Snapchat's big holiday shopping win

Today’s Social Media advertising rates are picking up steam:

↗️ META: $8.30 CPM | ↗️ TIKTOK: $4.75 CPM | ↗️ SNAPCHAT: $8.85 CPM

In this week’s edition: 

• 🤖 Pinterest, Microsoft launch new AI enhancements

• Google’s media tax is coming to Canada, eh?  🔎

• 📽️ New data proves Nicole Kidman is right about the movies

But first…

🎁 Just in time for the holiday rush: Snapchat’s shopping win

According to a recent eMarketer survey, Snapchat beat both TikTok and Instagram in creator-driven shopping. In the survey, 85.6% of social shoppers who said Snapchat content led them to make a purchase also said they had made a purchase because of creator or influencer content. Facebook had the lowest rate of creator-driven shopping.

The Inside Scoop🍦: Now trending in performance media

📌 Pinterest announced a bunch of updates at their big “Pinterest Presents” event Tuesday, including new promotion tools, highest value optimization, and generative AI upgrades. Highlights:

• If you loved AI-generated backgrounds on product photos in your Google and Amazon ads, you can now do that in your Pinterest ads, too. In beta testing, Walgreens reported seeing 55% higher click-through rate (CTR) and 13% lower cost per click (CPC) with AI vs. plain white backgrounds.

• Pinterest’s enhanced “Performance+” brings AI and automation to the platform’s ad experience.

• Also available “upon request”: new tools that give advertisers the ability to showcase seasonal sales and promotions. “To sweeten the deal,” Pinterest adds, “your promotions and discounts will also be eligible for distribution in other shopping surfaces like the new deal ads module featured in people’s home feeds.”

💾 Microsoft is rolling out a new experience for the way it displays ads on the responses by its generative-AI-powered digital assistant, Copilot. The play aims to make ads feel more intuitive and integrated: as seen in the example below, the new version includes some transition copy tying the ad back to the chat conversation.

Elsewhere at Microsoft Advertising, October saw the announcement of a slew of new updates: 

• More controls and reporting for PMax campaigns.

• Additional bid strategies for display ads, including Manual CPM limits, Enhanced CPC, and an option to Maximize conversions with the option to set a given CPA target. 

• Additional audience targeting for display ads, including a pilot to retarget users who’ve been exposed to your ads.

🔗 LinkedIn has added “Audience Penetration” as a metric you can view in Campaign Manager. Our first reaction: calm down, LinkedIn! Our second reaction: a great thing to highlight in any campaign where reach is the focus.

💵 Remember to pay your taxes, eh? As of this week, Google has started adding a 2.5% Canada media tax similar to the surcharges that already existed for Austria (5%), Spain (3%), France (2%), UK (2%), India (2%), Italy (2.5%), and Turkey (7%).

⏰ TikTok has tweaked the way they present Brand Lift Studies to users. As of September 25, the platform moved away from a format where each BLS question is presented via separate surveys. All BLS questions will now be included in a single survey card. 

• Beware that the BLS results that TikTok shares are very limited. You need to request visibility into lift by age and gender before the BLS starts.

📽️ Good news for cinema advertising: according to a new report from the Video Advertising Bureau, consumers’ mood — and therefore purchase intent and brand favorability — goes up at the movies. Our current mood?

🐘The Elephant In the Room: Our weekly office poll!

As McDonalds prepares to roll out the Chicken Big Mac this week with an all-in NPL campaign — hitting the Kai Cenat, Vegas Sphere, Zynga game trifecta — we found ourselves marveling yet again how lucky we are to be living through a new golden age of viral stunt foods. Is the Chicken Big Mac destined to be the new KFC Double Down? Or is it the next Crystal Pepsi? Only time will tell. In the meantime:

📊 Last edition’s poll results: If your Q4 marketing strategy were a movie, what would it be?

🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 Fast & Furious (all speed, no brakes) 

🟨🟨🟨🟨⬜️⬜️ Inception (layers on layers) 

🟨🟨🟨🟨⬜️⬜️ The Matrix (data overload) 

🟨🟨🟨🟨🟨🟨 Groundhog Day (same tactics, different day)

Thanks for reading! We’ll be back next week to fill your inbox with more tips, tricks, and treats from the addressable universe.

In the meantime, stay up to date with the latest performance marketing intelligence by following us on Linkedin, Instagram, and X.