Advertising Technology Blog

During Songkran 2025 in Thailand, overall app installs rose 8% and sessions 12% YoY. Food & drink apps surged up to 141% in installs and 160% in sessions during the festival. E-commerce saw a post-festival spike (+49% installs). Entertainment apps had longer sessions (+30%), while social and messaging apps also grew significantly. Key actionable insights: align campaigns to pre/during/post phases, optimize for intermittent usage, segment tourists vs. locals, and capture long-term value post-festival.

AI amplifies marketing's fragmentation tax—bad signals across platforms, channels, and tools produce faster wrong decisions. 62% of marketers cite data quality as top barrier to AI success. The fix is not more AI tools but governed signals, AI-ready data architecture (traceable, validated, privacy-compliant), and mobile-grade measurement applied universally. CMOs must prioritize foundation over hype to turn AI from liability into compounding advantage.

The article highlights three key consumer app trends for 2026: social features becoming retention drivers (e.g., Spotify messaging, Tinder Double Date), advanced retention mechanics from gaming (e.g., streaks, collections), and AI as an embedded utility (e.g., Gauth's Study Converter). For ad ops, these trends offer new hooks for acquisition and retention campaigns, such as aligning with social competition or event-based LiveOps. Marketers should shift from generic messaging to use-case clarity for AI features.

At IAB Newfronts, Meta announced AI-powered tools to help brands capture shrinking attention spans. Key updates include Reels trending ads with new cultural event lineups, improved creator marketplace and Partnership Ads Hub, generative AI for video scaling, and automated product video creation. With attention spans down 69% in 20 years, the focus is on being present in high-engagement moments. Meta's data shows Reels trending ads drive 6.6pp incremental ad recall lift. Ad ops should leverage these tools to align with cultural moments and scale personalized creative.

Demand Gen helps find customers across YouTube and Google surfaces. New AI tools like Veo generate video from images. Creator partnerships boost conversion lift by 30%. Optimize for follow-on views to increase watch time.

Digital health app growth shifts from acquisition to engagement, with AI health companions, femtech, and senior-friendly tools as key frontiers. Statista forecasts moderate 1.75% CAGR for fitness/wellness apps through 2030. Developers should prioritize hybrid monetization (IAA+IAP), smart UA with automated bidding, and interactive creative testing to maximize LTV and global scalability.

Marketing AI advisors bridge data and decisions, acting as agentic collaborators. Use natural language, ask follow-ups, and let Analytics Advisor uncover hidden insights like traffic spikes and funnel drop-offs.

High volume of form fills can be misleading without quality. Experts Mimi Forsythe and Lydia Azaret discuss ensuring high-quality leads, measuring full customer journey, and leveraging YouTube for performance.

Threads now has over 400 million monthly active users, fostering open sharing and collaboration. Recent global expansion brings updates to the Threads Marketing API, offering new ad features and tools for improved campaign performance and moderation.

Structured experimentation drives sustained performance gains in complex marketing landscapes. Liftoff's PEPr program prioritizes high-impact tests via quarterly roadmaps, balancing quick 'Discovery' initiatives with proven 'Scale' executions. Key insights include the need for clear hypotheses, controlled setups, and patience to distinguish signal from noise. Advertisers now expect tests to prove incremental value, not just generate learning. Consistency across regions allows validated insights to scale confidently, making experimentation a competitive advantage.

Meta introduces new creator tools for product tagging in posts and Reels, expanding affiliate partnerships with Amazon, eBay, Temu, and others. AI enhances shopping with product info surfacing and one-click checkout via PayPal and Stripe. Retail media gains product set optimization for campaigns, reducing seller cost per purchase by 17%. Product showcase expands to Reels and Stories. These updates aim to reduce friction from discovery to purchase, empowering creator monetization and advertiser performance.

Adjust's PC & Console solution enables cross-device measurement for gaming, addressing fragmentation across platforms like Steam, console, and mobile. It supports three setup paths: S2S for in-game events, Web SDK for web journeys, and external device ID matching for deterministic linking. Key features include Steam measurement via S2S or Steamworks SDK, SpendWorks for ad spend consolidation, and Datascape for unified reporting. With cross-device journeys becoming common, this solution helps marketers attribute campaigns, measure ROAS, and analyze player value across PC, console, mobile, and CTV, addressing the 61% rise in paid-to-organic ratio in gaming.

Creator marketing is now core to brand strategy. TikTok and BSI's report shows suitability enables creativity, trust, and performance. Clear expectations empower authentic storytelling.

YouTube's sports podcasts had 8.5B views in 2025. 56% of 14-24 year-olds watch athlete podcasts weekly. The new Top Sports Podcast Lineup helps brands reach engaged fans on YouTube Select.

Costco partners with Moloco Commerce Media to power onsite ads on Costco.com, aiming to replicate in-warehouse discovery digitally. The AI-powered platform helps brands drive results while preserving Costco's member-first experience, as highlighted by Mark Williamson, AVP of Retail Media at Costco.

Mintegral's Target ROAS guide offers practical steps for ad ops decision-makers to optimize campaigns. Key insights include enabling data postbacks for accurate ML modeling, verifying event mapping to ensure correct revenue signals, reducing data discrepancies with MMPs by selecting proper report types and time windows, and incrementally tweaking budgets (e.g., adjusting ROAS goals by ≤10% weekly, or reducing by ≤5% for scaling). The guide emphasizes flexible adaptation based on regional and product differences to achieve better ROAS outcomes.

Starting June 22, 2026, Meta will replace Nielsen's DMA with Comscore Markets for automotive model ads. From March 23, advertisers can update vehicle feeds with Comscore Market IDs. Campaigns using DMA codes will pause on June 22, requiring updates to resume. This transition aims for a more sustainable, scalable targeting solution.

Target ROAS campaigns often fail to scale due to unrealistic targets, budget cuts during learning, short data windows, or frequent structural changes. To scale, focus on three pillars: sufficient budget for exploration, flexible ROAS targets during early learning, and adequate data windows to capture long-term value. Avoid micromanaging; instead, provide stable signals and exploration capacity for the algorithm.

Broken app entry moments—activation, secure messages, re-engagement, offline prompts, and login interruptions—cause silent customer loss in finance. These failures look like low engagement but stem from poor deep linking that loses context or state. Eng teams must treat app entry as intent continuation, ensuring users land on the correct screen with preserved context. Fixing this boosts engagement and conversion. AppsFlyer's Deep Linking Suite provides owned media teams with reliable routing, state detection, and deferred deep linking without requiring a paid attribution package.

You don't need weeks of data for Smart Bidding. This episode debunks myths on learning periods and new campaigns, showing how AI with the right data achieves specific business goals.