Microsoft’s AI is growing faster than ChatGPT

Today’s Social Media advertising rates are taking center court:

↗️ META: $8.43 CPM | ↘️ TIKTOK: $4.65 CPM | ↘️ SNAPCHAT: $7.98 CPM

In this week’s edition: 

• 🤖  Microsoft’s AI is growing faster than ChatGPT

• This one posting tweak can boost your reach on LinkedIn 🔗

• 🏈 Super Bowl ads are already sold out—and prices are up

But first…

⚖️  Crime and Punishment: Google antitrust edition

This week, a federal judge issued the long-awaited penalty in the first of two Google monopoly trials. 

But instead of mandating a breakup of the company or instituting sweeping restrictions, the ruling was considered to be little more than a slap on the wrist. 

💰 Google was ordered to share some search data with rivals and cease its exclusive placement deals, but that ruling provides a potential loophole for some of its lucrative partnerships, including the $20 billion it pays to be Apple’s default search engine. 

📈 Investors cheered, with Alphabet and Apple stocks jumping—reflecting the lightness of the sentence and confidence that future antitrust cases may also bring light penalties.

• Still, even the reduced penalty is a reminder that Google is as vulnerable as it has ever been: even limited data sharing could weaken its edge on Search, while AI competitors like OpenAI and Anthropic are already reshaping how people search. 

🔥 For more on the decision and its impact on advertisers, subscribe to our LinkedIn newsletter The Arbiter, an executive series of informed opinions, strategic outlooks, and analytics-backed predictions.

The Inside Scoop🍦: Now trending in performance media

♾️ Meta’s latest (and mandatory) EU performance update reveals that Instagram is growing at 10X the rate of Facebook in the European Union. Instagram has had more European users than Facebook for some time, and Facebook has still grown by 0.65% since March 2024, but it could be another sign that Facebook is losing relevance. In fact, Facebook has actually lost users in The Netherlands, Greece and Germany.

📱Instagram has finally launched a dedicated iPad app, which puts TikTok-competitor Reels at the center of its redesigned interface. Using Instagram on an iPad previously required using a scaled-up iPhone version with blurry visuals and missing features.

🔗 LinkedIn has launched Ad Personalization—formerly known as Dynamic Creative Optimization, or DCO— which delivers dynamic, personalized ad copy with up-to-date LinkedIn profile info. This allows advertisers to use macros like First Name, Company, Industry, and Job Title for a bespoke experience at scale.  

🏋️ Conversion Lift Testing—LinkedIn’s way of measuring the incremental impact of your ads, by creating a test vs. control group—is now available to all eligible advertisers across the platform. Campaign minimums apply, and you’ll need to use an Insight Tag (a pixel you place on your website to track user actions and conversions) or the Conversions API (CAPI).   

🚀 For brands operating an organic LinkedIn presence, the eternal question is: How much should we be posting? If you’re Team “I think too many posts is diluting my reach,” you may want to check out a new report from Buffer. According to their research, based on some 2 million public posts, “moving from 1 post a week to 2-to-5 is like flipping a switch—LinkedIn starts distributing your content more widely and rewarding you with stronger per-post performance.”

Microsoft just launched its new Microsoft Media Marketplace, “a platform designed to help buyers discover media that aligns with their goals, access robust media planning tools, and seamlessly activate deals.” The new portal lets you:

• Select which DSP you are using (Gupta Media faves Amazon and Basis are among the many options, as are The Trade Desk, Stackadapt, and Adobe).

• Access Microsoft’s full deal catalog, where you can find inventory by publisher, format, device, and more.

• See their floor rates and all deal information with full transparency.

• Activate your deal(s) of choice immediately in your preferred DSP.

🤖Microsoft’s AI companion Copilot saw a 175% surge in U.S. mobile users, adding 5.6 million between March and June and outpacing ChatGPT’s 3.9 million gain and 17.9% growth, although ChatGPT still leads in total mobile user base with 25.4 million to Copilot’s 8.8 million. Copilot’s growth is largely being driven by the enterprise market, given that it’s integrated into Microsoft products. Google’s Gemini also saw significant growth, with mobile usage increasing 68% to 14.3 million users, due in part to its being preloaded on Pixel phones.

🔎 Google Ads has a new feature to help you manage your campaigns. New checkboxes are available to let you select the campaigns you want and filter the view to only show those campaigns. Previously, you were only able to select one campaign at a time, but now you can select multiple campaigns.

🏈 And finally, just as we gear up for this weekend’s return of the NFL, NBCUniversal announced it has already sold out of Super Bowl inventory, and the price of a spot is reportedly steeper than ever. Back in January, Ad Age reported that commercial prices had hit $8 million for the first time. Now, they’re reportedly topping $9 million. One advertiser told Ad Age, “The network is now asking for a $9 million price tag for a :30 and a $9 million match that you have to spend on the 2026 Winter Olympics. So whoever’s going to commit now is [committing] $18 million.”

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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