Will this new app save TikTok in the U.S.?

Today’s Social Media advertising rates are gonna need a bigger boat:

↘️ META: $7.65 CPM | ↘️ TIKTOK: $4.49 CPM | ↘️ SNAPCHAT: $6.36 CPM

In this week’s edition: 

• 🔎 The 5 new features you need to use in Google Ads Editor

• This new Meta feature auto-tailors ads to personas 🙋

• 📺 Disney rolls out interactive CTV ads

But first…

⏰ TikTok Life Watch: New app reportedly launching this fall

Are we rounding the corner? According to The Information, TikTok is developing a spinoff app, known internally as “M2,” that would replace TikTok for users in the United States. The report claims the new app will launch September 5 ahead of a potential sale of the platform’s U.S. business, and that TikTok’s existing app will close to U.S. users in March 2026. 

Still, many questions remain. Last week, Trump indicated he had a group of “very wealthy people” ready to buy TikTok’s U.S. operations and claimed that he would begin speaking with Chinese officials about a sale this week. However, negotiations with the Chinese government—which Trump threatened with an additional 10% tariff on Sunday, and without whom the sale cannot go through—have not yet begun. There are also questions about the legality of any sale, given the strict requirements in U.S. law about TikTok’s algorithm and Chinese ownership ties. Khartoon Weiss, TikTok’s VP of global business solutions, told advertisers in May that the platform’s advertising business “will not change,” according to Marketing Brew.

🎯 Meanwhile, TikTok has released more info on their new Brand Consideration objective, which they announced last month at TikTok World. The new option supposedly lets advertisers target different audience sub-segments based on where people are in the purchase journey (awareness vs. consideration vs. conversion). Check out their one-pager about it here.

📍TikTok’s roadmap for 2025, according to an ad exec briefed by the platform: “they’re going to improve the Smart+ platform by providing advertisers with more control around bidding, targeting and creative, which makes sense, and then the automation sets in after that.” Some pieces of this are already rolling out, including “a goal-based bidding figure called Smart+ target ROAS (tROAS) that debuted June 23. 

• Also said to be “in the works, behind the scenes”: introducing device-level targeting and advanced targeting that enables reaching audiences based on their likes and behavior. 

• Currently in whitelisted beta: an audience suggestion tool that automatically identifies and prioritizes a brand’s target audience.

The Inside Scoop🍦: Now trending in performance media

♾️ Meta is gradually transitioning shops from checkout on Facebook and Instagram to website-based checkout systems. Most shops will complete this transition by the end of August. This will give sellers greater control over checkout experiences, reduce shop setup complexity, and allow businesses to manage payments, delivery, returns, and customer service through their own websites and preferred systems.

Meta is rolling out Threads DMs to all users, giving them their own Threads-specific inbox for private chatting.

🙋 Meta is now offering an option to auto-tailor ad creatives to personas they generate based on your account details and history. You can use the auto-generated copy, or replace the copy with text of your choice for each persona: 

Looking for a faster way to double-check which Advantage+ creative enhancements you’ve opted into? Use the bulk edit option in the edit dropdown:

🚨 Buyer Beware: Meta is rolling out “related media” as yet another automated ad optimization. This feature will pull in images and videos you’ve previously used to increase your creative diversity in active ad sets. In initial testing, we’ve seen some big missteps with what Meta identifies as “related” enough (or still relevant enough) to swap into active ads. Proceed with caution!

💔 Previously, we mentioned that Meta was running beta feature allowing advertisers to turn off comments on paid ads. We’ve been told by Meta that their allowlist for this beta feature is now closed.

🔎 Google Ads Editor version 2.10 is rolling out now. Among other new features, it will have:

• Campaign-level negative keywords in PMax

• Device exclusions in PMax

• AI Max for Search campaigns

• Export Ad Preview URLs and Expanded Ad Preview for formats like Demand Gen.

• Link Checker tool to find broken URLs

🎯 Google’s new AI Max match type is now appearing in search reporting. This new match type broadens search-based reach based on a combination of broad match logic, creative asset signals, and landing page content.

• Need a refresher in how to PMax? SearchEngineLand has tips here.

💡Google's Keyword Planner now offers city, region, and device-level forecast breakdowns for improved localized planning.

• Looking to reach out-of-market prospects with Search Ads? Tips on how to expand your reach with reverse location targeting in Google Ads are here.

📉 Google Ads launched a new native Video Analytics tool. The new “Videos” tab centralizes performance data for all video assets across campaign types into one unified view:

🧪 Google has rolled out a new, simpler way to A/B test broad match keywords vs. phrase/exact keywords, eliminating the need to create separate campaigns. 

• Small sample size, but for a recent campaign we saw broad match drive a +32% lift in subscribers with similar conversion metrics to phrase/exact keywords.

🤖 Everybody’s talking about the changes that AI is bringing to the world’s #1 search engine. Well, now AI is coming to the world’s #2 search engine, too. Here’s what AI results on YouTube look like.

🐦 Linda Yaccarino, the CEO of X/Twitter, announced yesterday that she is leaving the platform. Her successor will have big shoes to fill, as she was in charge of appeasing lawmakers and advertisers, among other things. The day before her announcement, xAi’s chatbot Grok shared antisemitic comments on X. Yaccarino was reportedly planning to leave X before the latest Grok incident.

In other news, X appears to be moving to increase costs for taller aspect ratios and has already banned hashtags in ads.

📺 Disney Campaign Manager now has Interactive CTV ads, which are custom units created in partnership with KERV. At launch, they are carrying a $50,000 campaign minimum:

🐘 The Elephant In The Room: Our weekly poll!

Welcome to the back half of the year! Digiday has whipped out their crystal ball 🔮 and made some bold predictions for the rest of 2026. Test your predictive ability!

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.