Paid Ads

Google Ads, Meta, TikTok and programmatic breakdowns for practitioners. What is breaking, what is working, what CMOs are spending on now.

IAS Launched an AI Slop Filter. Nobody Agreed on What Slop Means.

Integral Ad Science shipped the open beta of its Low-Quality GenAI Avoidance tool on April 2, and the official blog post used the phrase "AI slop" in the headline. That's worth pausing on. A publicly traded ad verification company just elevated mass-produced AI content to the

Pop art illustration of Meta and Google revenue charts with social media ad feeds and growth metrics on advertising dashboards

Meta Is Passing Google in Ad Revenue. Most Budgets Haven't Caught Up.

Meta's ad business is projected to generate $243.5 billion this year. Google's will do about $239.5 billion. For the first time ever, Meta is projected to be the larger ad platform. Most coverage has framed this as a horse race. Company A passes Company

Pop art stadium scoreboard showing rising CPM prices next to floating social media icons

The World Cup's $5 Million Ad Minimum Is the Best Argument for TikTok in Years

Fox is asking for a $5 million minimum spend to advertise during World Cup 2026 coverage, with a matched $5 million commitment on streaming inventory stacked on top. If you want anything involving the U.S. team games, budget $10 to $15 million. The final? A $25 million tournament-wide commitment.

Pop art illustration of a fishing hook emerging from a contact form button with fake business cards and a red lock icon on a Google Ads dashboard

Google Ads Agencies Are Getting Phished Through Their Own Contact Forms

The best phishing attack is the one you're trained to respond to immediately. For Google Ads agencies, that's a new client lead. Multiple agencies reported this week that scammers are submitting polished inquiry forms, setting up discovery calls, and then requesting Manager Account (MCC) access during

Two parallel data pipelines for Google Shopping feeds in pop-art style, one fading out with a deadline calendar and disconnected product feed labels

Google Added the Merchant API to Ads Scripts 130 Days Before the Content API Dies

Google just announced that the Merchant API will be available in Google Ads Scripts starting April 22. That is the replacement for the Content API for Shopping, which stops working entirely on August 18. From where you are sitting today, that is 130 days. It sounds like enough time. It

DoubleVerify Caught a 200-Site AI Fraud Ring by Reading Its Own JavaScript

DoubleVerify's Fraud Lab just published something unusual: a full teardown of an AI-powered ad fraud operation, complete with the exact prompts the operators used to generate content. They didn't need a whistleblower or a subpoena. The operators left their entire content-generation system visible in client-side JavaScript.

Pop art illustration of Google Shopping auction grid with EU flags and competing marketplace storefronts showing bid numbers

Joybuy Outranked 10% of EU Shopping Advertisers Before Anyone Noticed

If you run Google Shopping campaigns in Europe, there is a good chance a new competitor started bidding on your product categories last month and you didn't get an alert about it. Joybuy, JD.com's export-facing marketplace, quietly started purchasing Shopping ads across six EU markets