👎 Snap’s numbers.
Snapchat reports slower ad revenue growth, AI Mode now sends searches to booking and quote pages, and more.
In this issue
Happy Friday.
Here’s a tip: Brand values matter. So does knowing your market.
An Italian chef in Brisbane lost his job after refusing to put pineapple on pizza three times in four years, calling it an insult to his culture. That, we understand.
But there’s a small detail: Queensland grows every commercial pineapple in the country. Turns out the customer is always right, even when they’re wrong about pizza.
Snap’s growth shifts to subscriptions, TikTok Shop goes solo
Snapchat’s logo is a ghost, and some brand advertisers took the hint in Q3.
Users chip in: Snap’s Q3 revenue rose 14% to $1.72B, and its fastest-growing line was non-ad revenue, up 84%.
Snap’s paid subscriptions like Snapchat+, Lens+ and Memories Storage now have 30M subscribers combined. That’s a shift for an ad-funded app.
Ad revenue grew just 4%, which CEO Evan Spiegel called “below our expectations,” as brand spend fell.
User growth stalls where the money is: Daily users hit 495M, up 2M on Q2 but flat in North America and Europe. Spiegel says better ad results now come first.
Good news for performance buyers. Reach buyers, not so much.
TikTok Shop spins off: TikTok quietly launched a standalone TikTok Shop app in Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand and the Philippines.
It offers shoppable videos and livestreams, in-app checkout and app-only deals to pull shoppers from the main app. No word on the US yet.
Twitter’s lead ads get a second life: X opened its refreshed Lead Gen Ads, which collect leads inside X, to every advertiser worldwide.
A CTA button under the post matches your creative’s colors. You can download leads or sync them to your CRM.
Meta flips two switches for you: Its Marketing API, which ad tools use to build campaigns, moved to v27 with new defaults:
- Wider device reach: New eligible Sales ad sets targeting specific mobile devices or operating systems also reach other mobile devices when Meta expects better results.
- Product showcase: Meta may add closely matched products from your catalog to new ads.
To opt out, have your developer set device to 0 and enroll_status to OPT_OUT. The device default hits all API versions around February 2027.
AI Mode adds booking and checkout, Clarity tracks AI agents, and ChatGPT Ads drops bid caps
Someone tell Super Mario to keep his calendar current.
Apparently, searchers can now book plumbers through Google’s AI Mode. It’s one of several jobs AI picked up this week.
Your booking software just became a search channel: AI Mode sends US home-service searches to booking and quote pages, but only through partner platforms like Angi or Jobber.
No partner account? No direct bookings. Jobber and Housecall Pro charge no lead fee, while Google’s Local Services Ads bill booking requests as leads.
Canada gets the buy button: Google is rolling out direct checkout in AI Mode and Gemini, so Canadians can buy without leaving the conversation.
Eligible retailers include lululemon, select Shopify merchants, Shoppers Drug Mart and Simons, which stay the seller of record.
Next year, a simpler Merchant Center setup will let more retailers turn on direct checkout.
Meet your newest visitors: Microsoft is adding Agent Activity to Clarity, its website analytics tool. The report tracks which AI agents visit, what they do and where they stall.
You’ll see whether agents can finish your forms and checkout.
Caps off at ChatGPT Ads: From Monday 9 November, OpenAI swaps bid caps for target bidding:
- Target CPA replaces Max Bid in new conversion campaigns, bidding toward the average cost per conversion you set.
- Target CPC does the same for clicks, replacing Max CPC in new click campaigns.
- Existing campaigns can switch before Max Bid and Max CPC retire on 1 January 2027.
First, check that your Pixel or Conversions API sends the right event. Set targets from your actual CPA or CPC, since tight targets can leave budget unspent.
AI keeps picking up jobs, so make sure it can finish yours.
See your new homepage before you pay a cent
On Deal or No Deal, contestants decide without knowing what’s in their case. Here, you open the case first.
Your part takes two minutes: send links and a few photos. Spectrum IT, our in-house dev team, turns them into a free homepage draft within 3 working days.
Deal? They build the rest (up to 5 pages) for €0. Running it costs €500 a year plus VAT.
No deal? You owe nothing. No card, no contract.
Their best reference? Us. They rebuilt STACKED MARKETER:
- A new website, plus a games section with 2,000+ plays in two weeks
- One setup for newsletters, sign-ups and memberships, saving about $20,000 a year
Just scraps? Burger Lab went from a few phone photos to a full website.
Templates need not apply: every draft is custom, so there are only 14 of 20 spots left.
Know a business that deserves better? Send this to them.
Your AI builds may count more than your years for your next gig
Remember “growth hackers?” It was a big thing in marketing a while ago.
Now, there’s a new role in town: marketing engineers.
You know how you explain your brand voice to ChatGPT in every chat, and your Monday morning vanishes into a report?
Marketing engineers build AI workflows that handle those chores.
