20 Updates: Meta AI Campaigns, Google Ads & B2B Buyers
Happy Friday.
Another week is in the books, and the marketing world did not exactly take it easy on anyone. Meta wants to run your campaigns for you, Google is redefining what counts as a view, and B2B buyers apparently started researching your product months before you even knew they existed.
Here is what is on my mind as I head into the weekend:
- If launching ads ever felt like placing a takeout order, the platforms just got one step closer to it.
- Vanity metrics are about to get a fresh coat of paint in Google Ads. I will show you where.
- The numbers on holiday shopping might change where you put your Q4 budget.
SOCIAL MEDIA
Campaign setup is shrinking to a prompt and a budget on Meta and X, plus new features from Reddit and Pinterest
Power Editor veterans remember losing entire afternoons to bulk spreadsheets. The platforms clearly have a new goal: making launching ads feel as easy as ordering dinner. This week they cut out even more clicks.
Meta's AI assistant is learning to run campaigns. Tests are underway for chat-based builds inside Ads Manager, where you can create campaigns, change targeting, and edit budgets just by chatting. The assistant also remembers your seasonality and past tests, so it gets smarter about your account over time.
This is a big shift for media buyers. Instead of clicking through dozens of menus, you describe what you want and let the AI handle the setup. I think the buyers who learn to brief this AI well will save hours every week.
Customer Lifecycle Strategy opens to all advertisers. Meta's Customer Lifecycle Strategy tool is now available to everyone. It recommends which existing customers you should exclude from your acquisition campaigns.
That is useful because mixing existing customers into acquisition campaigns muddies your results and wastes spend. With this tool, you can keep prospecting clean without manually building exclusion lists. My recommendation: if you have not excluded buyers from prospecting before, start now.
Static-to-video generation in Advantage+ is now available to everyone. Meta's Advantage+ can now turn your static images into video ads for any advertiser, not just a test group.
Video inventory keeps growing while static creative has to work harder for attention. A tool that converts your existing images into motion creative is a practical win, especially for smaller teams without video resources. I think this lowers the barrier to running video everywhere.
In-chat checkout tests are coming to Messenger and Meta AI. Meta is testing checkout directly inside chat, with partners including Shopify, PayPal, and Stripe.
This matters because every extra click in a purchase flow costs you conversions. If a customer can buy without leaving the conversation, friction drops dramatically. I will be watching how this affects social commerce, because it could turn Messenger into a real sales channel.
X Lift needs only your URL. X's Lift tool now builds your ads and targeting from just your website URL. You pick the creative and set the budget, and the system does the rest.
X also reported that its active self-serve advertisers grew 50% year over year in Q3. That is a strong signal that simpler setup is pulling in smaller advertisers who never bothered before. My take: the platforms are racing to see who can build the simplest launch flow, and X just made its move.
Reddit's lurking B2B buyers can now be targeted. Reddit is testing in-market audiences for B2B, covering enterprise, business AI, and cybersecurity categories.
Early testers saw nearly 7% better CPA than with other first-party targeting. Max campaigns now cover lead gen as well, so B2B advertisers have more ways to reach Reddit's quiet researchers. I think Reddit is seriously underrated for B2B: plenty of decision-makers lurk there without ever posting.
Brands can now boost creator Pins they never commissioned. Pinterest's new creator content promotions let brands put spend behind organic creator Pins they did not originally pay for.
Creators get an email when this happens and can decline, or opt out of brand promotions entirely. That control matters. For brands, this opens a new inventory source: authentic creator content that already performs. My take: this could be a goldmine for brands that find creators already talking about them.
Between them, Meta, X, Reddit, and Pinterest cut a lot of clicks out of launching ads this week. My opinion: the platforms can simplify the setup all they want, but deciding what is actually worth paying to show is still your job. Do not let easy launching become easy wasting.
GOOGLE ADS
Why your view-through numbers may soon flatter you
Participation trophies make everyone a winner. Google Ads is about to hand one to every Demand Gen Display ad that shows a single pixel. Your numbers are about to change, so read this before you celebrate a win.
The bar for a view drops. Google is changing what counts as a view to any rendered impression, down from Active View's viewability standard. The switch rolls out automatically over the coming weeks.
Your view-through numbers may climb without any actual improvement in performance. I recommend noting the switch date in your reports before you compare periods, or you will misread the trend. This is the kind of metric change that makes everything look better on paper.
The Overview page joins in. Google is adding video impressions to conversion paths on the Overview page, plus a new card that sorts metrics into awareness, consideration, and action.
One catch: video impressions only show up for eligible web conversions, not for conversions imported from GA4. If your setup leans on GA4 imports, you will not see the full picture here. My take: the new card is genuinely useful for funnel reporting, but mind the gap in what is included.
To test whether any of it is real. Search and Performance Max advertisers can now run Conversion Lift studies without a Google rep.
You will need at least 1,000 observed conversions and a $5,000 minimum campaign budget to qualify. This is important: with view definitions changing and new metrics appearing everywhere, you need a clean incrementality test to know what actually moved the needle. I think every serious advertiser should run one of these at least once.
AI Max is easier to inspect, too. Google added three new columns showing where Locations of interest, Optimized targeting, and Brand inclusions are switched on in AI Max campaigns.
Text customization now previews up to 10 sample headlines and descriptions before you opt in, so you can see exactly what the AI might write. Transparency like this is long overdue. My recommendation: check those columns regularly, because settings you did not know were on are the ones that burn budget.
