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Happy Monday.
Meta is quietly reshaping where ad clicks go, holiday spending forecasts look stronger than last year, and AI keeps pushing into ads, checkouts, and measurement. Here is what caught my eye today:
Product browsing keeps ad clicks inside Meta. Product browsing is a Meta ads setting that sends ad clicks to a Meta-hosted catalog page instead of your own website. It becomes the default on after October 28. Meta says an August test with 117,000 advertisers lifted conversions 3% on average. That lift makes sense if fewer clicks leak out between the ad and the checkout. My concern is what you lose when the visit never reaches your site. You lose your own tracking, your own landing page control, and your own chance to build a direct relationship. You can turn it off in Advantage+ Creative and in Destination settings. My take: test it on one campaign first, compare tracked conversions and lead quality against clicks that go to your site, and only keep it on where the numbers earn it.
Meta is testing AI-built landing pages. AI landing pages are a Meta test that builds a landing page from your ad creative when a person clicks. Common Thread Collective reports the test. The test started on October 14 and covers under 5% of impressions. The catch is measurement. Your pixel and GA4 do not fire because the visitor never reaches your site. That means your reports can look quiet even when Meta reports activity. You can opt out through “test new AI generation features” in Ad Account Settings. My take: opt out until Meta proves the tracking story. A landing page you cannot measure is a landing page you cannot improve.
New Commercial Terms let Meta crawl your site to train products. Commercial Terms are Meta terms that, from October 30, let Meta crawl a linked website to train products. The only opt-out is leaving Meta. That is a big shift from the old terms, which only allowed crawling for ads. Ars Technica covered the updated terms and the reaction from publishers and advertisers. The one control that still works is robots.txt, which can limit what crawlers can read. My take: check your robots.txt file and decide what you are comfortable letting Meta crawl. This is a business decision, not a setting you can toggle later.
Instagram adds a Use as reference mode and new Edits tools. Use as reference is an Instagram mode that lets you pull a Reel under 90 seconds into your camera view as a guide while you film. It is iOS only for now. Edits, the creator editing app, also gets tappable song and sound links, kits, and trending topics for creators with over 10,000 followers. The idea is simple: make it easier to copy a format that already works instead of starting from a blank screen. My take: use the reference mode to study pacing and hooks, then shoot your own version. Do not copy the clip itself. Copy the structure, then make it yours.
NRF expects holiday sales to grow 4.2%. NRF forecasts US November to December retail sales will grow 4.2% to $1.013 trillion, compared with 3.1% last year. That is a stronger headline number, but NRF also notes that inflation and gas prices hit income groups differently. Lower income shoppers feel price pressure first, while higher income shoppers keep spending longer. My take: plan for a split holiday. Lead with value and clear offers for price-sensitive buyers, and lead with convenience and gift-ready bundles for buyers who are still spending.
Google Search CPC growth picked up from 1% to 4%. Tinuiti reports Google Search CPC growth rose from 1% in Q2 to 4% in Q3. One reason is Amazon. Amazon made a July 2025 retreat from US Google Shopping auctions, which kept CPCs flat for a year. Other advertisers moved in to fill the gap, and prices are now climbing again. My take: budget for pricier BFCM clicks now. If your bids and budgets still assume flat CPCs, your ads will run out of room right when demand peaks.
TikTok Shop passed $500 million in BFCM 2025 sales. TikTok Shop passed $500 million in BFCM 2025 sales, which shows how fast live and social shopping has grown in the US. LIVE Shopping more than doubled US sales year over year in the first half of 2026. That matters because live shopping is not just a content format. It is a sales channel with its own pacing, offers, and follow-up. My take: if you sell products that demo well on camera, test one live shopping event before BFCM. Learn the format on a small event instead of learning it on your biggest weekend.
Shopify lets AI agents fill carts and check out. Shopify Checkout MCP and Cart MCP let AI agents fill carts and check out on behalf of shoppers. Shoppers who buy through an agent can opt into email and SMS marketing and make the same privacy choices they would make on a normal checkout. Only agents that adopt the update pass those choices along. My take: this is worth watching even if you do not use AI agents yet. When a machine places the order, your post-purchase flow still has to earn the second sale. Make sure your opt-in, welcome, and follow-up steps still work when the first checkout happens through an agent.
Jon Loomer says a custom conversion must earn its optimization slot. Jon Loomer advises advertisers to optimize for a standard event and add a custom conversion as a reporting column first. A narrower target gives you thinner data, and thin data makes learning slower and noisier. As a guide, aim for about 50 optimization events per ad set per week to exit the learning phase. A custom conversion earns the optimization slot only when it has enough volume plus a real problem that a standard event cannot solve. My take: I agree with this order. Prove the custom conversion in reporting first. Promote it to optimization only when the volume is there and the standard event is clearly missing something.
Measurement talk still runs ahead of measurement action. A new measurement report shows what marketers say they want: unified cross-channel measurement at 40%, higher-quality data at 33%, incrementality testing at 31%, AI for faster insights at 25% tied with in-house expertise at 25%. Only 16% picked using insights to plan spending. That gap is the story. Teams want better data, but few are tying it to budget choices. The advice from the report is practical: run one holdout test, then tie the reports to one budget decision. My take: start there. One clean holdout test beats ten dashboards. If a report does not change a budget choice, it is decoration, not measurement.
LinkedIn: LinkedIn is testing pre-roll ads on creator and publisher videos, plus Advice Sessions for verified Premium members in the US. Pre-roll ads put brands in front of video viewers before the content starts. Advice Sessions give verified Premium members a way to book guidance. My take: watch the pre-roll test if you publish video on LinkedIn. Early placements often cost less before everyone else moves in.
Google Ads: Google Ads added a 1-click 50/50 split test for AI Max on the Recommendations page, and you can pick AI Max features per ad group. AI Max is Google AI matching add-on for Search that expands queries, creative, and landing page matching. A split test lets you compare AI Max against your current setup on equal traffic. My take: use the split test instead of turning AI Max on everywhere at once. Let the test prove it on your own account.
Google AI Mode: Google is testing AI Mode ads for Personal Intelligence users. Personal Intelligence ads are Google AI Mode ads that can reflect a user’s own context. Google says ads will not draw directly on Gmail or Photos content. My take: this is a privacy line to watch. If the ads feel helpful without feeling intrusive, adoption will grow. If they cross the line, trust will drop fast.
ChatGPT: ChatGPT ads are getting measurement partners, a redesigned Conversions page, weekly emails, and a wider ad cards test, with no rollout date yet. Measurement partners matter most because advertisers need trusted third-party checks on a new placement. The redesigned Conversions page and weekly emails should make performance easier to follow. My take: do not build a plan around a launch date that does not exist yet. Build the measurement plan now so you are ready when the rollout lands.
Google Ads: Google Ads has a Campaign Type Attribution beta, available via a Google rep. Campaign Type Attribution is a Google Ads beta for Demand Gen that gives Demand Gen full credit for conversions it touches. The trade-off is that account-level conversion totals go blank while the beta is on. My take: only test this if you can live without account-level totals for a while. Full credit for one campaign type is not worth losing the total view you use to run the account.
