TikTok ads hit the mall (and the gym)

Today’s Social Media advertising rates are back from vacation but still adjusting to the inbox:

↘️ META: $8.04 CPM | ↘️ TIKTOK: $5.62 CPM | ↗️ SNAPCHAT: $6.85 CPM

In this week’s edition: 

• 🤬 YouTube DGAF about cursing anymore

• The quickest way to get to the top of Pinterest search 📌

• 👽 Reddit rolls out new automated bidding tools

But first…

🚕 TikTok ads hit the mall (and the gym)

TikTok is expanding its “Out of Phone” — i.e., Out of Home — program (launched back in October 2023) by partnering with Curb, Westfield Malls, Rockbot, and Hope Hydration to bring TikTok content to a wider range of real-world screens from taxi TVs, shopping malls, and hydration stations to airports, fitness centers, cafes, and local businesses.

Building on earlier billboard and cinema placements, the new rollout lets brands plan OOH buys directly via TikTok Ads Manager, making it easier to capture attention while people wait for a latte. Expect more cat memes while you’re on the treadmill—plus fresh ways to make offline audiences do a double‑take.

The Inside Scoop🍦: Now trending in performance media

🤬 YouTube is loosening its restrictions on dropping the F-bomb. As of this week, YouTube now allows full monetization even if strong profanity drops within the first seven seconds of a video—a shift from strict policies that previously de-monetized videos featuring heavy swearing at the beginning of a clip. Creators complained for years that YouTube’s policies were vague and capricious. YouTube says advertisers are increasingly comfortable with a little edge, and now have more granular brand safety controls to avoid content that crosses their own lines. 

💡 For marketers: This opens up new inventory and creator collab opportunities, but it also raises targeting questions. Brands will want to revisit their brand suitability settings to make sure “edgy” aligns with their audience.

⚠️ Worth noting: Videos still get penalized if they’re loaded with excessive profanity, use swearing in titles or thumbnails, or include slurs/extreme language. 

As YouTube’s own policy lead put it: “You have to pick and choose your f—s carefully.”

🔎 Google Ads: Big news for Responsive Search Ads (RSA): advertisers are starting to see clicks and conversions at the individual headline level—a huge shift from Google’s old “Good” or “Best” ratings. Why do we care? Real performance data means ad copy testing is back. Marketers can now cut weak headlines, test pinning strategies, and build cleaner asset categories with actual numbers, not guesswork.

⏰ TikTok’s Engaged Sessions optimization will move out of beta and into general availability (GA) as of today (July 31). Engaged Sessions optimization reaches users who will click on an ad and then spend at least 10 seconds on the page or navigate to a secondary page. It's perfect for clients who want to focus on driving quality traffic, and no pixel is required. Internal TikTok data showed: 

• Average session duration for Engaged Session was 32.2% higher than using the landing page views optimization (LPV).

• Engagement session rate was 20% higher than LPV.

• Bounce rate for Engaged Session was 13% lower than LPV.

• Cost per engaged session was 21.3% lower than LPV.

📊 Campaign-level split tests are also now in GA. This is available in TikTok Ads Manager as well as Experiment Manager—a central location for all campaign level split tests, where you can now view, set up, and manage tests.

🧪 Now in open beta: TikTok is offering advertisers a self-serve UI to ingest their TikTok campaign data into their Media Mix models (MMM) via TikTok Ads Manager. Both Paid and Earned data are available, with exactly the same data capability as MMM API.

👽 Reddit just launched two new automated bidding strategies for the brand awareness & reach objectives: lowest cost and cost cap.

💡 Pro Tip: Beginning tomorrow (August 1), reporting for Automated Targeting will be available for Communities and Interest groups. Keywords are still not available.

📌 Pinterest has two new betas for advertisers who want to show at the top of search results: 

• Top of Search Ads exclusively show up within the top ten slots. Ads only serve if they’re exactly what users searched for, or “ideal substitutes.”

• Top of Search Gallery serves at the top of search results and Related Pins when three or more of your Shopping products are highly relevant.

🔄 Need a refresher on Performance+, Pinterest’s suite of AI-powered, automated products (similar to Meta’s Advantage+)? Check out their overview. (Note: Amazon DSP also has a similar offering called Performance+. Totally not confusing.)

💡Pro tip: Running music in Pinterest ads? If your Pin uses copyrighted music, Pinterest may strip the audio until you verify you have the rights. The music appeal form takes about a week to get a response. This is especially common on brand-new profiles. Have your licensing proof ready and submit the music appeal form early to avoid campaign delays

🐦 Twitter/X has updated its ad quality policy this week to advise that ad copy should avoid hashtags, symbols, URLs, and grammatical errors. While we already knew about the ban on hashtags and limiting emoji usage, this formalizes their guidelines. To police this policy, X will begin assigning “aesthetic scores” to every ad on the platform based on guideline adherence, and ads that are aligned to their “aesthetic” values will cost less and be featured more. 

✌️ Amazon has made a dramatic international exit from product advertising on Google Shopping. While Amazon has been “cooling” on Google Shopping for about a year, the shift from a slow retreat to a total stop is a major inflection point that may cause costs to drop and impression share to improve for competing retailers advertising on Google Shopping. 

🎶 Spotify’s advertising business has failed to keep pace amid macroeconomic pressures and the slow ramp-up of its ad stack. Despite strong subscriptions growth, Spotify’s stock dropped over 10% after Q2 earnings missed revenue and profit expectations, and CEO Daniel Ek said that improvements with its ad business have been “an execution challenge, not a problem with strategy.”

🏆 Pick of the Week: Creative is still the new targeting 

We’ve been telling you that “Creative Is The New Targeting” for over a year now. But many marketers have been slow to understand the implications.

If you’re still chasing the bandwagon, this AdAge op-ed breaks it down even further, explaining how Meta and Google’s AI-driven products are basing their targeting decisions based on your creative choices: “Most marketers haven’t grasped this fundamental shift. We’re still thinking about creative development as separate from targeting when these algorithms have already merged them into a single process.”

Amen.

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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