Claude’s Super Bowl smackdown whacks ChatGPT

In partnership with

Today’s Social Media advertising rates are taking the points:

↗️ META: $6.59 | ↘️ TIKTOK: $4.21 | ↗️ SNAPCHAT: $12.85

In this week’s edition: 

• 👽 Reminder ads are coming to Reddit

•  TikTok’s like button goes Nova ⏰

• 📌 These 4 Pinterest upgrades are a major glow-up

But first…

📺 Are You, Too, Confused About YouTube Views? 

News you can use: Late last year, Google quietly rolled out a new metric that's changing how we measure video ad performance on YouTube: YouTube public views. Here's what makes it different from the TrueView views you’re used to tracking.

What counts as a YouTube public view? YouTube public views are ad views that contribute to the publicly visible view count on your videos—the number everyone sees on the watch page. They're counted when someone watches your video ad for a “similar amount of time as an organic view.” The key changes:

• Shorts ads count a YouTube public view as soon as the video starts playing

• Bumper and non-skippable formats count YouTube public views. Previously, only Skippable formats generated public view count increments.

So how’s that different from TrueView views? TrueView views are meant to indicate deeper engagement. They count when someone:

• Completes the video ad

• Watches 30+ seconds of skippable in-stream ads (or completes them if shorter)

• Watches 10+ seconds of in-feed video ads or Shorts ads

The Inside Scoop🍦: Now trending in performance media

♾️ Meta is giving Advantage+ a bit of a facelift with two new updates that will hopefully make our lives easier. However, as is tradition with any Meta automation, a healthy dose of skepticism is still recommended.

• Sticky Preferences: Meta now carries over individual user preferences for creative enhancements (if you opt-in or opt-out) from previous campaigns to new ones. That means fewer boxes to opt-out of.

• New Navigation: Enhancements are now grouped into Media, Text, and Interactivity. Before you hit ‘publish,’ use the dedicated 'In Review' page for one last look at your creative combinations

📷 Instagram is retiring support for 1:1 assets in Explore Home ads, in favor of creating a uniform Explore grid. Moving forward, all creative for this placement must be sized to 4:5 or 9:16 to avoid automatic cropping. Instagram Explore will also no longer be a placement available in Ads Manager; it will now be combined with Instagram Reels.

👉 Instagram has also made a number of improvements to Creator Marketplace, including:

• Creator profiles will now feature a badge that highlights creators predicted to drive high ads performance for your brand.

• You will now see creator recommendations that highlight creators who have tagged you in content, creators with high-performing ads and extensive ads experience, and creators who have explicitly expressed interest in partnering with your brand.

• You can now search for similar creators based on a specific creator’s name or IG handle

🧵 Threads now provides the ability to review replies to our ads, and hide individual replies within Ads Manager through the new “Manage Threads replies” menu.

🔎 Google confirmed it’s testing the integration of third-party reviews directly into search ads. It’s still unclear if this will be an opt-in feature or how much control we’ll actually have over which reviews Google decides to surface.

⏰ TikTok has a new branded asset for when the like button isn’t enough – introducing the Nova Like, which replaces the “like” icon with a custom animation and brand colors. It comes with a higher price tag, at least for now.

💅 Pro Tip: TikTok is sunsetting Custom Identity for all advertisers, meaning you’ll be required to link all ads to an organic TikTok account/handle in order to launch campaigns. The change went live on January 27.

🗞️ In other news: TikTok confirmed that U.S. services are back online, and we’ve seen our campaigns return to serving as expected—this after an outage hit TikTok’s domestic data partner sites last week. Not coincidentally, downloads of TikTok-alternative apps have slowed after last week’s peak. Interest in both UpScrolled and Skylight Social tailed off significantly, as reported by SimilarWeb.

💼 LinkedIn is launching a vertical, video-first beta called Premiere Video Ads, previously referred to as Primetime ads or First Impression ads. These high-impact, reserved units live in the mobile feed and expand to a full-screen immersive experience once tapped.

📌 Pinterest gives brands multiple ways to tap into the platform's trend-setting audience. Here's what's available, if you’re willing to spend:

• Trends Badge Sponsorships. The co-branded Pinterest Trends Badge is a visual indicator that appears on ads to signal that content aligns with Pinterest's identified trends—and gives ads editorial credibility. Campaigns delivered 2.4x higher conversion rates compared to non-badged ads.

• Editorial & Featured Board Sponsorships. Brands can sponsor Pinterest Editor-curated boards appearing on high-traffic search pages. Packages include organic brand pin integration, "Brought to you by" attribution, and guaranteed visibility.

• Interactive Ad Formats. Quiz Ads and Showcase Ads move users from discovery to decision. A streaming brand reported +3.8 points of awareness lift with Showcase Ads and +2.1 points of subscription intent lift with Quiz Ads.

• 2026 Predicts Trend Sponsorships. Pinterest Predicts is the platform's annual trend forecasting report identifying what's next across categories like beauty, fashion, home, and entertainment. Brands can secure exclusive sponsorship of a predicted trend in their category.

👽 Reddit is expanding Reminder Ads, a format originally launched for Ask Me Anything (AMA) sessions. The feature adds a "Remind Me" CTA to image and video ads, allowing users to opt-in for push notifications and inbox messages on the day an event goes live. 

Previously exclusive to AMAs, Reminder Ads are now available for all brand awareness and traffic objective campaigns—opening the format to product launches, ticket drops, game releases, and other time-sensitive events. The format aims to build anticipation, re-engage interested users, and bridge campaigns from awareness through conversion.

🧠 OpenAI has confirmed that a $200,000 minimum commitment is required for brands looking to participate in ChatGPT’s tightly controlled ad beta. This exclusive first wave of advertising is slated to roll out this coming Friday. As we reported last week, ads are priced at a $60 CPM and sold on impressions rather than clicks, diverging from performance-based models used by Google Search or Amazon Ads.

🏈 Meanwhile, OpenAI’s rival Anthropic is attempting to hijack the AI-ads hype—by running a Super-sized ad against chatbot ads. According to the Wall Street Journal, the company behind viral chatbot and vibe-coding platform Claude.AI “takes aim at rival OpenAI in its Super Bowl advertising debut.” The tagline of their Big Game commercial? “Ads are coming to AI. But not to Claude.” 

Anthropic—which charges a premium of up to $200 per month for its Max versions of Claude—claims that placing ads inside AI chats would erode trust, warp incentives, and clash with how people actually use assistants like Claude. (Also a very smart way of attacking a rival that happens to be light-years ahead in developing an ad platform.)

🌎 Universal Ads has announced a series of new changes in 2026:

➕They’ve added 10 new publishers that you can buy inventory across, including Samsung, Spectrum, Vevo, Vizio, and more: 

🎯 The pixel setup is updated to allow for more reporting across landing page views and conversion events. Previously, you could only optimize for 1 event and only had reporting for that 1 event tied to the campaign.

📊 There are two different campaign types that you can select now:

• Performance+ allows you to enter in your audience signals and it’ll find your target across the whole inventory.

• Content Select allows you to opt out of certain genres.

Can this idea actually make money?

The fastest way to find out is simple — launch a newsletter and website in minutes, then turn what you know into something people can buy.

With beehiiv’s Digital Product Suite, your expertise becomes real products: a short guide, a playbook, a set of templates, or limited access to your time. No friction, and no code required. Just create, price it, and share it with your audience.

And unlike other platforms that quietly take 5–10% of every sale, beehiiv takes 0%. What you earn is yours to keep.

For a limited time, get 30% off your first 3 months on beehiiv with code PRODUCT30.

Start building for 30% off today.

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.