Advertising Technology Blog

TikTok's Lorenzo Bierhuys argues that equating performance marketing with bottom-of-funnel capture is outdated; performance should instead mean data-driven, measurable marketing applied across the entire journey. TikTok frames discovery as the start of an infinite purchase loop, citing that 61% of users purchase after seeing an ad, 83% after using TikTok for inspiration, and 41% after a 'where to buy' search. Case evidence backs the full-funnel case: Mejuri +11% ROAS with 88% more efficient CPA, Tatti Lashes 13x ROAS, Conforama 239% CTR lift, and Ooh & Aah Cookies 8.81 total ROAS. Takeaway for ad ops: plan around intent signals first, then select capture routes — TikTok Shop, Pixel, App Events API, or Lead Generation ads.

MFA sites exploit programmatic buying by attracting low-intent clicks and inflating viewability/CPM metrics, so spend can look successful while delivering little brand impact. The article argues in-app advertising is a stronger advertiser-controlled environment: app downloads create intent-bearing friction; in-app video/display viewability outperforms mobile web (77.4%/72.5% vs 71.4%/63.6%, per DoubleVerify 2022); brand unsuitability is lower (4.4% vs 9.7%); and ads.txt/approved-publisher controls plus vetted apps reduce fraud. Decision-makers should treat MFA as a measurement and supply-path risk, not just a brand-safety issue, and reallocate a meaningful budget share to verified in-app inventory.

Google Ads’ Ginny Marvin and Tal Akabas outline bidding and budgeting updates for ad ops teams heading into peak season. The core message: align budgets to predicted demand rather than static spend, use demand-led budgeting and promotion mode for short-term holiday pushes, and avoid unnecessary bid-strategy changes during learning periods. Teams should treat learning phases as expected stabilization windows, not immediate performance failures, and focus on incremental impact and measurement. The 43:49 episode is a practical checklist for planners: forecast demand, set guardrails, coordinate promotions, and give automated bidding enough data and time to optimize.

The auction is a brief: optimisation event, budget, bid strategy, and attribution tell it which shopper to pursue, but it never asks clarifying questions—bad instructions execute perfectly. Results lag, so advertisers tinker, restart learning, and pay visible and invisible costs. Treat every campaign as a brief, use value-based optimisation where relevant, align attribution with finance, and consolidate changes. Maintain roughly 50 conversions per ad set weekly; below that, performance was ~28% costlier per purchase. Use the budget formula to cap ad sets. For peak, fix the largest campaign's optimisation, leave it alone, and measure against a holdout or lift study.

Automotive advertisers are shifting budgets toward localized digital acquisition as domestic growth slows. In China, premium NEV brands are gaining app users (NIO +25%, Li Auto +31% YoY), exports are NEV-led, and Geely’s overseas ad impressions jumped 572%, with Latin America near 70%. Japan rewards ecosystem engagement: Toyota’s moviLink builds cross-app reach, while BYD’s strong website affinity with Tesla signals in-market EV shoppers. Korea’s EV registrations surged 113.6%, intensifying competition; Hyundai leads ad impressions. India’s premium channels gain traction—NEXA visitors +24%—and premium/EV models shift more impressions to X. Prioritize market-specific channels, audience overlap, and full-funnel measurement.

Google is expanding Financial Services Verification to the U.S. and Canada, adding regulator- or registry-based authorization checks for certain financial ads on top of existing identity verification. The program already covers roughly 2 billion users across 42 countries and follows UK and EU rollouts. For ad ops teams, the key implication is preparation: financial advertisers will need accepted registry credentials and country-specific onboarding before enforcement begins. Google plans a phased rollout, with advertiser guidance and notifications ahead of an early 2027 launch. The company also cites cross-industry collaboration with banking associations and its Gemini systems, which blocked over 99% of policy-violating ads before serving in 2025.

