Buyers are rethinking their Google Search budgets

Today’s social media advertising rates are hanging ten:

↘️ META: $10.51 | ↘️ TIKTOK: $1.77 | ↗️ SNAPCHAT: $16.49

In this week’s edition:

• 💰 Why Instagram is dangling up to $500K in front of creators

• Is Reddit about to make you log in? 👽

• 📉 The Amazon change that could cut your impression counts 63%

But first…

🔎 Google Search budgets get a closer look

Advertisers are putting Google search budgets under closer review as AI Overviews reduce clicks and automated bidding pushes up cost per click (CPC) heading into Q4. Across 18 buyers Digiday spoke with, most put the share of Google budgets being questioned at roughly 10% to 20%, with some estimates as high as 30%.

Meanwhile, Google's search ad revenue grew 12% in Q3, its slowest growth this year.

• Money is moving to Meta, TikTok and Local Services Ads, or to Google's own Performance Max (PMax) and AI Max.

• Advertisers are leaning more on post-click quality (whether clicks become qualified leads and revenue), plus media mix modeling (MMM) and geo tests to prove search's incremental value.

The Inside Scoop🍦: Now trending in performance media

♾️ Meta says the update to its commercial terms for businesses could now be pushed back indefinitely. This follows last week's news that the rollout had slipped to Nov. 20 after regulators and legal experts objected to wording that appeared to let Meta scrape the site of any business present on Facebook or Instagram.

• Meta's terms preview page still lists Nov. 20 as the effective date, so treat that as the working date until Meta says otherwise.

🤖 Meta says upgrades to its ad ranking AI are lifting advertiser results, and partnership ads have passed a $15 billion annual revenue run-rate. Alongside its Q3 results, Meta pointed to models such as Andromeda and GEM (its Generative Ads Recommendation Model) as drivers of more ad clicks and conversions.

• Andromeda changes raised Facebook conversions 1.4% in Q3, and generative retrieval in Facebook Feed added close to 2% in the segments where it ran.

• Meta's AI business assistant, now reaching more advertisers, is lifting conversions 5% without raising costs, per Meta.

• Partnership ads nearly doubled in Q3, up more than 97% from a year earlier.

🎬 Instagram has reportedly offered some creators as much as $500,000 for long-form video on Features, the format for videos of up to 90 minutes that it started testing last week. Meta didn't confirm amounts but said it is funding some Features content directly.

• Instagram head Adam Mosseri acknowledged that creator economics are the challenge, since YouTube's Partner Program gives long-form creators much more earning potential; he said Instagram is exploring ways to help them get paid.

💅 Pro Tip: Be on the lookout for two new video engagement metrics in Meta Ads Manager: Hook Rate and Hold Rate.

• Hook Rate: the percentage of times your video played for at least 3 seconds.

• Hold Rate: the percentage of times your video played to completion after playing for at least 3 seconds.

• Both are now built-in columns, so there's no need for custom formulas to compare how well creative grabs and keeps attention.

🚨 Buyer Beware: Meta appears to have changed the "Ad Transparency" section of new ad sets. Even though the section is marked optional, users noticed Meta autofilled it with an unrelated advertiser, which had to be cleared by hand before publishing.

🔎 Google AI Mode is testing clearer labels for AI shopping results. Google is testing a new shopping layout that separates paid listings from organic recommendations through distinct headers: Sponsored and All Products. This takes the place of the previously more blended design that included individual badges, helping make ad boundaries clearer for shoppers.

🌍 Google is expanding AI Mode ads to 10 more countries, including Australia, Canada, India and Singapore; Brazil, Mexico and the UK are next, later in Q4 (no dates yet).

💬 In the U.S., new Multiturn Ads can now show up in the follow-up questions of an AI Mode conversation, not just the first query.

• For example, someone researching running shoes might begin with a general question before asking about cushioning, durability or suitability for a particular activity. These ads create opportunities for advertisers to reach users as their conversations become more specific.

