Advertising Technology Blog

Consumers use two search modes: traditional (utility) and social (influence). Social search drives net-new growth, with 64% of Meta conversions from new customers. Brands must show up in both.

The 2026 Finance & Crypto App Performance Benchmark reveals a 47% increase in UA spend and 2.15x re-engagement spend in 2025, with 8B+ global downloads. It analyzes spend gaps, retargeting shifts, and CPI by region and platform.

Instagram deep links route users to apps, but Instagram's walled garden often breaks them. AppsFlyer's OneLink provides deferred deep linking, attribution, and branded landing pages to fix this, making Instagram a measurable growth channel.

Google AI enhances bidding and budgeting. Smart Bidding Exploration expands reach with 27% more unique users. Campaign total budgets cut manual adjustments by 66%. Upcoming demand-led pacing optimizes spend on peak days.

Mobile UX is crucial for commercial success, affecting retention and revenue. Poor performance causes 90% of users to abandon apps. Good UX requires clear navigation, fast performance, and consistency, directly impacting business metrics like retention and conversion rates.

AI speeds up ad creatives but can't compromise accuracy or brand voice. Podcast discusses using Veo for brand loyalty, interpreting Ad Strength, and new ad features.

Dribbleup focuses 98% of ad spend on Meta, achieving profitable growth by deeply understanding customers and leveraging high-frequency creative. They avoid platform diversification, citing risk and opportunity cost.

Measurement drives growth in the AI era. It simplifies data management, causal experiments, and unified views for investment decisions. Accurate data boosts ROI, with Google tag achieving 14% conversion lift.

Incrementality must shift from analysis to an operating practice. Leaders use it for fast trade-offs, align stakeholders early, and embed insights into decisions. This cultural change turns marketing into a revenue driver, enabling smarter investment.

Honor of Kings led April 2026 revenues with Season 43, cross-promotion with its spinoff, and Ne Zha 2 event. Last War: Survival Game ranked second via Easter Celebration. Download leader Block Blast! remained top, while Arrows Puzzle Escape and Arrows GO! led growth.

Benchmarking top casual games shows standard tournaments are table stakes (avg 2.5 formats). Royal Match excels by layering win-streak events, co-op challenges, and album chases on weekends to drive revenue. Strategy is about integrating events, not just copying them.

AI Max for Shopping helps retailers capture discovery-phase shoppers by generating ad copy, expanding URLs to relevant pages, and selecting optimal ad formats, all based on Merchant Center product details.

Search Campaigns for Travel simplifies workflow by integrating travel feeds and formats into standard Search campaigns, with AI Max, unified bidding, and reporting for a cohesive performance view.

AI Max now extends to Shopping and Travel campaigns, using feeds to capture long-tail searches. AI Brief lets advertisers guide AI with custom messaging, matching, and audience rules, improving relevance and control.

Ridge expanded from wallets to luggage, reaching new customers via Meta's upper-funnel AI tools. Creative diversity matters more than volume. CEO Sean Frank emphasizes marketing-first culture, with everyone making ads.

Roove, a beverage brand, added creator-led partnership ads to their existing Meta Advantage+ campaign. Results showed a 73% lift in incremental sales and a 40% lift in ROAS, proving that adding authentic creator content can significantly boost performance without overhauling the strategy.

Conversion Rules extend fraud prevention beyond attribution by validating post-install activity. Features include Flow Checks for event timing/sequence, Source checks for S2S events, ad revenue filtering, and Parameter Rules for SDK parameter validation.

Meta announces AI connectors in open beta for advertisers. Includes MCP server and CLI for secure AI agent connections. Enables campaign management, reporting, catalog management, and signal diagnostics directly within existing AI tools.

Creator marketing doesn't require a big budget. YouTube's tools in Google Ads and Display & Video 360 help discover creators and manage creator-driven ads for performance campaigns.

Demand Gen drives 18% higher new customer conversions vs paid media average. New launches include Commerce Media Suite support and view-through conversion optimization, enhancing performance.