TikTok is laying off hundreds of UK staff as it shifts moderation to AI, with more than 85% of takedowns now automated. The cuts, part of a global restructuring, come as the UK’s Online Safety Act pressures platforms to strengthen oversight. Industry peers are also pivoting—Meta and X have scaled back fact-checking while Reddit, Pinterest, and Snapchat adopt varying models of control. Yet user sentiment runs counter: Most want more human oversight, not less, with strong demand for fact-checkers, privacy, and quality control. The divergence raises brand-safety questions as advertisers weigh cost efficiencies against consumer trust.

The news: Meta’s new auto-translation feature for Reels could simplify global content sharing. The AI-powered translation tool can automatically dub and lip-sync Reels on Instagram and Facebook into other languages, including English, Spanish, and Portuguese. It’s available to Facebook creators with at least 1,000 followers and to all public Instagram accounts. Our take: Creators and brands should lean into short-form multilingual content to maximize audience reach and watch for engagement spikes in views in unexpected regions to identify new markets and audiences worth targeting.

The news: Child safety concerns are mounting as several platforms face heightened scrutiny over lacking moderation capabilities. Google settled a lawsuit on Tuesday over claims that it violated children’s privacy through YouTube by collecting personal data for targeted ads without parental consent, though the company denied wrongdoing in its decision to settle. Our take: Heightened scrutiny over where advertisers spend and what they promote is a must-have amid current concerns over child safety online, and brands must practice caution when implementing strategies that could be perceived as targeting minors.

The news: Meta and Google still account for 88% of mobile ad spending despite shifting user habits, per a Moloco report. But while advertiser attention remains firmly focused on Big Tech, those that diversify their media mix could increase financial returns as much as 214%. Our take: As audiences become fragmented across social media, advertisers are increasingly faced with the need to look beyond the big players—but with big tech still commanding attention, a balanced approach is key.

Generative AI is rapidly moving from novelty to necessity in advertising, collapsing production costs and timelines while expanding creative possibilities. National TV ads that once required six figures and weeks of work can now be made in days for a fraction of the budget, opening broadcast-quality campaigns to smaller advertisers. With nearly 90% of large video advertisers already adopting AI, use cases like personalization, ideation, and versioning are proliferating. Yet consumer skepticism remains strong—especially among older audiences—underscoring that human craft and cultural nuance still matter. The challenge ahead: merging automation’s efficiency with trust and authentic creativity at scale.

The news: Meta is moving forward with its ad automation ambitions by introducing new options to consolidate ad targeting, per a company announcement. Meta’s Ads Manager page noted that “some detailed targeting options have been combined,” and that ads using now-unavailable options no longer deliver starting in January. Our take: Automated AI campaigns are the path forward as long as giants like Meta continue pushing for automation and away from manual—necessitating advertisers take key steps to adapt. Campaign goals must be reframed for an AI-first environment.

The news: OpenAI CEO Sam Altman is warning of a growing AI investment bubble. “Are we in a phase where investors are overexcited about AI? My opinion is yes,” Altman said during a dinner with a group of reporters, per The Verge. Still, he emphasized that AI remains “the most important thing to happen in a very long time.” Our take: Altman’s warning about an AI bubble applies to marketers too. The temptation to chase every shiny new AI tool is real, but teams should develop an AI experimentation roadmap with clear outcomes to avoid wasting resources. Pushing vendors for case studies can help maximize budgets.

The news: Instagram is testing a feature that lets users select their favorite movies, books, TV shows, games, and music to encourage intentional sharing and discovery. The offering, called Picks, then surfaces overlapping interests between friends to drive engagement. It’s still an internal prototype and isn’t being tested externally yet. Our take: Effectiveness will depend on user adoption, stickiness, and whether shared Picks sparks meaningful interaction or is perceived as just another data-harvesting ploy. If Picks launches, brands should be ready to experiment with interest-based messaging but prepare to navigate privacy sensitivities.

CPM prices are rising YoY on every major social network in the US. But AI-driven ad products are helping advertisers see better outcomes, making it easier for them to justify the higher costs that come with more efficient targeting.

