At Cannes Lions 2025, YouTube announced open call within YouTube BrandConnect, allowing brands to discover and partner with creators at scale via the Creator Partnerships Hub. Brands publish a creative brief, and creators in the YouTube Partner Program proactively submit video content. Brands review, approve, and promote these videos as partnership ads, measuring results.
This empowers creators of all sizes to connect with brands, leveraging creator relevance and trust to enhance social strategy. Open call is currently available for select advertisers, with more details coming soon.
Babbel runs 50+ monthly influencer partnerships in-house, achieving fast ROI on Instagram Stories (24-48 hours) and long-tail conversions on YouTube. Nano-creators (under 10K followers) provide cost-effective content for paid amplification. Authentic personal stories outperform polished ads. A viral campaign transformed their pipeline, with creators now proactively seeking partnerships. A lean test-and-scale framework avoids wasted spend, with ROI as the key metric.
Meta launches AI-powered creator discovery and content recommendations for Instagram's Creator Marketplace. Key updates include AI-driven suggestions for top-performing branded content in Ads Manager's Partnership Ads Hub, improved creator matching via affinity-based recommendations and keyword search, and new insights like playable Reels, email contact, partnership badges, and active ad visibility. These tools aim to simplify creator partnerships, enhance ad performance, and drive sales, with 53% of consumers more likely to purchase after creator promotion on Reels and US influencer spend projected over $10B by 2025.
Meta is testing Reels trending ads, allowing brands to run ads after popular creator Reels with brand safety controls. New tools like Trends in Creator Marketplace and a Discovery API help businesses find real-time cultural insights and scale creator partnerships. Ad formats expand with partnership ads featuring one header partner, Facebook Live Partnership ads, and Threads video ads. Video Expansion on Facebook Reels uses AI to optimize video aspect ratios for better performance.
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.
TikTok for Business is promoting tiered first-30-day ad credit incentives for new self-serve SMB advertisers: spend $100 get $100, $500 get $500, or $1,500 get $1,500 plus 1-to-1 expert onboarding support, with a headline entry offer of 50% off first-month spend up to $200 and matching credits up to $6,000. Credits are applied within 7 days of hitting the highest threshold or after the 30-day accumulation window. Eligibility excludes agency, Business Center, and TikTok Shop accounts, and limits one ad account per new TikTok For Business account. For ad ops teams, these terms dictate budget pacing, account structure, and credit-expiry planning.
This TikTok for Business landing page promotes a limited-period new-advertiser incentive program offering up to USD 6,000 in matched ad credits. Three self-serve tiers are presented: 50% off first 30-day spend (up to $200), dollar-for-dollar match up to $500, and match up to $6,000. A separate headline offer advertises Spend $100/Get $100, Spend $500/Get $500, and Spend $1,500/Get $1,500 plus 1-to-1 expert onboarding support. Registration requires email or phone sign-up with 2-step verification. Eligibility is restricted to new SMB self-serve accounts, excluding agency, Business Center, and TikTok Shop accounts; credits post within 7 days of hitting the highest threshold or after the 30-day window.
TikTok and System1 research shows creative fatigue diminishes ad effectiveness, but entertaining, emotionally-driven content sustains impact. Key insights: first impressions define success; joy/humor reduce fatigue; early branding boosts recognition and happiness. Creativity outperforms frequency—50% of campaign success relies on creative quality. Brands should iterate core concepts, use early branding, and prioritize emotion to achieve 1.7x higher recall and 2.9x higher association lift. TikTok's tools (TikTok One, Symphony) help scale creative production efficiently.
Meta’s Advertising Week New York updates center on AI-driven campaign automation and faster creative production. Ads Creative Studio is expanding with performance insights. Meta AI business assistant gains creative insights, deeper business memory, and agentic abilities to plan, create, optimize, and schedule tasks, with advertiser permissions and approvals. AI-enabled audience discovery arrives in Detailed Targeting, and Customer Lifecycle Strategy helps prioritize new customers. Generative AI video expands for static assets, catalog product video, and smart recommendations. Direct checkout tests launch in Meta Business Agent on Messenger, Meta AI, and Muse. For ad ops, these tools promise efficiency, but governance and testing remain critical.
Google Ads’ Ginny Marvin and Tal Akabas outline bidding and budgeting updates for ad ops teams heading into peak season....
Google is expanding Financial Services Verification to the U.S. and Canada, adding regulator- or registry-based authoriz...
Google Ads is adding optional channel prioritization and budget allocation across Search, Shopping, Performance Max, and...
Google is tying Demand Gen performance directly to first-party data strength. According to internal analysis, advertiser...
Google’s Ads Decoded episode highlights creative as the make-or-break lever for Demand Gen and YouTube performance campa...
Google’s Demand Gen updates focus on faster engagement and conversion across YouTube, Shorts, Gmail, and Maps. Ad ops le...