The world’s largest horse racing festival, the Cheltenham festival, begins this week, providing marketers with a chance to leverage the excitement and connect with racing fans on Facebook and Instagram. An infographic reveals the most discussed horses and jockeys, along with other useful stats and tips. For further guidance on targeting the right audiences and improving creative to meet campaign objectives and lead your brand to success, the article offers racing tips.
Meta's 2026 award winners show ad ops teams winning with automation, first-party signals, and creator/business messaging. Dior used Moment Maker plus Reminder Ads to scale a livestream, then Lead Ads, driving 267% more reminder signups at 24% lower cost. Its holiday rebuild consolidated campaigns into Advantage+ Shopping with CRM data, lifting ROAS 59% and cutting CPA 41%. Feastables used creative testing to find clean-label messaging, yielding a 23.9-point ad recall lift. American Eagle scaled organic creator posts via Partnership Ads; Boost Mobile used Click-to-WhatsApp plus incrementality testing; Winn-Dixie fed store conversions via Conversions API; NAR tested Advantage+ Audience; Compartés scaled with Advantage suite. Let data pick winners, then scale when efficiency holds.
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.
Meta is rolling out Meta One, a subscription service for businesses across Instagram, Facebook, and WhatsApp. Four bundle plans—Essential ($14.99), Advanced ($49.99), Expert ($149), and Max ($499)—unlock AI, advanced publishing, and audience/content insights beyond the free core experience. Key ad ops-relevant features include Meta Business Agent for automated WhatsApp responses, competitive and extended Instagram insights, custom Facebook audience insights, cross-app scheduling, links in organic posts/Reels, Instagram Link page, verified badges/channels, impersonation protection, and custom WhatsApp URLs. Decision-makers should evaluate plan mix by asset, AI response volume, analytics depth, and verification needs to improve credibility, response speed, and organic performance.
Instant Hydration scaled Meta spend in under 18 months by letting creative variety, not manual targeting, drive audience discovery. The brand diversified creators, ran Partnership Ads under brand and creator handles, and used AI to tailor briefs to creator audience themes. It runs Advantage+ broad targeting and automated placements, intervening manually only for lifecycle exclusions and brand-safe creative. Incremental attribution delivered ~35% more net-new visits and revived “burned out” creative. Takeaway for ad ops: automate delivery, own creative strategy, use incremental measurement, and extend creator-led systems across DTC and retail.
Cross-channel marketing analytics isn't about putting Meta, Google, and TikTok numbers side by side—they often double-count the same customer journey. Fragmented identity is the real culprit; without a first-party Customer User ID, attribution measures platform credit, not customer value. The article explains that deduplicating conversions across mobile, web, and CTV can lift attributed revenue by 30–60% and improve ROAS by 20%. It walks through attribution models, warns against platform-native analytics, and advises using an independent MMP for true cross-channel measurement. Ad ops takeaway: fix identity resolution first, because AI-driven optimization and budget allocation depend on trustworthy, deduplicated data.
A leading eCommerce loyalty platform integrated AppsFlyer's deep linking and audience segmentation with Braze's engagement platform to unify personalization, measurement, and lifecycle orchestration. This solved fragmented data and manual campaign production, driving a 66% faster time to first purchase, 500% uplift in push revenue, and 50–80% revenue lifts in email/content cards. The key insight for ad ops: accurate deep linking and behavioral data are foundational—when they work as one system, personalization scales and ROI improves.
Mintegral’s 2026 holiday guide shows Q4 gaming creative volume rising 12% from September to December, so testing must happen in September–October before peak fatigue. Category ramps diverge: Card & Board, Match, Puzzle, and Mid-core/Hardcore build strongly, while Casual and Idle finish below September. Regional category mix is consistent, led by Mid-core/Hardcore, Puzzle, and Match, with North America’s Card & Board exception. Rewarded video and interstitials dominate Q4; playable share is 18.2% but declines, creating room to stand out. After Christmas, most categories hold share; Puzzle gains slightly. Decision: build reusable creative cores, localize timing, and validate production against LiveOps and results.
Japan's mobile gaming market remains a revenue powerhouse, generating over $10B in IAPs in the past year despite a slight decline. Downloads are down, but engagement is stable, indicating a mature, high-value audience. Gaming ranks third in Japan's digital ad spend, with the ad market at record highs. Ad ops teams should align with major events and new releases for monetization spikes, balance casual puzzle UAC for volume with strategy/RPG for LTV, and consider cross-platform campaigns.
Meta's 2026 award winners show ad ops teams winning with automation, first-party signals, and creator/business messaging...
Meta is globally launching Creator Marketing Hub and expanding creator APIs, AI agent access, and Instagram Live Video A...
Meta is rolling out Meta One, a subscription service for businesses across Instagram, Facebook, and WhatsApp. Four bundl...
Instant Hydration scaled Meta spend in under 18 months by letting creative variety, not manual targeting, drive audience...
Meta's AI-powered advertising tools are proving effective across verticals, delivering significant performance gains whi...
Sydney Sock Project demonstrates how purpose-driven brands can scale profitably by embedding charitable donations into p...