AI-fueled gains kept Google, Meta, and Amazon atop Q2’s ad market, but slowing engagement, murky ROI, and macro risks leave the triopoly’s future growth story more complex than the headlines suggest.

This report compares our 2025 US ad spending and time spent with media forecasts. It identifies incongruities between how marketers are spending ad dollars and where consumers are spending their time.

The news: 88% of mobile app ad spend is concentrated on Google and Meta, per Moloco’s Performance Through Independence report, despite high user engagement with independent apps. Advertisers who diversified their ad mix beyond the two Big Tech giants saw return on ad spend (ROAS) improve by up to 214%. Our take: Independent mobile apps offer untapped ROI. Reducing reliance on Google and Meta by diversifying mobile app spend could boost reach, hedge against platform risks, and better align with user behavior, especially as privacy challenges threaten to reshape targeting and measurement.

The news: Content demands are growing faster than budgets, pushing marketers toward AI as a way to keep up. Even as automation increases, ad agencies remain crucial partners for executing and scaling campaigns. Two-thirds (67%) of global employees working in marketing and communications use AI for content creation frequently or all the time, per 10Fold’s AI-First, Buyer-Ready report. That surge in AI adoption is accompanied by ambitious output goals: 91% plan to increase their content output this year, and nearly half (45%) expect to produce three to five times more than before. Our take: The future of content marketing isn’t AI versus agencies—it’s a combination of both. Hybrid models that combine in-house human and AI-powered creation with agencies’ expertise in strategy, distribution, and optimization can help maximize budgets, maintain brand voice, and keep up output as demand rises.

The news: Meta announced today updates to its Brand Rights Protection product to combat an influx of scam ads across its social platforms. Meta will now give brands using Brand Rights Protection the option to report scam ads at scale, regardless of whether the ads use the brand’s intellectual property. This feature includes ads that are suspected as scams or ads that are misleading and exploit a brand’s name without authorization. Our take: With social media’s vulnerability to ad fraud and proliferating concerns about brand safety causing some advertisers to reconsider spending, Meta’s update comes at a critical time.

On today’s podcast episode, we discuss what to make of Meta’s ‘Superintelligence Labs’ unit, the unconventional ways young people are using Instagram, and the potential sleeping giant of WhatsApp’s ads. Join our conversation with Senior Director of Podcasts and host, Marcus Johnson, Vice President and Principal Analyst, Jasmine Enberg, and Senior Analyst, Minda Smiley. Listen everywhere you find podcasts and watch on YouTube and Spotify.

The news: Meta’s strategy of hiring its competitors’ top AI engineers reflects the industry’s urgency to ramp up capabilities and get to artificial general intelligence (AGI) first—CEO Mark Zuckerberg stated that was the company’s objective in “delivering personal superintelligence for everyone,” per ZDNET. Our take: Meta is betting big—on people, not just products. This strategy offers speed, proprietary insight, and technical capacity. But it also raises scrutiny from investors and customers expecting it to pay off. Marketers should track Meta’s progress and watch how it integrates newly acquired AI knowledge. If successful, this shift could reinvent ad targeting, creative automation, and user modeling at scale.

The news: A Snapchat, WPP Media, and Lumen study unveiled key insights on the growth of attention-based metrics as key indicators of ad success. Even 5% more attention can double brand perception. Attention was 8 times more effective than view-through rates for predicting brand recall and 4 times more effective at determining brand favorability. Our take: Snap is looking to be a leader in a metric that advertisers are increasingly paying attention to—but on the back of a lukewarm quarter, can Snap’s emphasis on attention help it bounce back?

The news: Instagram added a host of new features for connecting with friends. The offerings could expand brands’ peer-to-peer visibility and location-based content and boost their chances of going viral. Our take: Brands should lean into organic discovery by creating engaging, visual-driven content that encourages reposts and peer engagement. Prioritize geo-aware promotions to tap into Instagram’s shift toward real-time social discovery and exploration.

This is the first installment of our annual “Mexico Ad Spending Benchmarks” series, which helps ad buyers and sellers calibrate their spending and revenue mix against the market.