Breakout game launches are increasing, driven almost entirely by indie studios. 76 titles sold 500k+ paid units in their first 30 days across PlayStation, Steam and Xbox, up from 55 a year earlier; combined first-month sales rose 51% to 182.4M units. Indie breakouts more than doubled from 13 to 33 and lifted indie first-month unit share from 26% to 38%, led by friendslop hits and long-awaited sequels. AAA remains stable at 28 breakouts and nearly half of units. For ad ops, this signals a broader launch landscape: diversify spend beyond AAA and licensed IP, prioritize indie new IP and co-op/party titles, and use first-30-day sales as an early optimization signal.

Adjust's Device Usage dashboard in Datascape gives ad ops teams a prebuilt view of how active users are distributed across app versions, OS versions, SDK versions, and iOS ATT status, plus dimensions like device type, country, language, and date. The core insight is that release impact can lag because users update over days or weeks; segmenting DAU by version explains flat or shifting metrics. Teams can track SDK and app-version adoption, compare OS behavior, identify stale versions, and add device/country context to performance analysis. Actionable takeaway: use the dashboard before and after releases or SDK rollouts to validate adoption, isolate version-specific issues, and contextualize attribution and engagement trends.

Sensor Tower’s 2026 game ad report shows ad ops must manage more creative volume, not just bigger budgets. Top US mobile advertisers roughly tripled new creatives, driven by low-budget video tests: sub-$100 lifetime-spend creatives grew 6x year over year versus 1.7x for $10K+ winners. Creative output stepped up in 2025 and peaked near 220/month in Q1 2026, still over 2x 2024. Nintendo now holds 55% of US console platform ad spend and 74% of hardware; PlayStation leads subscriptions at 61%. Cross-platform franchises run separate mobile and console plans, channels, and calendars, so teams need distinct channel mixes, testing pipelines, and launch calendars.

JaeLuxe Shoetique, a one-person fashion brand, used Muse for Small Business to clear a multi-year backlog before Q4. The case shows how connectors to Klaviyo, Meta, QuickBooks, and social accounts let an owner audit duplicate email flows, rebuild templates, restore conversion tracking, and manage ad sets against larger competitors. Muse also produced brand-aligned website copy and a UGC influencer program with approval gates. For ad ops leaders, the takeaway is practical: AI agents can reduce campaign and lifecycle debt, but human approval and clean connector access remain essential. The result is not headcount replacement but faster execution and visible performance data.

Meta’s delivery system increasingly rewards creative diversity, making varied, platform-native assets a performance lever. Nest Commerce’s AI Creative turns one brief into multiple variants, blending manual guidelines with automated iteration. In Q1 2026, seven UK brands in health, food/beverage, and home/lifestyle ran the approach via Advantage+, Reels and Stories. Results: 68% of spend on video vs 38% benchmark; 93% vertical-first adoption; creative health above agency and industry benchmarks. AI creative scaled to 40% of spend drove 70% revenue growth and 20% higher CVR; one health brand saw 57% spend share with 5% lower cost/result and 17% higher CVR. Takeaway: prioritize diverse 9:16 video and AI-assisted iteration.

AppsFlyer’s 2026 creative data shows video and static image ads reward opposite creative qualities, so ad ops teams should plan, budget, and test them separately. Video spend is concentrating: gaming’s top 2% of video creatives captured 60.7% of spend, up from 53.5%, while image spend spread out. Top spenders are testing far more variations, widening the testing gap. Action/Strategy and Puzzle/Lifestyle show format-specific tone and social-proof reversals; Finance is the exception. Teams should use AI-assisted variation, analyze video winners deeply, keep broad image testing, and measure performance at attribute level.

Ad ops leaders should treat incrementality testing as a standard discipline, not a one-off audit. The method is straightforward: withhold ads from a randomly selected holdout, run business as usual for everyone else, and compare outcomes to isolate causal lift. Tinuiti’s DSW case shows why this matters. By rebuilding Meta campaigns into one structure and feeding in-store sales data into the ad system, DSW could optimize for online and store purchases. A lift study against the old setup showed 23% more total purchases, 45% more in-store purchases, and 15% better ROAS. The takeaway: validate major account changes with holdout-based measurement before scaling.

