Instagram teases a "reset button" for your timeline

Today’s Social Media advertising rates are rolling deep:

↗️ META: $8.66 CPM | ↗️ TIKTOK: $4.45 CPM | ↘️ SNAPCHAT: $8.38 CPM

In this week’s edition: 

• 📽️ YouTube’s shorts get stickier

• Snapchat’s Wicked ad debut 🧙

• 🔎 Will Google lose Chrome?

But first…

🧼🫧 Instagram tests the ultimate timeline cleanse: a reset button

If your IG timeline is anything like ours, it’s…a bit messy. But now Instagram is testing a novel solution: a way for users to trigger a full “reset” on the content recommended to them by the algorithm.  

Meta’s announcement says the new functionality was born of an initiative to “make sure everyone on Instagram—especially teens—has safe, positive, age-appropriate experiences” on the platform. 

“In just a few taps, you’ll be able to clear your recommended content across Explore, Reels and Feed and start fresh,” IG said in its announcement. “Your recommendations will start to personalize again over time, showing new content based on the content and accounts you interact with. When resetting, you’ll also have the option to review the accounts you’re following and unfollow any that share content you no longer want to see.”

While the reset button will cleanse your timeline, it doesn’t appear that it will immediately affect the ads you’re served: “Resetting won’t change who you follow or your ad topics,” IG says, adding that your past data won’t be deleted, and will still be used “to personalize your experience in other ways.” However, the UX flow for resetting does give users the option to review their Ad Topics — which affects which ads are shown — as well who they follow.

• In a related update, users have noticed another housekeeping feature: IG is making it easier to remove “inactive” or “flagged for review” accounts from your followers.

The Inside Scoop🍦: Now trending in performance media

🧑‍⚖️ Rough week for Google, with the Department of Justice recommending that the company be forced to sell off its Chrome browser (!!) as punishment for a court finding, earlier this year, that Google holds a monopoly in search advertising. It could get worse: The DOJ is also recommending that Google “be prevented from giving preferential access to its search engine on devices that use its Android operating system,” according to the Wall Street Journal. If Google was found to violate that rule, it would be forced to sell off Android as well. Those penalties are still just recommendations. The courts will ultimately decide Google’s fate, and there’s more uncertainty about which direction incoming President Donald Trump’s Justice Department — or the Supreme Court — will choose to pursue. 

🔎 Meanwhile, in the world of actual Google advertising, Google Ads is rolling out “new ad formats designed to take advantage of the leaned-in, tappable mentality of a Shorts viewer.” The big news:

• “Stickers, created automatically from images in your product feeds,” are rolling out to YouTube Shorts 

• Animated image ads are rolling out globally for Demand Gen campaigns. These ads “pull product images from your Google Merchant Center feeds and animate them into one appealing unit.”

🎁 Product-level shopping results have arrived in Google Maps. Another byproduct of using Google’s Merchant Center: your products can now show up not only in Google Search and Google Shopping, but also in . . . Google Maps. Just in time for the holiday shopping season, “you can search in Google maps for items like pickleball rackets, board games, ice cream makers, and more to find nearby stores that have them in stock.” 

🧙‍♀️ Snapchat: After announcing Sponsored Snaps back in September — as the first Snapchat ad type to be directly inserted into user inboxes — Snap has now announced its first Sponsored Snap campaign: a direct-message video going out to all U.S. Snap users aged 18+ to promote the new movie “Wicked.”

♾️ This week’s Meta Pro Tips:

📐 Meta now recommends 4:5 as the new best practice — instead of the 1:1 square format — for all Facebook Feed single-image ads.

👯 Later this month, Meta will start removing the ability to duplicate dynamic creative in existing app-promotion and sales campaigns. You will still be able to edit app-promotion and sales campaigns using dynamic creative, although Meta recommends switching to the flexible format.

👀 If you’re running campaigns using a Lookalike audience on Meta, here’s something to watch. Meta is now running a beta test that automatically applies Advantage Lookalike — the platform’s AI-enhanced tool that dynamically expands your lookalike audience — to all new campaigns that leverage a Lookalike audience in campaigns optimized for Link Clicks, Landing Page Views, Lead Gen, and Quality Lead Gen. According to Meta, some ad accounts have been automatically included in the beta test, beginning last month. 

