Wednesday Morning, Issue 37 (3/13/25)
Instagram rolls out new text-only testimonial feature, Adobe shows how music influences purchase on TikTok and Dentsu publishes report on long-term and short-term TikTok ROI.
Hello and welcome to Wednesday Morning, a monthly digest of the social advertising platform news and updates you need to know, along with occasional deeper dives, best-in-class ad examples and the resources we find truly helpful.
🗞️ JUST THE HEADLINES:
Instagram’s new text-only testimonial feature for Partnership ads is a resounding acknowledgement that the comments section is as much a part of the ad as the creative itself. This new feature is a powerful way to make sure your brand makes the most of influencer/creator engagements.
How it works: Ask the creator/influencer to write a short message (under 125 characters) about your brand/product and associate it as a comment on the appropriate ad via the Partnership ad portal.
Unilever says it will increase social spend from 30% to 50% of its media budget, which feels like a good segue to a couple new reports on platform roles and impact. First up, Digiday shares insights on how brands use and view Instagram and Facebook, so if you’re optimizing between these insights may help you think a bit more intentionally about channel allocation.
A new TikTok report commissioned by Dentsu, ‘Prom Storytelling to Sales: Short and Long-term ROI of TikTok’ breaks down how shorter, campaign-focused spends compared to always-on spends in terms of ROI, both on TikTok and across other marketing channels. These inspiring numbers and more data around TikTok’s influence on Gen Z’s purchasing habits come as both brand usage and spends have dipped in the midst of the looming ban.
Instagram is considering a new standalone app for Reels content, putting creators and influencers on edge. Those of us who lived through IGTV have been here before. 🫶🏻
👩🌾 IN THE WEEDS:
Meta now allows you to ‘chat with leads’ — letting brands create an instant chat dialogue with users who fill out an in-platform lead gen form.
📚 REPORTS & RESOURCES:
Fresh B2B creative inspo. Here’s a digest of +100 examples from Andrea Todorova. And one more I personally curated, a fun video GitLab.
Reddit and Okta shared a new recent case study on how Okta used the platform to drive leads at 68% less than their internal benchmark. For more Reddit brand inspo, subscribe to their new monthly LinkedIn newsletter.
Adobe’s new report, ‘Music’s Impact on Engagement’ shares insights from an analysis of over 65k TikTok clips and a survey of 1k users.
Meta’s VP of Analytics has written a new book that will “provide insider notes on the development of Meta’s various ad algorithms and processes.” We have it in our preorder queue.
If it’s been a while since you’ve thought about Pinterest ads, this podcast with Pinterest’s CRO is a great refresher on the updates the platform has made to its ad offering.
Thank you, as always, for reading Wednesday Morning! Subscribe to get new posts delivered to your inbox each month.
🫶🏻 WAYS WE CAN WORK TOGETHER: Sometimes I hear from longtime readers who would like to properly work together. Maybe that’s you? If so, take a flip through our capabilities deck.