Why Meta’s Black Friday will be bigger than ever

Today’s Social Media advertising rates are in line at the Salem Dunks:

↗️ META: $6.51 CPM | ↗️ TIKTOK: $4.36 CPM | ↗️ SNAPCHAT: $11.33 CPM

In this week’s edition: 

• 👻 The Snapchat tweak that just blew up your ads 

• Here comes OpenAI’s agentic browser 🧠

• 🤳 Is Instagram’s no-skips era about to end?

But first…

🎁 How big is Black Friday?

According to Meta: bigger than ever. 

New data released by Meta claims that in 2025, 83% of Meta users—190 million people—are expected to shop on Black Friday, when they’ll spend an estimated $52 billion. Luxury shoppers are a significant segment of that market, projected to account for 25% of Black Friday revenue—and Meta claims those “top spenders” are 3x more likely to click on Meta ads than TikTok ads. (Sick burn.) Of course, CPMs will also be up — but according to Meta, “purchase value is 10x during Cyber5.” 

And that’s not all: 30% of Meta users are planning to shop in-store in November—and 20% are shopping right now. 

The Inside Scoop🍦: Now trending in performance media

♾️ Meta confirmed that Instagram is testing skippable ads within Reels, giving users the option to hit skip on an ad when scrolling—similar to YouTube’s Skippable In-Stream ads. 

This new ad format displays a countdown timer in the top-right corner of the screen to signal an incoming ad. The countdown timer is followed by an ad with a “skip” button. Stay tuned.

🔎 Google is rolling out a new video creation tool for its Demand Gen campaigns that automatically turns image and text assets into videos across all aspect ratios. This feature will apply to all image-only ad groups created before August 27th, with auto-generated videos beginning to serve after October 31st— unless advertisers opt out, either through the UI or by contacting your sales rep.

🫧 Cleanup time: Advertisers now have just six months to reactivate canceled accounts before Google permanently deletes their data. Previously, advertisers could reactivate canceled accounts at any time, preserving data and structure indefinitely. Under the new policy, Google will begin a cleanup of inactive accounts, sending a 30-day email warning before deletion.

📍Google rolled out scrollable sitelinks in Maps ads, letting advertisers drive users to specific sites directly beneath promoted pins:

💡 Here’s a bright idea: Google is now letting U.S. merchants offer physical product subscriptions in Shopping ads.

• To participate, merchants must update their product feeds with the subscription_cost attribute, including subattributes for the billing period (week, month, or year), period length, and amount.

• Google only supports one subscription price per landing page, and sales or discounts on subscriptions aren’t supported yet.

💅 Pro Tip: Google’s AI Max Search Terms report just got smarter. A new “Sources” column now shows where your traffic really came from—whether it’s your own landing pages and URLs (matched to search intent) or AI Max matches that show when traffic came from Google’s algorithmic expansions beyond your set keywords.

👻 Snapchat: Remember a few weeks back when we told you that Snapchat had unified its safe zone guidelines for all placements? (No? Shame on you. Fine, you can find them here). 

Well: after more digging, we discovered that these safe zone changes are related to Snapchat raising the tappable card element of Snap Ads up to 35% from the bottom of the screen. Here’s what we know:

• Snapchat is launching a dynamic tappable card placement, which automatically identifies the optimal placement for the tappable card within eligible Snap Ads. (This is in Snap Ads only—that excludes Story Ads, Commercials, DPA, and AR ads.) Those go into effect…now.  

• The remainder of Snap’s ad formats (i.e. the aforementioned Story Ads, Commercials, DPA, and AR ads) will be adhering to these new specs starting in Q1.

🤖 OpenAI just announced the launch of its first web browser: ChatGPT Atlas. For now, Atlas is available only on Macs—and surprisingly, its built-in search features seem to be powered by Google and not Microsoft Bing, its early partner and one of its largest investors.

In addition to standard browser functionality, ChatGPT is available in the browser sidebar. You can ask ChatGPT questions, have it re-write your content in Gmail and other tabs, and tap into its personalization and memory features. It will also help you complete tasks, code, and even shop using agentic features.

Atlas joins Perplexity AI’s Comet browser, which we told you about over the summer, and which launched as a $200/month premium feature. Is this the future of the internet? Probably. But one thing’s for sure: the AI browser is the next leap into “agentic” functionality, and also a key to driving revenue for the age of the LLM.

🎤 Roku is turning its famous “Roku City” screensaver into a virtual concert experience. Demi Lovato will be the first artist to perform. Users will be able access the experience by selecting an interactive Roku City building, which will transport them to Demi’s performances, plus behind-the-scenes footage, photos, and a pre-save for her new album.

📖 Ad Age asked 10 media leaders honored on its 2025 Media Buying Power List for their advice to the next generation of media buyers. What should you be doing now? Read: “Early-career media buyers—skills and habits to master now.”

💡 Newsflash: The creative economy is now the attention economy. Boston Magazine just dropped a feature by our own Director of Communications, Carly Carioli, on how Boston’s creator class is stepping into the space once held by local newsrooms—and how agencies, brands, and the city itself are adapting.

• The “news desert” is a myth — welcome to the news jungle. We don’t have a shortage of information; we have an overload. The real challenge is who gets to shape the story—and who earns trust in a world where institutions are fighting for relevance.

• Creators are becoming media infrastructure. The City of Boston’s first Content Creator Summit, hosted at Gupta Media HQ, showed what happens when institutions and independents share a stage.

• Collaboration is the new distribution. The old model of “coverage” is giving way to connection. Legacy media, creators, and brands that collaborate will define the next chapter of storytelling.

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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