🚨 Buyer Beware: Google is moving standard Display campaigns into Demand Gen. There's a migration tool available now, and Google says the process is "expected to complete by 2027." For that reason, we're treating 12/31 as the deadline to migrate.

🧠 ChatGPT Ads are now live in 26 more countries (89 total), and OpenAI is adding creative enhancements that can rewrite your ads. Using your existing ad and landing page content, enhancements can update headlines and descriptions, translate copy, and send people to more relevant pages on your site, so check what's switched on before launching.

• Multi-image ads (4–6 square images) are in open beta for all advertisers.

• Shopify integration is now available in every ChatGPT Ads market for product catalogs and commerce events.

• A wider standard ad card is rolling out on desktop; it uses existing campaigns and creative, so no action is needed.

📦 Amazon is leaning on AI-driven buying tools to keep its ad business growing:

• Amazon Ads Agent (announced at unBoxed in September) is the new name for Amazon's combined ads console and demand-side platform (DSP), now with AI built in. Over the coming months it's adding natural-language tools for media planning (audience sizing, reach forecasts, budget recommendations), targeting suggestions and performance analysis.

• Full-Funnel Campaigns bring sponsored ads, display, video and streaming TV into one campaign that Amazon's AI optimizes in real time toward new-to-brand customers and long-term sales. They're now available to all U.S. advertisers, and Amazon says early beta tests showed up to 67% higher long-term return on ad spend than campaigns set up separately.

• DVA+ (Display, Video, and Audio) combines Sponsored Display, Sponsored TV and Amazon DSP programmatic buys into one goal-based campaign: pick sales, traffic or awareness, add products, creative and a budget, and Amazon's AI handles the rest. Targeting, deals, frequency caps and bidding are still available under advanced settings. It entered open beta in the U.S. on Oct. 24, with general availability planned for Q1 2027.

📉 Starting January 1, 2027, Amazon Ads will count display impressions on the Amazon Store only once the ad appears on the user's screen, not when it starts loading. Amazon estimates about 63% fewer impressions on average, so plan for that in 2027 benchmarks and pacing.

🏀 Amazon announced that DAZN inventory is now available self-serve through the Amazon demand-side platform (DSP). It covers several NBA teams plus other pro teams such as the New York Yankees and New York Rangers.

⏰ TikTok now lets you block comments on ad traffic separately from the organic post, and both comment toggles are on by default, so check your Spark Ads settings.

🛠️ Other updates from TikTok's Q3 Ads Manager newsletter:

• Spark Ads: Rename your Spark Ads in Creative Library and set custom authorization periods for creator video codes instead of fixed 7, 30, 60, 180, or 365-day windows.

• Search Ads now run on Smart+, with automated keywords, AI-generated copy and creative-level reporting.

• Smart Fix offers AI-edited versions of eligible rejected ads to preview and resubmit without rebuilding.

• Budget tools: Goal-Based Budget Increase (Target Cost per Action campaigns) and Safe Budget Increase (Maximum Results campaigns) can raise budgets automatically.

• Lemon8 placements expand to GMV Max, Video View and Traffic campaigns.

👽 Reddit will begin testing a login-only model in Q4 in select markets outside the U.S., to keep its content away from AI scrapers and to counteract traffic losses caused by search-engine AI summaries. A larger logged-in base could help Reddit improve ad targeting, build stronger interest profiles, and potentially lift average revenue per user. Logged-in users already drive over 80% of Reddit's monetization, per the Q3 earnings call.

📲 Reddit is rolling out an algorithmic For You feed globally over the next few weeks, to boost content discovery through tailored post recommendations based on community engagement and user interest patterns. The home feed will be split into two streams, Following and For You, with For You receiving prominent placement, though not set as the default view (the app opens to whichever feed the user last viewed).

🎯 Reddit appears to have removed its high spend minimums for Interactive Ads. They now show up in standard campaign formats as a Beta ad type alongside carousel, static and video, and include quizzes, polls and countdowns.

