New AI for marketers: Spotify's robot producer, LinkedIn's dealmakers

Today’s Social Media advertising rates are doing the electric slide:

↘️ META: $8.52 CPM | ↘️ TIKTOK: $3.72 CPM | ↘️ SNAPCHAT: $10.32 CPM

In this week’s edition: 

• 🔎 Google pulls back the curtain on its black-box metrics

• TikTok ads 🤝 Lemon8 ads?

• 🗞️ The NY Times, they are a-gaming

But first…

🤖 New AI tools: Spotify’s robot producer, LinkedIn’s virtual dealmakers

AI is stepping deeper into the media mix. This week, Spotify unveiled tools to create audio ads with generative AI, while LinkedIn introduced new AI-powered Buyer Groups to help you target the right decision-makers.

🎧 Spotify will be rolling out the ability to use generative AI to create audio ads. Users can generate a script, edit the draft, add voice-overs from a library of voices customized by gender, age and tone, then either select background music from Spotify or upload a track of their own.

🔗 LinkedIn is beta testing Buyer Groups: AI-powered audiences of professionals that collectively make product purchasing decisions for a company. You can build a Buyer Group from your choice of 56 different product categories to reach decision makers and key stakeholders relevant to that category.

The Inside Scoop🍦: Now trending in performance media

🧵 Threads: Last week, we jumped up and down about it. One week in, a few key details we’ve learned about advertising on Threads, which we’ve had a chance to lay hands on:

• Not all advertisers have access yet. The next rollout is tentatively scheduled for May 5, and full rollout is scheduled for mid-May. 

• Threads ads must be run in parallel with Instagram Feed, they can’t be run on their own.

• A Threads profile must be linked to an Instagram account. Once that’s done, the Threads profile will auto-populate based on the Instagram account.

♾️ Meta: This week’s hot tips 🔥

🎯 If an advertiser is pulling leads via Leads Center and not seeing all of the columns associated with the form, pulling leads via Business Suite >> Instant forms will give them all of the data.

💰 Advertisers can now add current price, a strikethrough sale price, percentage off, or free shipping labels directly onto product images. These Dynamic Overlays are styled like stickers to make promotions stand out in the Facebook Feed.

🔎 Google Ads is finally pulling back the curtain on some of its most important — and least understood — products. After years of calls for more transparency, Google will begin rolling out channel-level, search term, and creative asset reporting! They will open a beta program for channel-level reporting in a few weeks and will roll out the other updates for search terms and asset reporting over the course of the year. Additional details are expected at Google Marketing Live on May 21.

⏰ TikTok: ByteDance’s Instagram-like product showcase app Lemon8 is running a beta test that allows a small portion of TikTok Ads campaign budget to be allocated to Lemon8 placements.

🗞️ The New York Times just announced that they’re introducing ads to the NYT Games app to complement the inventory that already exists on desktop and mobile web. Ad options include share of voice-based sponsorships or efficient rotational plans.

🔊 Spotifyis launching Brand Lift in Ads Manager, which will be a free tool available for all advertisers globally. Should be live by the time you read this.

🔗 LinkedIn: Fun fact—you can create a CTV campaign using LinkedIn Campaign Manager to leverage LinkedIn’s first-party data.

🚨 Buyer Beware: What counts as a video view?

For advertisers, video view metrics can be a minefield. Each major ad platform defines a “view” differently—sometimes drastically so. Some count a view the moment a video starts. Others require a few seconds of watch time, a click, or even full completion. Check out our new comparison of how the major platforms — Amazon, Google, Linkedin, Meta, Pinterest, Reddit, Spotify, TikTok, and more — define what a view is.

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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