Meta Rolls Out Reels Trending Ads Globally

Plus: WhatsApp Adds Ads In Status And Paid Channel Promotions

Author

Avinash Duggempudi
September 24, 2025 • Estimated Reading Time: 6 minutes

ClickZ Meta Insider

Here's what's happening this week in the world of Meta advertising: 
- Reels trending ads go global with premium adjacency.
- Threads adds carousels and 4:5 ads via Ads Manager.
- Reels now captures most Instagram time; recalibrate spend.
- Creative must hook in 3 seconds to hold viewers.

⏱️Why Finance and Marketing Measure Growth Differently and How to Bridge the Gap?

At eTail™ Connect West, Fospha’s VP of Growth Jamie Bolton hosted a panel with leading retail brands on the future of measurement. Three themes stood out:

  • No single model is enough: Teams combine MTA, MMM, and incrementality for a fuller picture.

  • Finance vs. marketing tension: Finance demands proof; marketers need daily direction.

  • Speed vs. rigor: Annual MMM updates can’t keep pace with weekly budget shifts.

👉 Fospha closes that gap - the only full-funnel MMM delivering daily, ad-level insights built for teams to grow DTC, Amazon & Beyond.

📌WEEKLY MUST-KNOWS

Meta rolled out Reels trending ads globally, placing paid spots immediately after AI-identified trending creator videos. The placement offers premium cultural adjacency and early tests show a 20% lift in unaided awareness, rivaling YouTube Select and beating TikTok Pulse. Media buyers and brand teams planning launches and tentpoles gain a high-reach, vertical-first option.

THREADS ADVERTISING
Threads Adds Carousels And 4:5 Ads In Ads Manager
Threads introduced carousel and 4:5 image/video ads and can be bought via Ads Manager without a Threads profile, with Meta testing Advantage+ catalog and app campaigns. With an estimated 400M monthly users, Threads opens new feed inventory for product storytelling and performance automation. Creative, performance, and paid social teams gain incremental reach with minimal setup friction.

Meta is turning WhatsApp’s Updates tab into a monetizable surface: channel subscriptions, promoted channels, and ads in Status, with deeper integrations into Facebook Pages and Meta Ads. This creates net-new inventory and a cleaner path from ad click to chat, unlocking conversational commerce and lead capture at scale. Advertisers using WhatsApp Business and performance buyers on Meta are most impacted.

At Made on YouTube 2025, YouTube introduced AI-native tooling—Veo 3 Fast for generative video, Edit with AI, and Speech to Song—plus enhanced Studio assistants. The move slashes creative lift and accelerates content throughput across Shorts, live, podcasts, and shopping. Creative teams, performance marketers, and agencies get faster iteration cycles and more shoppable, on-brand video at volume.

📅Smartly Advances NYD: Why AI Means More Creativity, Not Less

At Smartly Advanced NYC, Fospha's CEO Sam Carter and CPO Dom Devlin joined industry leaders to debate the role of AI in growth.

The takeaway? From platforms to creators, the consensus is clear: AI isn’t about replacing jobs. It’s about extending human creativity and unlocking new opportunities for marketers to grow.

⚡QUICK READS

Reels Time Share Surpasses 50 Percent On Instagram: More than half of user time is in Reels, signaling where reach, frequency, and creative testing should concentrate this quarter.(More)

Creative For Trending Ads: Hook In Three Seconds: Short, vertical-first video with captions and a bold 3-second opener minimizes drop-off and boosts watch-through in trending placements.(More)

Early Tests: Trending Ads Lift Awareness 20 Percent: Reels trending ads delivered a 20 percent lift in unaided awareness in testing, rivaling YouTube Select and outperforming TikTok Pulse for brand reach.(More)

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