Target’s 2026 back-to-school retail media campaign became more concentrated: impressions fell 66% YoY to 781M and participating brands dropped 28% to 236, while the top eight advertisers captured 46% of BTS impressions, up from 15% in 2025. Crayola led with 94M, followed by Overtime (75M), Pokémon (53M), and LoveShackFancy (43M), reflecting a shift toward exclusive partnerships and style. Channel mix moved away from Facebook (27% share, down from 41%) toward Instagram (+13 pts, 120 brands) and OTT (22%, only 7 advertisers); TikTok fell to 2%. Ad ops should plan for fewer, larger buys, tighter brand-partner coordination, and Instagram/OTT-heavy allocations.

The holiday retrospective shows three distinct ad ops plays. Coca-Cola doubled spend (+110%) and impressions rose 91%, concentrating on video: Linear TV +494%, Snapchat +281%, TikTok +127%, YouTube +111%; one 30-second spot took 8.9% of spend, peaking at 42M daily impressions on Dec 28, with December spend 2.2x November. L’Oreal was moderate (+18%), but one Julia Roberts Lancome ad exceeded 12% of spend; it boosted LinkedIn +83%, TikTok +72%, YouTube +54%, then shifted Linear to Facebook/Pinterest for last-minute gifts. Hershey cut sequential spend (-32%) but stayed stable YoY, with Dec 25% above Nov; Snapchat +90%, YouTube +74%.

Meta is launching Ads Super Burst for 3–24 hour, TV-like brand bursts with category exclusivity, Reach Planner planning, and guaranteed delivery; tests showed median 2.9-pt ad recall, 0.6-pt intent, 34M reach, and 14% of US online adults in a day. First Impression Ads are in early US testing with one brand per day for Feed's first ad slot. Reels Trending Ads adds 15 always-on topics, seasonal lineups, 5+ pt lifts in action intent and unaided awareness, and custom audience exclusions later. Aggregated View Time alpha measures cumulative weekly attention; five seconds over a week drove 32% more offline sales than one continuous five-second view.

Moloco and Haus have partnered to offer independent, third-party geo-based incrementality measurement for mobile app and performance CTV campaigns. Ad ops teams can run Moloco campaigns in test markets while holding out comparable control markets, then measure the outcome gap to quantify true incremental conversions or revenue. This validates whether Moloco is driving new growth versus capturing existing demand. The partnership adds causal measurement on top of attribution, giving marketers stronger evidence for budget allocation, channel validation, and AI optimization signals. Existing Moloco partners should contact their representative; new advertisers can reach Moloco to start incrementality testing with Haus.

Google Ads is adding optional channel prioritization and budget allocation across Search, Shopping, Performance Max, and Demand Gen. Ad ops can mark channels or groupings high or low priority; high-priority inventory is fully funded within Target CPA/ROAS targets before remaining budget flows to lower-priority channels. Low-priority channels can receive a maximum daily budget percentage, enforced best-effort. Controls work at account, campaign, and shared budget levels. This gives granular alternatives to all-or-nothing opt-outs, enabling Search partners and Display testing with limits. Key deadline: February 2027, Search campaigns with Display on must set Display low priority at 50% allocation to preserve current spend configuration.

Financial services marketers must stop treating downloads and CPI as success. In Türkiye, 85% smartphone penetration and 60% digital payment preference are fueling neobank growth, but an install may never become a funded account or revenue. Ad ops teams should shift to LTV- and ROAS-based buying, tracking 90-day cohort revenue versus acquisition cost. Build LTV models before scaling spend. Target high-intent users who link cards, open savings, or complete transfers, and align creative and media mix to those behaviors. Winners will set new acquisition cost benchmarks by measuring outcomes, not raw install volume.

TikTok’s article argues last-click attribution creates a major measurement blind spot for ad ops. Because customer journeys loop across days, devices, and platforms, dashboards often credit only the final click and miss TikTok’s demand-creation role. Key data: 79% of TikTok-driven purchases are unattributed, 73% of click attribution undervalues TikTok conversions, and 50%+ undervalues ROI. TikTok users are also 30% more likely to convert and spend 20% more. The takeaway: short-term reporting can misallocate budget away from demand generation. Agencies should adopt measurement that captures full-funnel impact and not rely on pixel attribution alone.