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6 things to know about Meta’s new Threads ads

Plus: 7 stats that sum up the digital ad industry

Author

Gupta Media
April 25, 2025 • Estimated Reading Time: 8 minutes

Today’s Social Media advertising rates are moving up in the first round:

↗️ META: $8.58 CPM | ↗️ TIKTOK: $4.20 CPM | ↗️ SNAPCHAT: $11.72 CPM

In this week’s edition: 

  • 🔎 What Google’s breakup could mean for advertisers

  • TikTok unveils ad targeting for women’s sports ⚽

  • 🧠 7 stats that sum up the digital ad industry

But first…

🎂 Happy birthday to us — from Meta and Google?

For those of you who’ve been with us from the beginning, thank you for not losing the Thread: we launched the first edition of this newsletter back on May 2, 2024. 

Among the first questions we got when we said we were launching a newsletter called The Thread: Isn’t that a little close to, uh, Threads by Instagram? 

We think of it as a feature, not a bug. And we’ve been covering the anticipation around Threads ads ever since. So we’re extremely flattered that Meta chose our birthday week to finally roll out . . . A SELECTABLE AD PLACEMENT ON THREADS. 🚨🚨🚨

Here’s the tea from the Meta folks: 

  • Reach, Traffic, and Website Conversion optimizations are eligible.

  • Use your existing image assets for feeds.

  • Newly created campaigns will be automatically opted into Threads via Advantage+ and Manual Placements. You can unselect the Threads placement to opt out (Manual Placements only).

  • Expect low delivery.

  • Threads ads will be delivered in “select markets” at first before rolling out to additional markets.

🍪  Not to be outdone, our good friends at Google also dropped a timely birthday gift on us—by not taking away our cookies! It’s been a long five years since Google promised—promised—to upend ad delivery by blocking third-party cookies in Chrome. And almost from the beginning, the ad industry has been pretty sure it would never happen—but also went ahead and spent “endless millions” preparing for it to happen. 

We’d just like to point out that our Threads readers correctly predicted this outcome in our first ever readers’ poll back in May of 2024:

♾️ Meta has updated its preview link tool, adding a separate link for users logged in via a managed Meta Account.

✂️ Earlier this month, we teased that Instagram was expected to launch its own version of TikTok’s video-editing app CapCut in the coming weeks. That day has arrived, and Edits is now available in the app store for iOS and Android. It’s currently free, but Instagram may start charging later for some AI features.

🤖 Meta Advantage+ needs no introduction — but if it does, here’s a two-minute explainer — and Meta is stepping up its AI adoption efforts by highlighting some new research into Advantage+ performance. According to Meta: 

  • Advertisers are seeing 9% lower average cost per action when using the new streamlined setup for Advantage+ sales campaigns.

  • Ad dollars spent on Advantage+ products drove a 22% higher ROAS than business as usual (BAU) campaigns.

🔎 Google has updated its policy to allow Search ads from the same advertiser to appear in both the top and bottom ad positions on a results page. This is no longer considered a violation of its unfair advertising policies or a case of double serving.

🛍️ In D2C news, Shopify is phasing out legacy Google tag setups by August 28, 2025 for Shopify Plus merchants—and by August 26, 2026 for non-plus merchants. Learn more here.

⏰ TikTok is beta testing Pulse Custom Lineups, which place your ad next to a bespoke lineup of the top trending content.

⚽ The platform is also about to start rolling out a Women’s Sports Pulse Lineup. An open beta begins May 16, subject to campaign minimums.

🛍️ Previously on TikTok, Shopify merchants could sync only one catalog per store, regardless of country-level stores that had their own unique pricing, currency, and product inventory. Now, with Localized Catalog Sync for Shopify, country-specific TikTok catalogs are created automatically from a single Shopify store.

🔗 LinkedIn is rolling out Qualified Leads Optimization, which activates when you set up a “qualified leads” conversion event using the LinkedIn Conversions API. After connecting your CRM, LinkedIn will use your existing qualified leads to find similar audiences.

👽 Reddit will no longer support optimization for the following conversion events starting June 1: Add to Wishlist, Search, and View Content. You’ll need to switch to one of these available conversion goal events instead: Purchase, Lead, Signup, Add to Cart, or Page Visit.

🎯 Criteo just announced it’s rolling out a new format: on-site, shoppable video ads on hundreds of retail media networks. Criteo claims this will make it simpler for brands to buy across many retailers at once without having to customize the creative to each retailer’s specific formatting requirements.

🧠 By the numbers: The state of advertising in 7 stats

📊Digital Marketing Agency Tinuiti released their Q1 Digital Ads Benchmark Report, which showed: 

  • Google Ad spend grew by 9% YoY

  • Microsoft Ads spend grew by 17%

  • Performance Max continued to show declining performance relative to standard shopping campaigns.

💸 The Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) published a 2024 digital advertising report revealing that digital advertising revenue hit $258.6 billion last year, representing growth of 15% year over year. Propelled by a U.S. presidential election and the Olympics:

  • Search grew 15.9% and accounted for a whopping 39.8% of total digital ad revenue

  • Social media revenue increased 36.7%, totaling $88.7 billion

  • Retail media networks saw revenue grow 23%, reaching $53.7 billion.

☠️ Digital Media Death Watch: What Google’s breakup could mean for advertisers

🔎 Google lost its second antitrust trial in as many years last week. This week, hearings commenced in the penalty phase of Google’s first antitrust case — which will determine whether Google is forced to sell off Chrome and/or spin off Android. In those hearings, the Department of Justice and a coalition of states unveiled their plan to dismantle Google’s illegal search monopoly. That plan would also include banning default search payments (such as those paid by Google to Apple) and advertising remedies that include letting advertisers opt out of broad and automated keyword matching. 

♾️ Meanwhile, Meta is facing its own landmark antitrust trial. In that one, CEO Mark Zuckerberg testified that Facebook’s and Instagram’s share of the amount of time people spend on social media apps has “gone down meaningfully.” This is not something that Meta has been eager to admit before now.

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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