ClickZ Meta Insider Newsletter | 🧠 Outthink Last Click Attribution

Plus: 📊 PMAX vs Paid Search: What Top Brands Are Doing

Author

Rafe Houston
April 09, 2025 • Estimated Reading Time: 33 minutes

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Welcome to Meta Insider, your essential newsletter for insights into the latest trends and innovations shaping Meta’s advertising and social media strategies.

Editor’s Pick 🌟

Curious to know the optimal way to allocate your Google Ads budget? Fospha’s latest analysis of top performers reveals key insights into balancing Performance Max (PMAX) and Paid Search:

🥇 How Top-Performers Do It: For the highest-performing 25% of brands, a strategic allocation of around 55% of total Google budget to Performance Max and 12% to Paid Search appears to be the sweet spot for driving results.

🏢 Size Matters: Note, this optimal allocation does vary slightly between different brand sizes. Top-performing small brands were found to have a 52% PMAX / 15% Paid Search split, while top-performing large brands allocated more to PMAX, with a 59% PMAX / 9% Paid Search split.

Why? Consumer goods adopt search-heavy strategies because their products often address specific functional needs that consumers actively search to solve. Fashion brands, by contrast, primarily sell products through visual storytelling and emotional appeal, better suited to other Google ads formats including PMAX.

Unlock the full potential of your Google Ads budget! Fospha’s new Performance Max and Paid Search Playbook is your guide to cultivating cross-channel synergies, reducing wasted ad spend, and maximizing blended performance.

Sector Spotlight 🎥

DIGITAL ADVERTISING SHAKE-UP

A potential TikTok ban could significantly raise ad prices on Meta platforms like Facebook and Instagram due to increased demand. This shift would disproportionately harm small businesses, which rely on TikTok's lower costs and high engagement, underlining the need for diversified advertising channels.

SOCIAL MEDIA INNOVATIONS

This article identifies six social media platforms that offer unique features similar to Instagram, tailored for marketing professionals seeking fresh engagement strategies. Each platform, such as Flashes with its Bluesky integration and Snapchat's ephemeral stories, provides valuable alternatives for dynamic content sharing. These insights serve as practical tools for marketers to expand their social media presence with innovative approaches.

SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING

Instagram's 2025 algorithm prioritizes engagement metrics like watch time and shares to enhance content visibility, urging marketers to optimize profiles, create engaging Reels, and use AI tools for audience insights. Understanding these factors helps target both existing and potential followers effectively, driving growth and adapting to future algorithm shifts. Key takeaways include:

  • Enhanced Collab Tools: Tag multiple collaborators on a post to cross-promote to wider audiences.

  • Add Yours Templates: This sticker trend boosts Stories engagement and encourages user interaction.

  • Comment Pinning: Use it strategically to highlight positive or relevant feedback and guide conversation tone.

  • Customisable Story Highlights: Treat Highlights like a mini-website—organised, branded, and clear.

  • Instagram Notes: Resurfacing in 2025 as a great way to drop quick updates or promos directly in DMs.

  • AI-Powered Captions & Filters: New AI integrations help streamline content creation and personalization.

AI INNOVATION LAUNCH

Meta introduces new open-source Llama 4 AI models, enhancing capabilities in generative AI. The most powerful model, Llama 4 Behemoth, remains in development, aiming to outperform competitors. This advancement holds strategic importance for marketers interested in leveraging cutting-edge AI tools for enhanced consumer and business engagement.

AI AD TOOLS

Meta has launched a fresh suite of AI-powered ad tools aimed at helping advertisers drive more efficient campaign performance across platforms like Facebook and Instagram. These new tools focus on:

  • AI-Generated Image Expansion: Advertisers can now use Meta’s generative AI to automatically expand images to better fit different ad formats and placements, improving visual consistency across devices.

  • Text Variations with AI: Meta’s AI can now generate multiple text variations based on original ad copy, allowing for dynamic A/B testing and improved message personalization.

  • Background Generation: Advertisers can remove and replace backgrounds in product shots using AI, allowing for more creative experimentation without reshoots.

