YouTube’s Top Tips for Shorts

Today’s Social Media advertising rates are reporting to training camp:

↗️ META: $9.78 | ↗️ TIKTOK: $1.74 | ↗️ SNAPCHAT: $9.42

In this week’s edition: 

•  🔎 Google analytics, but for your missed opportunities

•  Amazon Ads AI can learn from your customer data 🧠

• 🏀 TikTok x B-Ball: Now even bigger

But first…

🎞️ YouTube’s Top Tips for Shorts

YouTube has shared new best practices for creators and brands looking to improve Shorts engagement and incorporate short-form video into their broader content strategy.

• Tap into trends: YouTube recommends using Remix, trending audio, hashtags, and templates to identify emerging trends and quickly create relevant content.

• Encourage interaction: Poll, Quiz, Q&A, and Add Yours stickers can help drive direct audience participation and provide inspiration for future content.

• Turn engagement into content: Creators can respond to interesting comments or questions with a new Short, helping continue conversations and build community.

• Connect Shorts to long-form content: YouTube recommends using Related Videos and clear CTAs to direct Shorts viewers to relevant longer-form videos and encourage deeper channel engagement.

The Inside Scoop🍦: Now trending in performance media

🔎 Google Ads is bringing its “Missed Growth Opportunity” insights into the main Recommendations tab as a new beta. This gives advertisers a clearer view of the traffic, conversions, and revenue they may be missing because of low budgets and/or bids.

Advertisers can now choose between two Brand Lift Study options in Google Ads: Standard Brand Lift, which measures lifts of 2% or higher, or Enhanced Brand Lift, which can detect lifts as low as 1.2%.

• Google says the enhanced option requires approximately three times the budget, but increases the likelihood of detecting a positive lift by 60%.

Some advertisers are seeing a new Partners (Alpha) setting within Performance Max campaigns that lets them choose whether to include Search Partner and/or Google Display Network (GDN) inventory.

• Until now, both networks were automatically included in Performance Max with no option to exclude them.

• Google has not announced when (or if) it plans to roll the setting out more broadly.

📦 Amazon announced three new capabilities have launched—or are launching over the next few weeks—via Open Beta or GA:

• You can now feed your own customer data (first-party data) directly into Amazon's system. This teaches their AI who your ideal customers are, which helps optimize your "Brand+" and "Performance+" campaigns to reach the right people (both are Open Beta).

• Amazon has expanded formats, supply, and access with Audio for Brand+ (GA), Audio for Performance+ (Open Beta), Automatic Deal Selection for Brand+ STV (Open Beta), and Managed Service Campaign Proposal Builder (GA).

• Improve performance with Brand Outcome Optimization (Open Beta), Prime Video Signal Integration (Open Beta), Asynchronous Remarketing for Performance+ (GA), and Expanded Conversion Support for App Ads (GA).

🌍 Location-based interactive video ads are now available in Canada, Mexico, and Brazil via the Amazon DSP.

📈 Omnichannel Metrics (OCM) lets you see how your Amazon ads are driving sales at other physical retailers, rather than just sales on the Amazon website.

🎧 For the first time, self-service advertisers using Amazon DSP can access programmatic podcast ads across premium publishers and SSPs including Spotify Ad Exchange, SiriusXM Media/AdsWizz, and iHeart Media/Triton.

• Buying methods will be flexible across PMP and Programmatic Guaranteed (PG) deals for both podcasts and streaming audio.

🗣️ Self Service Sponsored Tiles ads are now available on Alexa+ conversational entertainment content discovery, allowing you to feature your Media & Entertainment content directly within Echo Show voice query results.

📊Unified reporting is now generally available in the Amazon Ads Console, consolidating cross-account campaign analysis into a single interface. This release eliminates the manual work of combining separate reports by allowing you to generate one unified view across multiple accounts, ad products, countries, and metrics. Key improvements include:

• Template Gallery: Reduce setup time with pre-built reporting templates

• Streamlined Workflows: Simplified processes for advertisers managing single accounts.

• Standardized Methodology: Consistent metrics, dimensions, and attribution across all reports.

• Managed Service Support: Extends unified reporting capabilities to advertisers working with Amazon’s managed services

⏰ TikTok continues to expand its influence in sports with an NBA and WNBA global partnership. Building on similar collaborations with FIFA and MLB, the multi-year agreement introduces more exclusive highlights, live-game discovery, and creator access through TikTok’s Gameplan, while opening new premium advertising opportunities through TikTok’s Pulse Premiere. The partnership reflects growing demand for basketball content on the platform, with global interest for “NBA” and “WNBA” content up nearly 30% and 15%, respectively, since the start of 2026.

🎙️ Comscore announced that it’s adding Spotify, SiriusXM, Triton Digital, Acast and Libsyn to its Proximic contextual targeting solution, which will simplify Audio buying and make it more akin to CTV and Display buying. This would also give ad buyers more precision than the show-level or genre-level targeting.

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, Mariya Samardzhieva, Sabina Saktaganova, Sims Wilson, Kiara Quigley, Lara Spijkerman, Kayleigh McDonald, Caitlin LaValle, and Carly Carioli.