SEM & Paid Social Q4 2025 Updates

TL;DR: Our picks for most relevant and impactful features:

• Google Minimum Audience Size Reduced from 1000 to 100
• Meta New Generative AI Creative Solutions

Google Ads Updates

Google Sponsored Results Format Changes

What's the Update
Google Sponsored Results (ads) in the SERPs are now more grouped together under a “Sponsored results” header with a single-click option below the ads to hide the ads.

Why It Matters
More transparency may equal lower ad CTRs, may help SEO, may have no impact, depending on user behavior.

Next Steps

• We have not seen any noticeable ad CTR changes, especially for branded, but will continue to monitor.

YouTube Brand Pulse Report

What's the Update
This new report, powered by Google AI, provides actionable insights to understand the full presence (paid and organic) of a YouTube channel and its content.

Why It Matters
Increased visibility/metrics like total unique viewers, % share of watch time (vs category averages), and metrics to encourage more content creation and promotion.

Next Steps

• This should be available in any clients’ YouTube channels.
• https://blog.google/products/ads-commerce/youtube-new-brand-pulse-report/

Account Suspension Clarity

What's the Update
Google has made improvements to its account suspension process.

Why It Matters
Google says it has reduced incorrect account suspensions and has addressed appeals faster.

Next Steps

• Hopefully, this will minimize the amount of account suspensions we encounter and accelerate fixing any that may still occur.

Minimum Audience Size Reduced from 1000 to 100

What's the Update
CRM and other audiences minimum size to deliver/generate impressions is lowered from 1000 to 100.

Why It Matters
This can help smaller businesses reach their customers or other audience lists.

Next Steps

• If we receive any lists with fewer than 1000 users, we can use them in Google Ads now.

Social Ads Updates 

Meta Advantage+ for Leads Campaigns

What's the Update
Adv+ Leads campaigns now available for all advertisers.

Why It Matters
This gives access to opportunity score and a new user experience in Ads Manager when creating or editing Lead Generation campaigns.  

Next Steps

• All new lead-gen campaigns are now defaulted to some level of AI-driven optimizations/ADV+.
• Campaign managers need to deselect any ADV+ features not desired for new lead-gen campaigns.
• Advertisers who are open to fully automated (not controlled) audience targeting, budget splits, placements, etc. for lead-gen campaigns now have that option.

Meta New Generative AI Creative Solutions

What's the Update

• Generate unique and custom sounds with AI-generated music that captures the overall product, style, and sentiment of your ad.
• AI Sticker and Uploaded CTA Sticker to add visuals to ads’ CTA buttons.
• Video expansion (to 9:16) is now possible for IG Reels & Stories (previously was just FB Reels).
• Upgrade color contrast and enhance video visuals with HDR (high dynamic range) optimization.
• Highlight key moments in ad videos, allowing users to skip ahead to important moments, enhancing video comprehension.
• Leverage AI dubbing to translate video ads to languages that may best resonate with the target audience.

Why It Matters
Additional options for automated visual and audio enhancements for clients who are interested.

Next Steps

• We can enable some of these features and share preview links of the enhancements for interested clients.
• We’ll send a separate email about CTA Sticker Uploads.

Meta Instagram-Direct Boost Partnership Ads

What's the Update
Boosted partnership ads on Instagram (only) can be created directly from Instagram.com or meta business suite.

Why It Matters
This is like boosting partnership posts for Facebook, and is only for boosted posts, not inline ads managed by USIM/Liquid Audience.

Next Steps

• If any clients want to boost their partner content directly on Instagram, we can share details.

Meta Value Rules in Special Category Campaigns

What's the Update
We can now assign value rules to the very basic targeting audience segments that are available for Housing, Employment, and Financial Products/Services ads.

Why It Matters
These special category campaigns can’t use age, gender, narrow geos, interests, etc. in targeting, so this allows us to at least “weight” state-level targeting, operating systems, placements, and/or device types for these limited ads.

Next Steps

• We should run state, OS, placement, and Device reporting for special category campaigns to see if there’s opportunity to improve performance over Meta’s purely automated bidding.

Meta Creative Testing Up To 5 Variations

What's the Update
Test up to 5 ad variations in a single campaign while ensuring delivery for new test ads.

Why It Matters
This helps new ads get enough delivery against top performers.

Next Steps

• This is available for 75% of advertisers, and if available for any current clients that introduce new ad copy against current ad copy often, then we can test this feature.

Meta ADV+ Creative Enhancements – Reveal Details Over Time

What's the Update
When not disabled (because it’s auto-enabled like many other ADV+ features for all new ads), this will reveal details from the ads’ website if users spend a few seconds looking at or interacting with an ad.

Why It Matters
As with other ADV+ enhancements, this changes approved ad previews, and may pull unwanted or irrelevant content from the website.

Next Steps

• We are disabling this for all non-ADV+ enhanced ads during ad creation and QA.

TikTok Symphony Creative Automation

What's the Update
Symphony Automation creates new assets, refreshes existing assets, and optimizing content mid-flight.

Why It Matters
Similar to Meta ADV+ creative generation and enhancements, we have to disable these unless clients are open and interested.

Next Steps

• If clients are interested in creative asset generation, we can test the tools and provide previews and screenshots.

TikTok Media Mix Modeling Data

What's the Update
Advertisers can download 4 years of MMM-ready historical data from the TikTok Ads Manager.

Why It Matters
Invaluable for measuring TikTok Ads performance as part of the media plan and against other ad platforms.

Next Steps

• If interested for any specific client, we can see what data is available to export.

TikTok Smart+ Campaigns

What's the Update
Like Meta ADV+ campaigns, this can allow TikTok to fully automate, define, and optimize targeting, placement, and creative within campaigns.

Why It Matters
Every ad platform is offering or working to offer fully automated advertising solutions.  We can test some or all of the features depending on each client’s threshold.

Next Steps

• This requires access granted from TikTok reps for interested clients/accounts.

Pinterest Ads Epsilon Audience Targeting

What's the Update
An available Epsilon self-service audience builder in Pinterest Ads with access to 7k+ person-level attributes to create relevant audience with first-party CRM data or Epsilon proprietary data.

Why It Matters
Potentially greater reach and/or greater targeting accuracy.

Next Steps

• If interested for specific clients who currently have CRM lists, we can contact Pinterest reps or test in the account.

LinkedIn Ad Personalization

What's the Update
Dynamically personalized/custom-tailored ad copy with LinkedIn user-profile information.

Why It Matters
Ad copy with users’ profile first name, job title, industry, and/or company name is attention getting.

Next Steps

• Only available for managed customers at this time, so please contact your LinkedIn account representative.