And Tarek Reslan at CXL went through job ads and discussions about the role to see if it’s the real deal. Let’s dissect it.
What’s the job behind the buzzword: 61% of discussions describe a marketer who automates repetitive work to make time for strategy. Typical builds:
- One context doc with your customer, positioning and voice that every AI tool reads
- A workflow that turns a brief into a campaign draft
- An agent that writes the weekly report, with next steps
You still make the final call.
A steep curve: In the year to August, 173 people in tech and marketing became marketing engineers, up 77% from 98, per workforce data firm Live Data Technologies, via the WSJ.
The skill spreads faster than the title: 40% of 878 US marketing job descriptions required AI skills in Q3, up from 15% in Q1.
Portfolios beat time-in-seat: Figma’s marketing engineer listing asks for 5+ years, but it’s “open to less time-in-seat if your AI builder portfolio is strong.”
GOAT Group’s entry-level role wants AI builds that real people used. Wonolo ranks what you built above your title. Also, no one asks for a tool certification.
No title required: Pick the chore that eats most of your week. Write the context doc first, then build one workflow end to end.
Employers most often name automation platforms like n8n and AI coding tools like Claude Code. Get a teammate to run it without you, then write down the before and after.
What we think: Job ads lag the hype. Emily Kramer’s analysis of B2B startup marketing job posts found only 15% ask marketers to build AI workflows, and 8% ask for AI work samples.
Companies seem to hand that work to one specialist, so a working build still sets you apart.
Start with Monday’s report. You’ll get your morning back, plus your first portfolio entry.
A new AI tool every week? Get three ways to use it by Monday
New AI models come out on a schedule that would make Marvel jealous. Most marketers bookmark the hype and move on.
Tactics skips the hype and gets straight to the work. Every Saturday, our free newsletter takes one new AI tool and turns it into three tactics you can apply on Monday.
Each tactic comes with:
- A "do it now" checklist
- A copy-paste prompt
- A live example to steal from
All in 7 minutes or less, so your coffee won't even go cold.
Reddit mentions track AI visibility more closely than anything else
Want AI to recommend your brand when nobody asks for it by name?
Ahrefs looked at which signals rise and fall with AI visibility, and the internet’s comment section came out on top:
Ahrefs measured how closely brands’ mentions on each signal match their visibility in unbranded AI answers.
Those are answers to questions that don’t name a brand, like “best running shoes.” The scores use a 0 to 1 scale, where higher means a closer match.
- Reddit threads that show up in Google results: 0.70 to 0.74, the top signal on all three AI platforms.
- Mentions across the web: 0.64 to 0.70.
- News articles: 0.62 to 0.66.
- YouTube and TikTok: 0.59 to 0.63, the lowest, but still strong.
Every score sits between 0.59 and 0.74, so no single channel does the job alone.
Google’s AI Mode and AI Overviews also track web mentions more closely than ChatGPT does. Remember, this shows correlation, not proof that mentions cause visibility.
The Crew’s Take: AI picks up on which brands people talk about, and Reddit is where people talk about products most candidly. Google also ranks those threads high, so its AI finds them easily.
Actionable tip: Track brand mentions, not just backlinks. Join Reddit discussions in your category openly as your brand, and earn coverage on the sites your buyers read.
AI MARKETING: This daily newsletter condenses the latest and greatest AI developments into a 5-minute read. They read the noise, pull out the signal, and explain what actually matters for work, strategy, and the tools your team is already using. Trusted by 700k+ readers. Subscribe right here.*
AMAZON ADS: Paid way more per click on Prime Day? Amazon blamed competition. The FTC and 22 states blame hidden surcharges. Their newly unredacted complaint alleges Amazon secretly raises ad prices up to 50% above auction results on ordinary days, and up to 250% on major shopping days like Black Friday.
GOOGLE SEARCH: Parasite SEO penalties stop at the EEA border, and Google is only now telling affected sites. These site reputation abuse manual actions target third-party pages that borrow a host site’s ranking power. Got one? Since August 30, it no longer affects what EEA searchers see. Everywhere else, it still applies.
YOUTUBE: Gambling advertisers just got better odds on YouTube. Since October 30, Google allows more personalized gambling ads in the US, UK and Canada, through its predefined audiences, like interests and demographics. Audiences you build yourself and gambling-related health data are off-limits.
LINKEDIN: Tired of opening analytics one post at a time? The new Post Performance Table puts all your posts in one view, so you can compare impressions, members reached, followers gained, saves and DM shares. You can also export everything for custom reports.
META: Need someone to hear your pitch before the client does? Muse, Meta’s AI app, now holds real-time voice conversations, with an expressive avatar that reacts as you talk. You can interrupt it and pick from hundreds of voices, pirate included, and it’s rolling out in the US first.
SOCIAL MEDIA: California’s AB 1709 bans features like personalized feeds and autoplay for under-16s from January 2027, unless a court blocks it. Google, Meta and TikTok just sued for exactly that, citing free speech.
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