Meta slaps guardrails on AI connectors

Today’s Social Media advertising rates are back to school:

↗️ META: $7.77 | ↗️ TIKTOK: $1.80 | ↗️ SNAPCHAT: $10.86

In this week’s edition: 

• ▶️ YouTube chooses new Views you can use

• ChatGPT ads are headed to Europe  ✈️

• 🤖 Spotify’s AI audio ads sound more human than humans

But first…

🧠 Meta slaps guardrails on AI connectors

Earlier this year, Meta began rolling out AI connectors that allow advertisers to use third-party tools including Claude, ChatGPT, and Perplexity to manage their campaigns—including, by default, some of the most sensitive actions on the platform. Now, Meta is releasing more security controls for those AI connectors. Here’s what’s changing: 

• When advertisers go through the initial setup, they can now decide whether to automatically opt-in all current and future Facebook pages, or only the current ones. And if selecting current, you can choose the exact pages.

• Advertisers can choose whether a tool is always allowed, blocked, or should request approval. This includes interactive tools (create campaigns, ad sets, and ads), read-only tools (get pixel, creative, and account health details), and write/delete tools (make actual changes to your campaigns, catalog, custom audiences, and more).

The Inside Scoop🍦: Now trending in performance media

♾️ Meta is testing sequenced events and preferred lead answers to improve lead quality. Note that there’s no official documentation, so these new features are likely limited to isolated tests.

➡️ Sequenced Events applies when using the Instant Forms conversion location for a Leads campaign while selecting the “maximize number of qualified leads” (previously “conversion leads”) performance goal. After selecting a dataset, a dropdown appears for the lead event with “Sequenced Events” selected and you can select a higher-value action, such as a purchase, after the lead.

➡️ Preferred Answers allow you label answer choices from multiple choice questions as preferred. If you have this option, there’s a slider option above the answers: “Prioritize higher-quality leads by using the checkboxes to mark preferred lead answers.”

⚖️ Meta is back in court this week with a landmark child safety case holding opening remarks last Tuesday. Four states are suing Meta over child social media addiction, seeking $200 billion in damages and calling for changes to Meta’s platforms. Don’t expect results until the end of September with the trial expected to take 6+ weeks.

🔎 Google is planning to implement three updates to bidding, default settings, and inventory support for Demand Gen campaigns only. These will be rolled out in the coming months:

Default Settings:

• Current Behavior: VTC is turned off by default during new campaign creation, requiring you to opt-in. If you are currently opted in to VTCs in your Demand Gen campaigns, this behavior won’t change.

• New Behavior: VTC optimization will be turned on by default for new Demand Gen campaigns.You’ll need to manually opt out if you don’t want to use it.

Bidding behavior:

• Current Behavior: VTC (view-through conversion) optimization applies to both image and video assets.

• New Behavior: VTC optimization will apply to video assets only. For existing campaigns containing both video and image assets, image VTC’s will continue to be reported in secondary conversions columns; however, it will no longer be biddable or appear in the main “Conversions” column.

Inventory and Billing Support:

• Current Behavior: Only YouTube and Discover Feed are supported.

• New Behavior: YouTube, Discover Feed, and Display will be supported. For Display, the billing method for all video assets will change from cost-per-click (CPC) to cost-per-thousand impressions (CPM). Note: This billing update applies regardless of whether you opt in to VTCs.

🙊 Google is removing campaign-level language targeting from Search and AI Max for Search campaigns starting in late September.

• Instead of advertisers explicitly selecting which languages to target, Google will determine which ads to serve based largely on the language of the ad alongside signals about the languages a user understands.

• Advertiser-selected language settings will continue to guide delivery across YouTube, Display, Discover and Gmail, while Shopping ads within Performance Max aren’t affected by language settings.

▶️ YouTube is changing the way it counts public-facing video views. Beginning Monday (August 24), the platform will start counting a view from the moment the video starts to play. YouTube says the change will bring long-form videos in line with YouTube Shorts, where since March 2025, YouTube has counted a Shorts view from the moment the video begins playing.

• YouTube will keep the original view metric, called “Engaged views,” in YouTube Analytics > Advanced Mode, so creators can see how many viewers choose to continue watching their video.

• While this change means videos will appear to have substantially more views than before, creator earnings and eligibility will continue to be based on ”Engaged Shorts views” and “Engaged Watch Hours.”

