There Exists a Not-Inconsequential Chance This Headline Will Make You Skip Today's Newsletter Offering

Want to fix your ad campaigns quickly?
 
New research from Harvard says use simpler headlines.

Pinterest Launches AI-Driven “Performance+” Ads

Meta has Advantage+. Google has Performance Max. Now Pinterest is joining the party with an ad product it calls Performance+.

All these are the so-called smarter campaigns which remove a lot of fine control from advertisers, and use machine learning to steer a campaign’s audience and placement.

Pinterest expects ad revenue to grow more than 17% this year — still, that will bring it to about $2.6 billion. [Q1 2024 results] Compare that to Google’s parent company which made $80 billion — just in Q1 of this year.

Performance expectations

Pinterest says its new format generated about a 10% improvement in cost per acquisition for conversion and catalog sales campaigns. And consideration campaigns got a little more than 10% improvement in cost per click.

And unlike many AI-based ad products at launch, you still get a decent amount of control over targets. You can specify age, country, and product interest. Performance+ will manage the placement — in other words, where the ad will appear.

It’s an AI world

What’s next

Pinterest also working on a couple of other formats including a new collage ad designed to make things more shoppable.

Simple Headlines Will Get More Clicks: Study

Next time you’re slaving over your ad headline, consider this: Simple is better.

New research from Harvard University finds people are more likely to click headlines that use simple language and common words.

The study was published in the Science Advances journal and looked at 24,000 headlines.

Editorial, but still…

To be clear, this wasn’t a study about ad headlines specifically; it was a study of news headlines. But there are certainly lessons that can apply to our world.

Some examples:

A headline saying Meghan and Harry were “spilling royal tea to Oprah” got more clicks when that was changed to just “talking to Oprah”

The headline “Defiant gestures are increasingly what conservatives have instead of policy” got better results when it was changed to “I get the indignation. But where are the ideas, Republicans?”

Tiny means huge

The improvements in CTR were small, but depending on the scale of your business, that could actually be huge.

Podcast Consumers Listen to Ads More

Consumers are more likely to pay attention to podcast ads than any other media channel. This, according to a new study from Sounds Profitable, a podcast industry newsletter and research arm.

Key findings

28% of listeners say they listen to “all of the ads” on podcasts, the highest percentage among all media channels tested.

46% of listeners say they “always or often” skip ads on podcasts.

But when asked about the last specific episode they consumed, that percentage dropped substantially.

The study was underwritten by a bunch of podcast companies including Wondery, SiriusXM, and NPR.

Instagram’s Testing CTA Buttons on Organic Stories

First, it was unskippable ads that prevented you from scrolling down the feed until you watched them. Now, Instagram’s testing another intrusive ad format which will might piss off both consumers and marketers alike.

This time, they’re testing pop-up ads that show up on Stories.

To be clear, we’re not talking about Stories Ads, where the ad takes up the Story screen and you get a call-to-action. Rather, these are call-to-action buttons that get overlaid over top of an organic post.

In one version, a single headline and call-to-action button appear near the bottom of the Story…

…in another, it’s at the top and sort of pushes the story down a bit.

The big downsides

It’s definitely going to confuse consumers, who might wonder what the connection is between someone’s Story about running in the house with an overlaid incontinence ad.

And for marketers, we might not particularly like the idea of a competitor’s call-to-action getting added to our organic posts.

Many questions remain

Like many things in our business, we learned about this through screenshots of this in the wild; there hasn’t been any official announcement of this as a new ad product.

And so far, the ads seen have been in-house ads for Meta products, like its VR games.

Oracle Gets Out of the Ad Business

Oracle, the software technology giant, is shutting down its advertising business, citing a significant decline in revenue.

During its earnings call this week, the CEO reported that the company's ad business generated only $300 million in revenue for the 2024 fiscal year, a drastic drop from the $2 billion recorded in 2022. [Financial reports]

Oracle's foray into the ad industry was marked by big investments, with the company spending more than $4 billion on acquiring advertising companies over the past decade. Notable acquisitions include BlueKai, DataLogix, and Moat.

But Oracle’s ad and marketing business suffered a big blow when Meta stopped sharing data with third parties, including Oracle, in 2018 following the Cambridge Analytica scandal.

Then, the GDPR in Europe forced Oracle to stop offering third-party data targeting services there. This led to the shutdown of the AddThis publisher audience tool in Europe in 2019 and its complete termination two years ago.

The company says it will now focus on cloud, subscription services, and artificial intelligence.

Disney’s New Ad Products for Streaming TV

Disney has introduced two new ad products across its streaming portfolio — shoppable ads and something it calls “advertgames.”

Advergames

Powered by the ad tech firm Brightline, these include Quiz Show and Beat the Block, both which are launching on Hulu and ESPN. These are interactive games that hope to increase brand recall.

One example of how a brand used it — Topgolf created a game where viewers used their remote controls to shoot golf balls into on-screen targets.

Shoppable Ads

The shoppable ad product is available across Disney's portfolio and comes in three formats:

Sync

L-Bar

Impulse

These use QR codes to let viewers shop specific products on their phones during a show.

These shoppable ads are also available programmatically.

LinkedIn Will Now Write a Cover Letter For You

LinkedIn this week announced some new job search tools powered by, you guessed it, the magic of AI.

They include a tool that can write cover letters for applicants. Which, I don’t know, as an employer, I kind of like to see how people write on their own.

They also have automated coaches that can recommend specific on-platform courses they can take.

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