quantify the precise amount of time it takes to get someone hooked on TikTok?

It turns out, you can: according to internal TikTok documents unearthed as part of a lawsuit brought by 14 states’ Attorneys General, it takes 260 videos—in some cases as quick as 35 minutes—“for someone to form a habit,” NPR reported last year.

Now, TikTok’s sticky algorithm is under new investigation—this time by the Washington Post, which looked at the TikTok viewing habits of more than 800 Americans over five months, “to see how their TikTok usage evolved.” Their research examined how much time each user spent, how many times they opened the app, and how quickly they swiped between videos. The Post found that lighter TikTok users on average increased their daily viewing time by over 40% in about a week; over time, power users swiped more frequently.

The Inside Scoop🍦: Now trending in performance media

♾️ Meta just kicked off Advertising Week with a full-court press on AI, unveiling new tools that blur the line between media, creative, and commerce. Here are the 7 updates you need to know now: 

💼 Business AIs are turnkey AI agents that small and medium businesses can use to automate conversations with their customers on their own eComm websites, as well as within Meta’s apps (see below). They learn from your existing social posts, ad campaigns, and sites and can be activated in minutes. Meta is currently positioning Business AI as a free, easy resource that will shorten and simplify the sales funnel (screenshot below), and their longer term vision is more ambitious. They want it to eventually serve as a fully integrated agent for brands of all sizes and they’re already partnering with platforms like Salesforce and Klaviyo on more substantial integrations:

👗 Meta will begin testing the ability to see how clothing featured in an ad looks on users after they upload a photo of themselves:

🖥️ Also in testing: a new experience that uses generative AI to show a dynamically-created, personalized page after clicking on an ad, showing specific details about a business and its products or services based on the customer’s buying journey:

🎧 They’re introducing an AI-generated music feature that understands the content of an ad and produces unique, custom music that reflects the product, style, and sentiment. 

📺 Meta is rolling out video high dynamic range enhancement, which uses generative AI to deliver videos with higher contrast ratio and more vibrant colors for a “more engaging experience.”

🤹They’re introducing a persona-based image generation feature that creates several different versions of an ad. For example, if you're selling headphones, the tool might create one image that focuses on style for fashion lovers, another that highlights sound quality for music fans, and a third that shows comfort for people who travel a lot.

🤝 You’ll soon be able to see AI-recommended Collabs that can be easily turned into partnership ads from recommended content in the Partnership Ads Hub.

🧵 Threads is testing a new option called “Ghost Posts,” which let users share an update that would be auto-archived after 24 hours. Replies go to messages, and only you can see who liked and replied—much like a broadcast message.

📷 Instagram is testing a new mode in which users would land directly in their Reels feed after opening their app, as opposed to seeing their traditional post feed. (In a rare case of tablet being ahead of mobile, the recently-released Instagram iPad app already does this.) File under: the continuing TikTok-ification of Instagram? 

🔎 Google has good news for sports marketers: YouTube has introduced two new “YouTube Select” sports offerings: their College Sports Lineup and their YouTube TV Women’s Live Sports Lineup.

• The College Sports Lineup serves ads across a variety of live college sports content—including men’s college football and basketball—on YouTubeTV, across device types. 

• The Women’s Live Sports serves on YouTubeTV across a lineup including professional and collegiate women’s basketball, golf, soccer, tennis, softball, and more.

💅 Pro tip: since live sports is seasonal, your delivery could be spiky. Google recommends a minimum two-week flight. 

⏰ TikTok is giving advertisers more control over their Smart+ campaigns by letting them customize the level of automation in their targeting, budget, and creative elements, module-by-module. They also shared this handy guide of the 5 best practices for managing Smart+ campaigns:

🐝 Earlier this year we told you that TikTok was alpha testing Branded Buzz: their version of a manufactured “viral” moment that brands can buy. The gist: TikTok delivers 1,500 creator-made videos, garnering an estimated 15 million impressions over a short flight of 2-3 weeks. These have now been moved to open beta, and TikTok has raised the price to the mid-six-figures. 

💅 Pro tip: After many advertiser complaints, TikTok has made a few changes to Custom Identity deprecation, including:

• "Don't show on TikTok profile" is now "ads only mode"

• "Ads only mode" defaults to on and covers web/desktop

• The advertiser will no longer see the ad on their organic page, and if any user clicks on the ad and then goes to the advertiser’s page, they will no longer see the ad there either.

👻 Snapchat has unified safe zone guidelines for all placements to help simplify creative development. Check out their new safe zone guidelines here.

📦 Amazon DSP is making Netflix ads available through the platform beginning October 14. Initial indications are that CPMs will be cheaper than those available through direct insertion orders with Netflix.

Amazon DSP also gives us access to Amazon Inventory Hub, launched in March, which has many helpful features, including the ability to:

• See what percentage of a deal is online video (OLV) vs. streaming TV (STV)

• See what apps are beneath each deal

• Forecast reach

• Compare rates

Speaking of which…

💾 Microsoft is officially winding down its DSP, Microsoft Invest, and naming Amazon DSP as its preferred transition partner. Via Microsoft Monetize, Amazon DSP advertisers will be able to access premium Microsoft inventory and curated deals.

🪦 Elsewhere, Microsoft Advertising is shutting down its Ads for Social Impact grant program, which provided free ad credits to nonprofits. Final grants will be issued November 30, 2025, with a 45-day window to spend them. 

If this rings a bell, that’s because the announcement comes only two weeks after Microsoft confirmed that the program was still active 😑

💳 American Express and PayPal have each announced their own commerce media networks—joining Mastercard, which announced its own network last week. Let the credit commerce ad boom commence! 

💸 PayPal has unveiled PayPal Ads Manager, a product that lets its small-business merchants monetise their own websites and apps by serving ads informed by PayPal’s transaction data. The rollout is scheduled to begin in early 2026 in the US, with the UK and Germany to follow.

🌐 American Express announced the launch of Amex Ads, an ad network powered by the payments provider’s first-party data, drawn from a base of 34 million U.S. card carriers, initially targeting travelers through AmexTravel.com

• According to AmEx, pilots with Marriott and Tumi saw exceptional ROI, 300% and 30% above goals, by leveraging Amex’s first-party data and contextual precision.

🎬 Paramount has rolled out Streaming Fixed Units, an offering that lets brands run 30-second spots against the first seven days of new episodes of some of Paramount+’s most popular shows.

🔊 Spotify has good news for music marketers —the platform has added a feature that lets users link their accounts to ChatGPT to receive personalized music and podcast recommendations.

💅 Pro tip: Now that Spotify has rolled out custom audiences, note that they can take 4-5 days to generate.

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

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