• According to Meta’s tests, campaigns using Advantage Lookalike achieved a 21% decrease in median cost-per-result, compared to campaigns using regular Lookalike audiences for Landing Page Views & Offsite click results objectives.

🛒 Meta has rolled out new features within the Sales objective called Highlight Your Promo Codes.

• Highlight Your Insider Promotions is designed to attract new customers by offering them a discount in exchange for an email signup. When “email sign-up offer” is enabled, users will see a native form where they can submit their email. Once the user submits their email, the promo code will be automatically applied when the user checks out within the in-app browser. When auto-apply isn’t available, codes will be highlighted to users with the option to “copy code.” Whether or not the user completes a check-out, advertisers can collect the captured email.

• When Promo Codes is checked, a promotional code will be highlighted to users who interact with your ads. If they subsequently check-out on your website within the in-app browser, the promo code can be automatically applied (or easily copy-pasted to be applied at checkout). On Instagram, there’s additional functionality: if someone clicked on an ad created with Highlight Your Promo Codes toggled on and didn't complete the purchase, they may receive a reminder notification that the offer is still available. These promo codes are sourced from your ad creative, existing ad inventory, your website, and any synced offers in your Commerce Manager. Meta will also automatically update active and eligible promo codes for the duration of your ad campaign. You also have the option to manually enter any promo codes you want to share.

🧵 Ads are coming to Threads next year . . . maybe? You know us, we’ve been all over this story from the beginning: When will Instagram’s Twitter killer decide to enable ads? Over the summer we gave you a sneak peak of what a Threads ad could look like. And this week, The Information cited an inside source in claiming that Meta plans to roll out Threads ads in 2025. 

Social Media Today threw some cold water on those expectations by obtaining a non-denial denial from a Meta spokesperson, and reminding us that Meta’s initial guidance was that it wouldn’t think about ads until Threads had a billion users under its belt. (To date, they’re at 275 million and counting.) And yet: this week, the other Twitter killer — Bluesky — took over the discourse with news that it had reached 20 million users and, according to some metrics, is overtaking Threads in daily website visits in the US and UK. Will competition convince Threads to pull the trigger on ads sooner? Stay tuned!

💡Are you ready for 2025 trend predictions? Inject them in our veins. First up: Hootsuite released its “Social Media Trends 2025” report. Our key takeaways for Organic success: 

• Brands that focus on sharing creative, entertaining content on TikTok—rather than strictly brand-consistent content—are reaping the benefits of these creative risks.

• More brands are expanding their community management efforts to include proactive engagement as a tool to boost overall engagement with the brand on social.

• Over the last year, adaptation of generative AI tools has grown exponentially among social media professionals — fueled largely by increases in content needs.

• Generally, AI tools are being leveraged more often by folks in heavily-regulated industries (government, finance, healthcare) than those in loosely-regulated industries (agency, nonprofit, professional services, retail)

Run CTV Ads on Roku This Q5

Peak shopping season isn’t over yet! Two thirds of consumers plan to shop the week after Christmas, and “Q5” – the period between Christmas and mid-January – has become a significant shopping window.* Roku Ads Manager makes it easy to run self-serve CTV ads and reach shoppers where they’re streaming post-holidays. Get started for as little as $500 and find your next customers on the big screen. (*National Retail Federation, 2023)

Discover CTV performance on Roku

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

Just like the rest of the internet, we’re obsessed with Amazon’s holiday campaign featuring Adam Driver reading real-life reviews left by actual Amazon customers. Driver turned the “deeply personal” reviews into theatrical monologues in 10 different 30- and 60-second ads running across paid social, premium online video and Amazon’s owned channels. We’re having trouble picking our favorite. Help us out, would you?

📊 Last edition’s poll results: Which social platform do you think will have the most significant impact on holiday shopping campaigns this year? 

🟨🟨🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️ TikTok 

🟨🟨🟨🟨⬜️⬜️ Instagram 

🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 Snapchat 

🟨🟨🟨🟨⬜️⬜️ Pinterest

Thanks for reading! Advance warning: The Thread is off next week (For Black Friday — and perhaps some other cornbread-stuffing-related activities). But we’ll be back in December 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.