Netflix is personalizing its World Cup ads

Today’s Social Media advertising rates are trading up for a higher draft pick:

↗️ META: $8.60 | ↗️ TIKTOK: $4.01 | ↘️ SNAPCHAT: $8.50

In this week’s edition: 

• 💾 Microsoft is optimizing search ads for AI selection

• Your Instagram algorithm is getting another checkup 🩺 

• 🧠 Are ChatGPT ads going self-serve?

But first…

⚽ Netflix is personalizing its World Cup ads

File under: live television is becoming more like digital video. 

Advertisers generally take dynamically inserted ads (DAI) for granted: you show personalized, targeted ads based on who’s viewing the video. But DAI is still often off-limits in live sports, where you get the whole enchilada or none at all—you typically can’t target, say, 21+ men who are in-market for cars.

That’s rapidly changing. Netflix is already offering advertisers the option to buy dynamically inserted ads during its broadcast of the Women’s World Cup next summer. And it has already rolled out that technology for select live events including WWE and its Christmas Day NFL games. Meanwhile, Disney+ began offering DAI on select live events across Hulu, Disney+, and ESPN last April.

The Inside Scoop🍦: Now trending in performance media

♾️ Meta is rolling out Incremental Attribution to all advertisers by May 20. The model lets advertisers optimize for conversions which are a) directly attributable to Meta ads, and b) would not have occurred without them. We’ve been testing IA since it started rolling out last August. How does it work, you ask?

📷 Instagram has expanded its Your Algorithm content control options to Instagram Explore. Previously, IG allowed you only to adjust the algo on your Reels content. This now extends those choices to Explore via the same control center: IG lets you see what the platform thinks you care about, then edit with topics you want to see more or less of. Explore also lets users “add or remove interests directly from the topic pills at the top of the page.”

🎞️ Reels Trending—Meta’s version of TikTok Pulse, which allows advertisers to place ads next to curated buckets of content—has added new topic lineups, including Electronics & Technology, Fitness & Training, and Health & Wellness. 

💅 Pro Tip: Meta has launched Target Audience Search in Creator Marketplace. You can select a saved Custom or Lookalike audience in Creator Marketplace, and then see a list of creators with similar audience profiles. You can search for saved audiences by audience name or audience ID.

🔎 Google is rolling out new agentic safety features within Ads Advisor to simplify account oversight and campaign management. 

• Proactive Troubleshooting: Real-time policy reviews enable Ads Advisor to automatically detect, diagnose, and guide resolution of account violations.

• 24/7 Security Monitoring: Enhances account security with continuous monitoring, surfacing flagged domains, dormant users, and a live security level overview.

• Instant Certifications: Accelerates approval process with one-click certification and instant approvals.

📺 YouTube is giving parents a little more leverage. The platform rolled out stronger supervision tools, including: 

• Daily time limits for Shorts, in an attempt to stop the doomscroll

• Simpler family account setup for supervised teen accounts, because dad was having trouble figuring it out

🎧 Spotify is releasing more information on the Carousel Ads we told you about last month:

• Spotify is providing carousel-level reporting on impressions, clicks, spend, and all standard ad-level metrics

• There’s no minimum spend, and you can buy through the auction—either self-serve or managed service

• 2-6 images per ad; 1:1 ratio, minimum 600x600 pixels

• Each card can include its own unique URL, CTA, optional price or discount overlay, and tagline (up to 40 characters)

• Appears In-feed, Now Playing view (music only)

🎯 Spotify has also enabled Ad Engagement Retargeting, which lets you build audiences based on how users have interacted with your ads. You can choose to target these audiences, exclude them, and also create lookalike audiences from them.

👽 Reddit has launched a new integration with HubSpot, allowing users to directly create and analyze content from the HubSpot platform. 

• Now in public beta, this integration includes publishing, scheduling, monitoring, and performance tracking, including a sentiment analysis and integration with the HubSpot Social Tool. 

• This unifies workflow between social media management and organic conversation insights, making it easier to translate Reddit’s discussion signals into actionable insights.

📌 Pinterest for CPG brands? Sounds positive. A new study commissioned by Pinterest looked at 17 campaigns to crunch the numbers: 82% “generated positive incremental ROI, meaning that the incremental sales impact was greater than the Pinterest media spend. Meanwhile, 76% of the campaigns achieved an ROI of 1.5x or higher.”

📦 Amazon is highlighting expanding opportunities across its portfolio during the 2026/2027 upfronts:

• Expanded ad opportunities across Prime Video through premium entertainment inventory, upcoming originals and films, and deeper brand partnership sponsorships tied to priority titles. 

• New Twitch formats like Creator Casts, PlayAds, and Premium Event Ads. 

• A new Alexa+-powered Fire TV experience, including a more personalized UI

• Ability for advertisers to buy inventory across Amazon, Hulu, and Netflix in a single workflow 

• New AI tools, including AdsAgent for conversational media planning, plus campaign solutions designed to improve activation and performance.

💾 Microsoft is introducing AI Max for Search campaigns, which will expand query matching and personalize ad delivery across AI surfaces like Copilot and Bing; and Offer Highlights, a suite of new ad formats that surface key selling points, like free shipping, directly within AI conversations. 

Why we care: By shifting from optimizing for clicks to optimizing for AI selection, Microsoft is helping brands show up in AI-driven decisions, not just search results. 

Other AI enhancements coming soon:

• AI Visibility in Microsoft Clarity shows how brands appear in AI-generated answers, including which content gets cited and where competitors are outperforming.

• CoPilot Checkout enhancements allow purchases directly within Copilot.

• AI-powered audience generation builds targeting segments from advertisers describing their ideal customer in plain language.

🧠 OpenAI is now testing Cost Per Click (CPC) ads within ChatGPT, moving beyond a set CPM model and taking a first baby-step into performance. Early reports suggests CPCs are priced in the $3-$5 range. Meanwhile, CPM-based ads are said to be coming down in price, from $60 at launch to closer to $25.

🧭 And perhaps the bigger news: OpenAI is now testing an Ads Manager, suggesting that it’ll be moving to a self-serve model in the future:

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.