Gen-Z's favorite app is now open for ads

Today’s Social Media advertising rates are chilling out:

↘️  YOUTUBE: $2.35 CPM | ↘️ META: $7.55 CPM | ↗️ TIKTOK: $5.74 CPM

In this week’s edition: 

• 📺 YouTube’s new hype machine

• Why TikTok’s ad growth is in decline 📉

• 📌 Pinterest joins the AI-ads revolution

But first…

🐝 Gen-Z’s favorite ad platform is open for ads

BeReal ads are here! After some initial rumblings we reported a while back, the Gen-Z social platform announced it’s open for business. What we know so far:

• You can book directly to go live as early as next week. Currently, BeReal’s direct offering is a 1-day, 100% share-of-voice takeover of their native in-feed ads.

• You can book by country—including the US, which has a price tag of $50K.

The Inside Scoop🍦: Now trending in performance media

🔗 For those of us in the newsletter game, this is big news: LinkedIn has rolled out Sponsored Newsletters. If you’re creating a newsletter within the app, you can now use it as a broader lead-gen tool. Only newsletter posts authored by a company and part of an organic Company Page post can be sponsored. Member-authored newsletter articles can’t be sponsored, but this capability will be available in a future release.

📌 You’re already familiar with all the machine-optimized black boxes: Meta Advantage+ Shopping, Google Performance Max, Amazon Performance+, to name a few.

Well, now meet Pinterest Performance+. It’s a thing! Available now in Beta, PP+ “combines Pinterest’s top performing automation and AI features into a simplified campaign setup with 50% fewer inputs and optimized features.” According to Pinterest, Alpha testers saw a 10% improvement in CPA.

👍 Meta launched a new lead-ads feature that allows us to display the first question of an instant form as the final card in Instagram Stories or as the end card in Instagram Reels. Here’s a peek at what that looks like (for those of you downloading your email images):

Coming Soon: 

• Meta advertisers will soon be able to create, organize and send paid marketing messages on Messenger, using Ads Manager, to people who have opted-in to hearing from them.

• Starting July 29, Meta will begin removing Detailed Targeting exclusions. You’ll still be able to exclude audiences. Any existing campaigns using Detailed Targeting exclusions (i.e., created before July 29) can continue running and will not be affected until January 31, 2025, when they will stop delivering.

🕰️ TikTok’s ad growth is slowing, and the leading culprit is: the U.S. TikTok ban, slated to go into effect next year unless the platform is sold. In March—the month the ban was announced—TikTok grew overall ad spend by 19% YOY. In the months since, growth tapered to 11% and 6%, according to Ad Age. While some ad categories are still seeing growth on the platform, 4 of the top 10 overall advertisers on TikTok cut their spend in April—as competitors like Snap, Meta and Google are heavily lobbying advertisers to test TikTok alternatives like Reels with increased incentives, according to Digiday.

Meanwhile, TikTok is rolling out two new interactive add-ons for TopView ads. “Interactive add-ons transform conventional ads into engaging experiences,” the platform notes, “fostering a deeper connection between brands and their audiences, as well as elevating campaigns to capture interest and drive engagement.” Here are the two new options:

• Countdown Sticker helps you build buzz and anticipation around your upcoming and current events. Use the sticker to capture attention and leverage the scrolling timer to announce launches and events.

• Pop-Out Showcase helps you capture attention and highlight the main product/element of your ad in a creative way. The custom pop-out is clickable, allowing brands to turn passive viewing into a more interactive experience that leads users further down the funnel.

📺  YouTube is testing a new engagement option to “hype” a video. Viewers can “hype” a video to give it a greater chance of appearing in rankings with other hyped videos that week. Testing is happening in Brazil, Turkey, and Taiwan before YouTube makes decisions about a broader rollout.

How are your thumbnails? Could be better? YouTube is rolling out its thumbnail A/B testing tool to all creators. Check out this video for their tips on what makes a thumbnail resonate.

🔊 Spotify is rolling out comments for podcasts, a step that brings its podcast experience closer to parity with YouTube. More importantly, will “leave us a comment on Spotify” replace “leave us a review on Apple Podcasts” as the default CTA for podcasters? Stay tuned! 

🔎 Google Ads have made “broad match” the default setting when creating new Search campaigns, a departure from its previous default of having “broad match” turned off.

🧪 Testing Testing: Is this thing on?

We recently tested different YouTube ad types to see which drove the highest ad recall. In two tests, non-skippable in-stream drove the highest recall, followed by skippable in-stream — beating out Shorts, bumpers, and in-feed. 

🐘 The Elephant In the Room: Our weekly office poll!

How many TikTok Shop Ads are too much? According to Vox, TikTok has an internal estimate of how many TikTok Shop ads they can push into your feed before users start to flee: somewhere between 8 and 10% of your feed. In an unscientific survey, Vox reported seeing even more than that— “roughly five or six ads for every 20 videos.” What are you seeing? Are the TikTok Shop ads annoying?

📊 Last week’s poll results: DID YOU GET YOUR DATA OUT OF GOOGLE UA YET?

⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ Yes, and boy was it a pain. 

🟨🟨🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️ Yes, Gupta helped me and it was smooth sailing 

🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 No, still got my head in the sand. Help me, Gupta Media!

🏆  Pick of the Week: Roblox video FTW 

We’re seeing very cost-efficient video views on Roblox with a recent campaign driving a cost per 15-second-view of $0.02 at a $1.05 CPM. You can optimize your campaign for views and are billed on a 15s click-to-play, sound-on view, which could include a reward for watching 15 seconds. See what they look like here and review ad details and specs here.

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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