Instagram tests 90-minute videos, Pinterest opens up to programmatic buyers, and more

Scorsese needed almost three and a half hours for Killers of the Flower Moon.

Instagram is giving creators 90 minutes. Paycheck not included.

Coming soon to a feed near you: Instagram is testing Features, a format for videos up to 90 minutes, like podcasts, vlogs and interviews. Select US creators have it now.

VidIQ says YouTube pays creators $1 to $10 per 1,000 long-form views. On Instagram, views alone pay close to nothing.

So brand deals are the main reason to go long there. Expect creators to pitch you sponsored long-form content.

Pinterest plugs into your media plan: Programmatic Deals let you buy Pinterest display and video ads through the ad-buying platforms (DSPs) you already use.

You can buy through Amazon Ads, Google DV360, Yahoo DSP or DeepIntent in the Americas and Asia Pacific. Europe isn’t included yet.

…and Meta’s magic number is 50: Meta’s peak-season guide says each ad set needs about 50 conversions a week to learn.

Below that, ad sets cost about 28% more per purchase. To find how many ad sets your budget supports, use this formula: weekly budget ÷ (cost per result × 50) = your max ad sets.

Running more? Merge them before peak spend hits.

ChatGPT ads start arriving through Amazon DSP as AI answers swallow search

AI companies built the answer machines. Now the ads are coming, and so is the ad money.

DSP-served ChatGPT ads are showing up in the wild, and users are spotting them because their click URLs route through Amazon’s click tracking.

Remember, we covered this in September. And now the report says it expects DSP to handle buying and likely targeting, while the creative stays standard ChatGPT. Details are still thin.

OpenAI is also testing a text ad with a dotted-underlined “Learn more” link and an upward arrow. Not every ad gets it yet.

The lookup tool: OpenAI’s Signals data, a monthly sample of 1M consumer messages sorted by topic, shows that looking for information now edges writing in ChatGPT.

Lookups include product questions, so make sure ChatGPT can find accurate answers about yours.

Google answers first, too: AI Overviews, Google’s AI summaries above the results, now appear on over 80% of searches, per Semrush. That’s up from 50% in June last year.

SE Ranking puts them on 82.5% of US brand searches. Google your own brand and check what it says about you.

And the AI brands are buying: MediaPost projects Anthropic will spend over $655M on ads this year, with total sales and marketing topping $9B.

If you sell ad space, AI brands just became a category worth pitching.

They built it. Now they’re paying to advertise it.

Measurement is influencer marketing’s biggest headache, so brands boost their way to clearer numbers

An Instagram view, a TikTok view and a YouTube view walk into a bar.

Nobody can tell if that’s three people or the same person three times.

That’s influencer measurement, and Aaron Baar at Marketing Dive explains how brands work around it.

Two-thirds of marketers in a new Association of National Advertisers (ANA) influencer report call measurement the hardest part.

Vetting, negotiating, contracting and finding creators trail at 40% to 45%.

Same word, different math: Each platform defines views, reach, engagement and video completion its own way, and no standard accounts for audience overlap across channels. Even impressions don’t add up.

Don’t expect a fix soon: Aquila, the ANA’s cross-media measurement service, hasn’t started on creators and needs platforms, agencies and marketers on board.

Paid media brings receipts: So more brands pay to boost creator posts, since paid campaigns report far richer data. EMARKETER expects US boosting spend to match creators’ sponsorship revenue, about $14.2 billion, in 2027 and pass it in 2028.

As a starting point, the ANA suggests 30% paid and 70% organic for awareness, flipped for conversion. Then boost what performs.

Our tip: Write paid usage rights and whitelisting (running ads from the creator’s handle) into the first contract, so boosting a winner doesn’t mean renegotiating.

Early IAB survey results on creator brand deals flag inconsistent usage-rights terms as a barrier to growth.

Goal first, creator second: Pick sales, conversions or awareness before launch, or you can’t measure a win, let alone repeat it. It matters more as creators sell on marketplaces like TikTok Shop. “Now, they are the store,” says the ANA’s Leah Marshall.

One roster to rule them all: Kantar’s 2026 Media Reactions survey finds more brands likely to invest in micro (66%) and nano creators (61%) than macro (41%) or mega ones (42%).

More creators, more chaos: some global brands have two units negotiating against each other for the same creator. Put one group in charge, from negotiations to measurement.

Until platforms agree on what a view is, the easiest rounds to count are the ones you buy.

Most shoppers aren’t ready to chat with your store

Retailers are racing to add AI shopping assistants. Shoppers are in much less of a hurry.

Bizrate Insights and EMARKETER asked US digital shoppers how interested they are in using retail AI chatbots, and most said no thanks.

Nearly half of shoppers (47.1%) have never used a retail chatbot and have no interest in trying one. Another 11% don’t even know what one is.

Only about 1 in 5 have used one at all, and most of them didn’t stick with it: 12% tried one but don’t use it regularly, while just 7.8% are regular users.

There’s still room to grow. 22.2% haven’t tried a retail chatbot yet but say they’re interested, which is more than all current users combined.

Shoppers already know how to use search bars and filters. A chatbot adds a step, and years of frustrating customer service bots haven’t helped its reputation.

What we’d do: Add a chatbot alongside search, not as a replacement. Show it at moments where it helps, like a holiday gift finder, to win over the curious 22%.