🔍 Reddit is testing ads in search results with a select group of advertisers. Reddit says placement depends on several signals, including how relevant the ad is to what the user searched.

💼 LinkedIn is testing new ad products. Access isn't guaranteed; Gupta Media clients can check with us for more details:

• Beta: Premiere Video Ads. High-impact vertical video in the mobile feed, with a lower 100K minimum audience for Reserved Ads.

• Beta: Creator Discovery (North America only). Find B2B creators using LinkedIn's professional data, then amplify their posts with Thought Leader Ads.

• Alpha: Company-Level Brand Lift Testing, Company Reach Optimization, and Target Cost Per Lead for Lead Gen Form campaigns.

🔒 Publicis has completed its $2.2 billion LiveRamp purchase, a little over a week after U.S. regulators at the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) approved it on the condition that both companies stay neutral for five years. LiveRamp will keep running as an independent company under CEO Scott Howe.

• The close lands as Apple's Safari blocklist now includes LiveRamp. Identity providers like LiveRamp turn a signed-in visitor's email into a shared ID so the same person can be recognized across sites, which Apple argues lets a third party link browsing activity no single site could.

• Email-based matching on Safari traffic is likely to become less reliable, which can lower audience match rates and weaken cross-site measurement.

📺 Walmart makes 3,300+ shopper audience segments available to advertisers on Vibe. The update gives small and medium-sized businesses, Vibe's primary users, the ability to target households based on in-store and online purchase behaviors by combining Walmart's data with their own customer lists, all within Vibe with no contract required. This move positions Walmart as a contender against other CTV leaders.

🛒 DoorDash has agreed to acquire Instacart for $17 billion, bridging the gap between grocery and restaurant delivery. The deal would combine data on spontaneous takeout orders with habitual grocery purchases, potentially giving advertisers a fuller view of a consumer's spending across both.

🎛️ Basis SmartBid can now be told whether to prioritize spending the full tactic budget or hitting your key performance indicator (KPI) goal when it can't do both. Other Basis updates:

• Compass (Basis's AI assistant) can now pull your historical platform performance and research current market data when building strategies, and can create and edit media plans and line items from chat or an uploaded plan.

• Publisher Showcase lets you browse curated deal packages from premium publishers, currently for CTV inventory only.

📊 By the numbers

Q3 earnings roundup: how the platforms' ad businesses grew last quarter.

• Amazon: ad revenue of nearly $20 billion, up 12% year over year, with Q4 growth expected in the high teens.

• YouTube: ad revenue of $11.2 billion, up 9% (slowing from 13% in Q2). TV screens now drive more than a third of it, so build YouTube creative for the TV screen, not just mobile.

• Reddit: ad revenue of $847 million, up 54% year over year.

• Pinterest: 661 million monthly active users (MAU), up 21 million from Q2, with revenue up 12% to $1.17 billion; programmatic buying is now available in all regions.

• LinkedIn: ads featuring creators up 63% and video ads up 25% year over year; membership passed 1.4 billion.

🗳️ Political advertising hit a record $11.21 billion this election cycle, per AdImpact, edging past the 2024 presidential cycle (US$11.20 billion) and well ahead of the 2022 midterms (US$8.9 billion). In Q3, about half of aired political spend went to broadcast TV, with connected TV (CTV) at 23% and digital at 15%.

• With Election Day behind us, we should start to see cost metrics like cost per thousand impressions (CPM) come down, especially for local broadcast and CTV in markets that had competitive races.

• That said, it's still Q4: holiday demand is ramping up and Cyber Week (Black Friday, Nov. 27, through Cyber Monday, Nov. 30) is close, so don't expect costs to stay low for long, and lock in holiday plans early.

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, Kayleigh McDonald, Kiara Quigley, Lara Spijkerman, Liana Giacobbe, Mariya Samardzhieva, and Carly Carioli.