Retailers can now share audiences with brands. Campaigns using these commerce segments can only send traffic back to the retailer's approved domain.
This creates a clean co-marketing path: retailers share valuable shopper audiences, brands spend against them, and the traffic stays in the retailer's world. I think this could work well for product launches in retail media. Just remember the traffic restriction before you plan the strategy.
Most of these updates add data to your account. My opinion: more data is good, but only if it is honest data. Run a lift test before you trust the new numbers, and never compare performance across the view-definition change without flagging it.
B2B MARKETING
B2B buyers started shopping four months before you noticed
By the time a buyer books a demo with you, they have already picked their favorites. That is one of the takeaways from Greg Willis's LinkedIn marketing blog, where he unpacked recent research covering 850+ B2B companies and 50,000+ closed deals.
Yes, I know. A LinkedIn blog citing a LinkedIn Marketing Partner urging you to spend more on LinkedIn. But I grabbed the salt shaker while reading and pulled out the core points worth knowing.
1) Your CRM is the last to know. Buyers start researching roughly 124 days before they talk to a seller.
Forms and lead scoring only kick in after preferences form, so a capture-only strategy reacts to decisions instead of shaping them. That is four months of shortlisting happening without you. My take: if your only marketing is a demo form, you are not competing, you are just hoping.
2) More contacts, more wins. B2B purchases involve a whole buying committee. Forrester puts the average at 13 internal stakeholders.
Reach 6 or more of them at a target account before a deal hits your CRM, and win rates climb 17 percentage points. Engage 3 or more once the deal is live, and they climb another 16 points. Yet 76% of LinkedIn ad spend targets director-level roles and above.
Everyone chases the corner office, but the CFO, the IT lead, and the end user all get a vote. My recommendation: audit your targeting by role, not seniority. If every persona has VP in the title, you have found your gap.
3) Headcount matters less than the mix. Six people from one department will not cut it.
Engaging internal end users, influencers, and technical evaluators together lifted win rates by 22 points. It is not about how many people you reach, it is about which seats at the table you reach. I think this is the most actionable finding in the whole study.
4) Paid and organic, better together. Companies pairing LinkedIn Ads with organic activity see 2.4x higher win rates than paid-only campaigns.
That tracks with how buyers actually behave. They see an ad, check your Company Page, read an executive's post, then catch a retargeting ad days later. The numbers behind the budget shift back this up: LinkedIn Ads now hold 39.8% of B2B display budget share, up 8 points since 2024. LinkedIn-sourced deals close at a 34% higher average contract value, and ROAS hits 1.6x versus 1.18x on Google.
Run these against your own attribution before moving the budget. My take: do not move the budget on a vendor's chart alone, but do take the hint that your buyers are checking you out long before the demo request.
DATA STORIES
Brick, mortar, and mistletoe: where holiday orders will actually come from
Online shopping has not pushed holiday stores out yet. Narvar asked US retail leaders which sales channels they expect to bring in the most holiday orders this year. Respondents could pick their top two, and physical stores came out on top.
Here is where retail leaders expect most holiday orders to come from:
- Physical retail stores: 55%, still the top pick.
- Third-party marketplaces like Amazon: 49%, close behind.
- Social commerce (TikTok Shop, Instagram Shopping): 42%, narrowly ahead of brands' own channels.
- Own website or app (DTC): 41%.
- Wholesale and B2B: only 13%.
The surprise is that social commerce edged out brands' own websites. A few years ago, few retailers would have bet on TikTok Shop over their own store.
Holiday shoppers go wherever buying is easiest. Stores offer instant gratification, marketplaces offer fast shipping, and social shops let people buy without leaving the app.
What should you do? Treat your website as the place shoppers come back to, not just a checkout page. Use stores, marketplaces, and social to get the first sale. Then win the second one with packaging inserts, QR codes, and email sign-ups. My take: the first sale is about convenience, the second sale is about ownership. Own the customer, or keep paying rent on them.
QUICK UPDATES
Copilot. Edge users with unsigned profiles now hit a sign-in wall before they can open the browser's AI assistant, and Microsoft says it will require all Copilot users to log in going forward. Browsing still works signed out. My take: plan for fewer casual users but more identifiable ones when you size Copilot as a search channel.
ChatGPT. GPT-6 now answers with interactive maps, forms, charts, and calculators built inside the chat. It is rolling out globally to paid tiers first, then to Free and Go users. With more than 1.2 billion weekly users, expect more tasks to finish without a click out. My recommendation: judge your AI visibility by citations and mentions, not referral traffic.
Google Ads. AI Mode is showing three website ads at the bottom of results instead of the usual two, according to an unconfirmed Search Engine Watch sighting. If it sticks, a third slot lowers the bar for showing up below AI answers. Watch your search impression data for a lift.
AI Disclosure. Pennsylvania lawmakers have passed a bipartisan bill that requires advertisers to disclose AI use in consumer ads, joining a small group of states with similar rules. Start tracking which of your creatives use AI now, so you can label ads that run in Pennsylvania.
Advertising. Global ad spend should grow 11.9% this year, 2.2 points above its December baseline, with 8.4% forecast for 2027 and 7.9% for 2028. The growth is uneven: the AI boom lifts some companies and sectors more than others, while many consumers stay cautious. My take: benchmark your budget against your own category, not the global number.
YouTube. From 21 October, certified online gambling advertisers can buy the Masthead, not just sports betting brands. Certification runs per jurisdiction, so check it covers every market you plan to target before you book.