  • AI Sandbox Expansion: Meta is scaling its AI Sandbox (a testing environment for generative tools), giving more advertisers access to features like headline generation and creative remixes.

This launch is part of Meta’s broader effort to integrate generative AI into its ad ecosystem, promising greater creative agility and performance at scale.

Expert Insights 🌟

From Homeland Security to Ad Strategy: What Meta Advertisers Can Learn from Government-Tech R&D

Most advertisers don’t look to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) for marketing inspiration. But they should. The DHS Science & Technology Directorate’s new mission—focused on proactive threat detection, advanced data analytics, and resilient infrastructure—signals a broader opportunity for Meta advertisers to borrow from the government’s innovation playbook.

At its core, the S&T Directorate’s new wave of grants is about future-proofing through precision data handling, algorithmic trust, and real-time decision-making—all familiar ambitions in performance marketing. The difference? Government-backed research is building the frameworks to operationalize these goals at scale, with security, ethics, and reliability baked in. For Meta advertisers, these same principles are increasingly mission-critical.

As privacy regulation tightens and platform policies evolve, brands that succeed on Meta aren’t just targeting well—they’re architecting campaigns around trust, accountability, and adaptive intelligence. That’s where DHS-aligned tech comes in. Risk scoring models used to detect cyber threats can inspire audience segmentation strategies that prioritize predictive accuracy over broad strokes. Federated learning, pioneered in security environments, offers blueprints for privacy-safe optimization. And real-time anomaly detection tools built for national security can help brands better anticipate creative fatigue, click fraud, or signal loss.

The bigger opportunity? Elevating ad operations from media buying to risk-aware, mission-aligned systems. Performance marketers who begin applying resilience thinking—borrowed from government-tech—to Meta campaigns can mitigate volatility, defend ROI, and even turn compliance into competitive advantage.

This isn’t about militarizing marketing. It’s about learning from systems built to survive—and applying those lessons to campaigns built to scale.

Influencer Corner 📢'

We chatted with Amy J. Oelkers, TikTok’s GM, US Head of Commerce, about how the power of discovery on TikTok is driving commerce everywhere | TikTok for Business

📌 4 in 5 users are discovering brands through creators' recommendations.*

📌 After discovering something on TikTok (via a creator), 45% of users continued searching for more information on the platform.

📌 1 in 4 users search within the first 30 seconds of opening the app (internal user data).

In our Shoptalk 2025 wrap up with ClickZ.com, one thing was clear | Lee Arthur

This industry is operating in a new reality. From full-funnel AI to omnichannel orchestration, the conversations weren’t speculative,they were tactical.

Here are the biggest shifts we heard on the ground:

🔹 AI is everywhere
“AI isn’t a concept -it’s a capability,” summed up by voices across the floor. From text-to-buy to media measurement, brands are moving from testing to scaling.

🔹 Omnichannel is baseline
“Omnichannel isn’t a trend - it’s the new baseline,” said Sam Carter, CEO at Fospha. The new standard is unified journeys online and off.

Optimization Hub ⚙️

BUSINESS MEASUREMENT FRAMEWORK

Breaking organizational silos is essential for building effective measurement frameworks, ensuring data-driven insights drive marketing success. By involving all stakeholders and focusing on real-world applications, businesses can align metrics with strategic objectives. Tailored frameworks improve communication and performance across departments, essential for today's competitive landscape.

SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING

Instagram's new monthly recap feature provides creators with valuable insights into their content performance, including total views, follower engagement, and specific audience activity times. This feature aids marketers by offering actionable tips to enhance content strategy based on the unique behaviors of their audiences, fostering a more tailored approach to growth and engagement.

ECOMMERCE OPTIMIZATION

Adjusting the Google Ads bid strategy, specifically the Target ROAS, can enhance Shopping Ads revenue without reducing profitability for eCommerce businesses. Use Impression Share and Search Lost IS metrics to identify and rectify revenue loss. Gradual budget and ROAS adjustments ensure consistent performance improvement.

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