Why your TikTok ads may overspend—on purpose

Today’s Social Media advertising rates are ruining the friendship:

↘️ META: $7.25 CPM | ↘️ TIKTOK: $4.20 CPM | ↗️ SNAPCHAT: $14.63 CPM

In this week’s edition: 

• 💬 ChatGPT’s new feature could be prime ad space

• Snapchat puts a price on Memories 👻

• 💳 Mastercard just became an ad network

But first…

🤑  When is your daily budget not your daily budget?

Answer: more often than you’d expect. 

TikTok recently confirmed to Gupta Media that a campaign can spend up to 25% more than the daily budget on a given day—but the average over a week will not exceed your daily budget multiplied by seven. TikTok calls this “Dynamic Daily Budget”—which can be alarming to see in the UI without that context. 

While it’s disappointing that TikTok has moved away from “Set your daily spend. We’ll never go over your limits,” this is similar to other platforms:

• Your actual spend on Google on any given day may exceed your average daily budget by up to 200%. This is called overdelivery. You won’t be charged more than your monthly charging limit, which is the average number of days in a month (30.4) multiplied by your average daily budget.

• Meta may spend up to 75% over your daily budget. On a weekly basis, they won’t spend more than 7x your daily budget. If your campaign is less than seven days, the total spend will not exceed your daily budget, multiplied by the campaign duration.

• Amazon may spend up to 100% more than your average daily budget using leftover amounts from previous days in the month. You can choose to opt in to 100% increases on daily budget or only enable 25% increases on daily budget for all your campaigns in settings.

The Inside Scoop🍦: Now trending in performance media

♾️ Meta AI has unveiled a new project, called “Vibes.” What’s that, you ask? Think of it as TikTok for AI-generated video clips. If you haven’t downloaded the Meta AI app or checked out the Meta.ai site, well, you’re not alone — like all AI apps, it’s going head to head with ChatGPT. But Vibes offers something new: the app and the site offer a custom feed of AI generated content, letting people scroll through existing clips, share their own AI-generated videos, or remix what people have already shared in the app:

💬 Speaking of which: As of December 16, Meta will start using interactions with its AI chatbot to more effectively tailor content and ads on Facebook and Instagram. This means that users may see recommended posts or ads about topics they discuss with the Meta AI chatbot. For example, a user asking the tool to help plan a family vacation could start to see ads from travel companies on their Instagram feed.

🔎 Google has rolled out reporting improvements to Performance Max including asset reporting segmentation, which lets you break down asset performance by device, time, conversions, and networks.

💅 Pro Tip: Google’s AI Max uses Google AI to match your Search ads with more relevant searches, customize ad copy dynamically based on user intent, and send users to your most relevant landing pages automatically. Need a 101? This Search Engine Land article has answers. It includes:

• A Google Ads script to make AI Max analysis faster and easier.

• Case studies from advertisers who have already tested AI Max. (Spoiler alert: one advertiser saw neutral results, one saw good results, and one saw disappointing results, which aligns with a recent LinkedIn poll that showed 56% of respondents reporting neutral AI Max performance.)

👻 Snapchat is putting a price on Memories. Starting next year, users with more than 5GB of saved Snaps will need to pay for extra storage.

• Only heavy users (5GB+) will be charged; others keep free storage.

• Pricing will be $1.99/month for 100GB. Storage is also included in Snapchat+ (250GB) and Platinum ($14.99/month for 5TB).

• Rollout begins in 12 months, so users over the limit have a year before Snaps start being deleted.

• More than 1 trillion Memories have been saved since the feature launched in 2016. Snap cites rising infrastructure costs as the driver behind the move.

📊 A new study looks at Q4 2024 data from Snapchat’s First Ad Impression Takeover, which gives advertisers the first impression to their target audience on a specific day. It can take the form of a First Story (the first ad within a users’ Stories stream), First Commercial (first ad shown within video playback), or First Lens (first promoted lens in the lens carousel). 

• According to Snapchat, these takeovers generated an ad awareness lift that was 2.5 times higher than Snapchat’s benchmark lift.

• Note: The study does not include First Snap, a first-impression, single-day ad takeover in the chat feed, which Snapchat rolled out earlier this year with a $350K minimum.

💼 LinkedIn reports that CPMs for their CTV ads — that is, CTV ads served via LinkedIn Audience Network targeted using LinkedIn data — are now averaging an all-time low of $27.

💲Conversion Value Optimization (CVO) is now accessible to all advertisers on LinkedIn as an option to maximize ROI/ROAS. 

💬 Beginning this month, LinkedIn is renaming its campaign terms to align with other ad platforms. Campaign Group will become Campaign, and Campaign will become Ad Set.

📺 CTV: Nexxen is teaming up with Hisense to bring more native ad inventory to smart TV home screens. The deal taps Hisense’s VIDAA OS, which powers nearly 8% of smart TVs worldwide, to serve “home screen” ad units through Nexxen’s DSP.

Viewers spend an average of 10+ minutes browsing before choosing something to watch — making the home screen prime real estate. VIDAA is second only to Samsung’s Tizen in global share (12.9% vs. 7.8%).

👽 Reddit has updated its conversion model by shifting to an Optimized CPM (oCPM) bidding model, an industry standard model designed to maximize conversions. 

• What is oCPM? oCPM is a bidding strategy that optimizes for your specific conversion goal (like a sale or lead) for every single ad impression. While you are billed based on impressions (CPM), our system intelligently shows your ads only to the people most likely to take that action. Previously our bidding model billed on clicks. 

• How does it work? To reap the benefits of this updated model, Reddit recommends switching your campaign to Lowest Cost bidding strategy, and updating your attribution window to 7 day click/1 day view. Adopting these changes has seen a 31% decrease in CPA in early testing.

💳 Mastercard is launching its advertising business, Mastercard Commerce Media, which will allow brands to buy ads on its owned properties — and run ads with publisher partners based on data from Mastercard’s 159 billion transactions each year. “In one example, Mastercard could help a restaurant find new diners or retarget previous diners who haven’t been to the restaurant in six months,” according to AdWeek.

💬 ChatGPT has launched a new feature called Pulse, which can deliver a personalized, AI-generated newsletter that will help people plan their days, shopping trips, hobbies and other activities. “What marketers see,” notes AdAge, “is the first flickering of potential ad space on the fast-growing AI platform.” Stay tuned.

📊  By the Numbers: Search vs. ChatGPT, social media vs. news

📈 Pew Research has published its latest overview that looks at how people are increasingly relying on social media apps to keep them informed of the latest information and news updates.

• Facebook and YouTube still lead the way, but TikTok and Instagram are steadily rising as news sources.

• X’s value as a news source has declined in recent years, following Elon Musk’s takeover.

• 53% of U.S. adults say that they get at least some news from social media, which is around the same level that it’s been for the past few years.

• Young audiences are far more likely to get news input from TikTok.

▶️ YouTube is cited 200 times more than any other video platform (TikTok Twitch, Vimeo, etc.) in AI search results, according to new data from enterprise SEO platform BrightEdge. Given that YouTube appears to be the only video platform that AI platforms appear to trust, creating YouTube content should be a key consideration for SEO marketers.

🔎 SEO ain’t dead yet. Google is still 210 times bigger than ChatGPT in search, with Google handling 14 billion searches per day to ChatGPT’s 66 million search-like prompts. 

• Keep in mind, though, that Google Search was 373 times bigger than ChatGPT as recently as March 😬

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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