👉 Note that this does not change how paid views are counted: 

• Skippable in-stream ads: Paid advertising views will be counted as TrueView views when someone watches a complete ad that’s 11–30 seconds long or someone watches at least 30 seconds of an ad that’s more than 30 seconds long or someone interacts with the ad.

• In-feed video ads: Paid advertising views will be counted as TrueView views when someone clicks the ad and the video starts to play or someone watches at least 10 seconds of an ad that’s more than 10 seconds long.

• Shorts ads: Paid advertising views will be counted as TrueView views when someone clicks the ads or someone watches at least 10 seconds of the ad.

🎧 Spotify is using AI to generate instant audio ads — and we are already hearing examples where the AI-generated ads sound better than Spotify-sourced voice actors. The benefits of AI-generated ads are obvious: they reduce turnaround time to nearly zero, revisions to change things like pronunciation are essentially instantaneous, and Spotify has tools to help write the scripts if needed. The drawback, up until now, has been the delta between human-read ads and AI-read ads—nobody wants to run an audio ad that sounds like a robot. But in separate tests this week, two of our teams had an uncanny experience: Spotify’s voice-actor-sourced ads came back sounding more like AI, and the AI versions sounded more human. For better or for worse, welcome to the future.

👽 Reddit released a new study on holiday travel conversations and planning, showing that users start planning as early as April based on mention trends. For marketers, waiting for the traditional holiday rush can mean arriving after key decisions are already underway. Brands have an opportunity to support travelers from early inspiration through comparison, booking, and post-purchase advocacy.

• 85% of travel shoppers on Reddit said its conversations offer authentic experiences that make products easier to compare.

• Another 76% called those conversations a trustworthy way to inform product decisions.

🛜 Reddit is expanding its Ads API partnerships with Skai and Innovid to allow advertisers to manage campaigns alongside other channels in their media mix.

🧠 ChatGPT Ads is expanding access to Free and Go users in 31 EU countries, with ChatGPT confirming the following countries in their press release: Germany, France, Spain, Italy, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, the Netherlands, and Austria.

• This expansion is scheduled for later this month, but we’re already seeing the new countries as targetable options in the UI.

• Targeting will be contextual-only at launch based on: the topic of the current conversation, approximate location, device type, time of day, language.

📳 OpenAI introduced “ChatGPT for Teens” on Tuesday. The age-specific mode will be turned on automatically for all users who self-identify as being between the ages of 13-17. It’s being positioned as a healthy middle ground for underage users with features, such as:

• Responsible Homework Reminder & Study Mode: Automatically detects when a teenage user is trying to get a quick answer from ChatGPT on a school assignment, and instead helps guide them through the problem step-by-step.

• Content Sensitivity: It’s also been designed to withhold sensitive content related to self-harm, eating disorders, sexual content, and other “high-risk areas.”

📦 Amazon DSP now supports publisher-hosted creatives for Google Ad Manager (GAM) programmatic guaranteed (PG) deals. Advertisers can bid on premium inventory where creative assets are hosted directly in the publisher's ad server, rather than being served from Amazon DSP or a third-party ad server. This unlocks access to more premium inventory from broadcasters, news platforms, and major publishers that require creative to be hosted on their side for compliance, format, or delivery reasons.

💅 Pro Tip: Existing Amazon DSP accounts are being upgraded to master-level advertiser accounts, essentially consolidating its ecosystem in a way that enables users to manage all Amazon ad products — programmatic campaigns, sponsored ads, and Amazon Marketing Cloud — globally from a single account without re-registration. Advertisers will get the below benefits:

• Multi-country buying: Activate programmatic campaigns across Americas, EMEA, and APAC regions without creating new accounts or completing additional registrations.

• Omnichannel campaign management: If you buy programmatic campaigns alongside Sponsored Ads, you can now manage everything from one advertiser account.

• Amazon Marketing Cloud (AMC) access: Makes it easier to connect cross-product, cross-region analytics without separate registration.

• Unified billing and permissions: Manage invoices, billing settings, and user roles (admin, editor, viewer) across all ad products globally from a single page.

• Simplified first-party data management: Connect signals once and activate across Amazon DSP, AMC, and Sponsored Ads.

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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This week’s edition of the Thread was created by Jess Dashner, Anoushka Madan, Mariya Samardzhieva, Sabina Saktaganova, Sims Wilson, Kiara Quigley, Lara Spijkerman, Kayleigh McDonald, Caitlin LaValle, and Carly Carioli.