🎃 Trick-or-Treating With Ad Platform Announcements from October
Plus, an announcement of my own. (And yes, it's been a while.)
Hi! Do you even remember subscribing to or receiving a Chasing Rabbbits, let along me?
It’s been a minute (or a couple thousand), mostly because I changed the way I was doing this marketing blogging thing. Which brings me to…
In classic fashion, I had an idea for a domain name right before I fell asleep. So I forced myself awake enough to buy it. And that’s how CuriousMarketers.Club was born.
I have plenty of ideas on how I want to grow it, but let me know if you have ideas of your own.
Now, on to…
Trick-or-Treating With Ad Platform Announcements from October
Everything is AI this and Performance that and Max and +. Here’s all the announcements like that (and more) I could find from the big name ad platforms in October.
Did I miss a platform or announcement? Hit reply and let me know.
From Google:
Performance Max and Standard Shopping ads will now compete head-to-head in the auction instead of PMax getting preference. A sign that Standard Shopping is here to stay?
Testing: expandable search ads and in-ad search refinements.
The former is like a Google Shopping layout but for search ads when expanded. The latter is your classic search filter like what you see on ecomm sites.
A “For You” feed for Shopping.
Google will use your recent searches and YouTube history to figure out which products you like.
Ads in AI overviews
Conversational interface for Search ad creation
“Better” AI image generation for ads
New Customer High Value, Win-Back, and High Value Win-Back Mode
“Search Bidding Exploration”: I’m guessing AI audience expansion for Search, next gen Dynamic Search Ads without needing a new campaign type?
New stuff for Shorts & video ads
Shopping discounts for new & loyal customers
New Shopping ad format: Video Highlights
New Shopping bidding type: optimize for gross profit
Demand Gen campaigns now offer creative-level controls for video assets, empowering you to choose which video appears in each format.
More Performance Max insights!
Select Google Ads accounts can now access a new “segment” option for Performance (PMax) Asset Group performance, offering a long-awaited layer of granularity to campaign insights.
The segmentation feature enables advertisers to break down Pmax Asset Group performance by:
Time
Click Type (consistently set to cross-network clicks)
Conversions
Device
Network (showing cross-network by default)
Top vs. Others
Use specific pages to guide PMax asset creation. (Assuming this means generative AI.)
From Snapchat:
Sponsored Snaps enable businesses to engage their customers through visual messaging, by delivering a full-screen vertical video Snap directly to Snapchatters. Snapchatters opt-in to opening the Snap and can reply by sending a message directly to the advertiser or using the call-to-action to open a predetermined link.
Pay to show up in the main inbox next to their friends.
Promoted Places highlight sponsored places of interest on the Snap Map, helping our community discover places that they want to visit. The Snap Map is used for exploration and browsing to learn more about what your friends are up to, what is happening nearby, and which places are “Top Picks” based on the Snapchat community’s visitation trends.
Sounds like this is paying to be a Top Pick.
From Meta:
Exactly what no one wanted:
Meta silently implemented “automatic adjustments” across several advertising accounts, giving its system authority to make significant changes to ad campaigns without explicit advertiser approval.
From Amazon:
Prime Video is turning the dial up in 2025:
More ads: current load is in the range of 2-3.5 minutes of ads per hour, which could increase. Mid-stream ads could also be added.
Shoppable ads: including carousel, pause, and trivia formats (absolutely not surprise on this one).
Overhauled DSP experience, now with AI! (And the obligatory campaign type named Performance+)
Frequency cap controls
Amazon Ads 🤝 first-party data
More generative AI: audio this time
More full-funnel and audience tools through managed services and partnerships
From Pinterest:
The Performance+ Suite, which, yes, is a portmanteau of Google’s and Meta’s names for their AI-first ecommerce solutions.
Pinterest Performance+ campaigns can help any advertiser drive lower-funnel performance by optimizing targeting, managing budgets or deciding how much to bid.
I’ve been testing this with some success lately. The key is to be running upper-funnel campaigns in tandem. (A theme for a standalone post sometime soon.)
Tapping into the value zeitgeist:
Personalized promotions “based on what they’ve searched and pinned”
Deals ads modules “making ads more visible for consumers across the Home Feed”
From TikTok:
All the new toys…
Smart+: Performance Advantage+ Max in TikTok for most objectives
GMV Max: Performance Advantage+ Max in TikTok for shopping, focused on gross merchandise value
Out of Phone: a clever play on out-of-home that places TikTok ads in in-store retail settings
Conversion Lift Studies.
PETs: no, not those ones. Privacy-Enhancing Technologies via third-party integrations.
From Microsoft:
Impression-based remarketing! (I’ve long wanted a more granular version of this on Meta.)
impression-based remarketing allows you to target users based on ad exposure. This means that you can reach people who saw your ad, and did not make it to your site.
As the AI search experience improves, so will the accompanying ads.
ads will be triggered considering the whole conversation within a single session and not just the last prompt. Before an ad block is shown, Copilot will share with the user how the following ad section connects to their conversation. For now, we are calling this feature ad voice
AI will also come to the ads manager to act as a…copilot for advertisers.
Plus some targeting and analytics updates.
From LinkedIn:
Boost a post directly from your page for lead generation (using lead gen forms).
I don’t know how well this avenue performs compared to building in the Ads Manager, but an easy way to test the concept for companies.
More Live Events promo features
Wire program expansion: videos in “trusted publisher” content
Additional video options in automated campaigns
63% of B2B buyers say short-form social video content informs buying decisions.
From Reddit:
AI-powered keyword targeting features. Contextual advertising for a community-first platform.
From DoorDash:
Ads Manager for Enterprise Restaurants includes advanced targeting capabilities, marketing insights, new promos and collaborative marketing functionality aimed at regional marketing teams and franchisees.
The platform has made new high-visibility placements on the storefront and category pages widely available, helping CPG brands highlight seasonal moments, introduce new products and amplify promotions.
The ad platform now also offers advertisers offsite media, helping them reach consumers across search engines, programmatic displays and social media platforms with campaigns powered by DoorDash’s first-party data.
Any (large / public / venture funded) platform that has users and collects data on them will likely become an ad platform at some point.
From PayPal:
An ad network.
See the last line of the DoorDash section.
And that’s it. A scant 999 words on what all was announced (that I could find).
Thanks for reading. Welcome back. Maybe the next post will be sooner than the last. And if you don’t like chasing rabbbits with me anymore, I totally get it. Thanks for reading in the past!
And rabbit rabbit!
-Kyle