What Gen Alpha thinks about your brand

Today’s Social Media advertising rates are trying to buy Kelly Clarkson a bird.

↘️ META: $9.61 | ↘️ TIKTOK: $2.06 | ↗️ SNAPCHAT: $16.83

In this week’s edition: 

• ♾️ Meta just issued a massive red flag about its ad metrics

• What Google’s new P-Max test signals for ad transparency 🔎

• 📌 Your next ad might already be someone else’s Pin

But first…

🤪 What Gen Alpha thinks about your brand

From influencers to AI, here’s what Gen Alpha thinks about your brand. Digiday covered a panel of Gen Alpha teenagers at Shoptalk discussing brand loyalty, highlighting that authenticity and ethics matter more than ever:

• AI-generated ads: The panel universally rejected them, viewing the practice as lazy, deceptive, and harmful to real artists.

• Influencer partnerships: They heavily scrutinize them. If they don’t trust the creator, they won’t trust the brand.

• Corporate ethics: Another major dealbreaker. How a company treats its employees directly impacts Gen Alpha’s willingness to spend money there.

• Retail pop-ups: They need engaging, interactive activities rather than just standard product displays.

The Inside Scoop🍦: Now trending in performance media

♾️ Meta is updating its self-serve ad terms effective October 30. And there will definitely be some raised eyebrows when advertisers read lines like this: “Ad selection is primarily determined by our ad auction, and we do not guarantee any specific results from your use of the Meta Company Products for business or commercial purposes, including with respect to ad delivery, targeting accuracy, reach, engagement, impressions or conversions. We do not warrant the accuracy, completeness or reliability of any metrics, analytics, targeting, reporting or other data provided through the Meta Company Products.” (Our emphasis.) We’ve long advocated for measurement tools that don’t rely solely on platform metrics, and now the biggest platform of them all is saying the quiet part out loud. 

🧠 Meta shared updated ad placement control guidance as it moves toward fully automated, AI-driven ad distribution. To help advertisers maintain some control over where their ads appear, Meta’s revised overview highlights include:

• Increased asset customization: Upload multiple images and videos into a single ad and control how they appear across placements. For each asset, you can customize aspect ratios, text, URL and delivery settings. 

• Placement Value Rules: Adjust bid values for specific placements. 

• Account-Level Exclusions: Use account tools to set account-level placement exclusions by campaign objective.

🥊 Meta and TikTok are no longer playing nice. Meta banned ads driving to TikTok links following TikTok’s own ban on links directing users to Meta profiles. This move will likely impact brands and advertisers who may use the TikTok Shop as their primary ecommerce hub, limiting where they can drive users to that experience.

🧵 Threads now recognizes top posts with new in-app Gems program.

• Gems automatically selects original posts and replies that bring value and spark discussion based on their perspective, discussion, and originality. Recognized posts will display a special Gem icon in-stream and creators will be notified with the option to accept and announce the badge. 

• Currently, this is only active for U.S. users. It's somewhat similar to X's recent "Bangers" promotion.

🔎 Google rolled out Performance Max Asset experiments for all advertisers earlier this month. You read about this here first back in June; the change allows brands to A/B test creative assets in this format for the first time across headlines, images, and videos—removing much of the guesswork and blind trust in the algorithm that PMax has required to date. 

• Note that running an experiment locks your assets for the duration of the test, so triple check for typos before going live.

🏷️ Google Tag Manager has released an update promises faster websites and simpler tracking.

• The platform was updated to allow optimized containers to send measurement data directly to supported Google destinations. 

• For supported connections, this update eliminates the need to load additional gtag.js JavaScript, improving website performance, reducing transmission delays, and centralizing management and troubleshooting directly within the GTM interface.

👯 Google Ads is shifting Lookalike segments in Demand Gen campaigns to act as audience suggestions by default rather than strict targeting restrictions.

• Advertisers who prefer the original strict targeting constraints will need to manually opt out of the new default. 

• You can still scale your reach using three Lookalike sizes: Narrow (top 2.5% of similar users), Balanced (top 5%), or Broad (top 10%).

💬 Speaking of Demand Gen, Google is introducing a new “Overlay on videos” asset optimization setting for Demand Gen campaigns, which lets Google automatically add text messaging to video creatives.

• Assets modified by these optimization features are labeled as created or edited with AI when served in the European Union, India and New York state.

🎯 Google Ads is beta testing automated bidding for Video Reach campaigns, letting advertisers launch campaigns without manually setting a Target CPM. Advertisers can choose between two bidding methods:

• Automated bidding: Leave the bid field empty and let Google manage bids to spend the available budget. 

• Target CPM bidding: Set a preferred CPM, allowing Google to optimize delivery around that target.

🎲 Effective October 21, Google will allow certified online gambling advertisers to run YouTube Masthead campaigns, expanding its existing policy that already permitted sports betting advertisements.

🔎 Google is rolling out a Search Term and Ad Combinations report for AI Max Search. The report has appeared in some accounts; broader availability and rollout timing have not been confirmed.

• Hoping to provide clearer insights for Search ads, this consolidated report allows advertisers to analyze search queries alongside their corresponding descriptions, headlines, match sources, landing pages, and asset sources all in one place. 

• This should help avoid mismatching, refine negative keywords, and minimize wasted spend.

📌 Pinterest just flipped the advertiser-creator relationship on its head: the platform is testing content promotion through its Creator Commerce Hub with eligible brands. Participating brands can promote Creator Pins as their own ads when they already have a relationship with the creator, such as through an affiliate or creator program. This gives advertisers the ability to put paid spend behind authentic creator content, reducing friction between influencer partnerships and paid media performance.

🐦 X has updated Grok with analytical search. Grok now features enhanced in-app search capabilities, allowing the AI agent to instantly scan posts across X to track brand mentions, follow breaking news, and deliver industry insights. This is currently available for Cursor and Grok subscribers.

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.

This week’s edition of the Thread was created by Jess Dashner, Anoushka Madan, Kayleigh McDonald, Kiara Quigley, Lara Spijkerman, Liana Giacobbe, Mariya Samardzhieva, and Carly Carioli.