Top trends and news about paid media and growth through the lens of industry leaders
X Ads Manager Got a Makeover: New Dashboard, AI Targeting, Vertical Video. But the Migration Broke Things.
X redesigned its Ads Manager with real improvements: AI targeting, vertical video, unified dashboard. The product is better. But the migration brought data discrepancies between API and dashboard, a policy overhaul with 35% rejection rates, an aesthetic scoring system that financially penalizes non-compliant creative, and a global outage during the rollout.
Stripe Enters Facebook Ads: Native Checkout, the Agentic Commerce Protocol
Stripe launched native checkout inside Facebook Ads where users can buy without leaving the app. This isn't just a payments feature: it's the first concrete step toward a model where the funnel compresses to ad-to-checkout. For paid media teams, the urgent question isn't whether to activate, but how to measure when the click to your site disappears.
Meta Andromeda: real revolution in ad delivery or black box with better marketing?
Andromeda radically expanded how many ads compete for each impression on Meta, feeding Advantage+ with more data and more options. The operational response depends on team size, budget, and tolerance for concentration risk.
Manus AI in Meta Ads Manager: the platform now also operates your account
Meta integrated Manus AI into Ads Manager as an autonomous agent available to all advertisers. Current capabilities are reporting and analysis, not campaign execution. But the conflict of interest is structural: the platform that sells your inventory now also controls the intelligence layer inside your account.
ChatGPT Ads Are Now in Testing: An Operational Update
OpenAI started testing ads in ChatGPT for free tier users in the US. Ads appear below responses without influencing content. There's no buying platform and no performance benchmarks. The honest move today: awareness, not resource investment.
ChatGPT Ads: The Rise of Answer Engine Marketing (AEM)
The launch of ads in ChatGPT marks the transition from Search Engine Marketing (SEM) to Answer Engine Marketing (AEM). This shift will impact performance measurement, especially in Latin America, where deployment is expected by late 2026. Success will depend on brands' ability to become the suggested answer, prioritizing semantic influence over traditional click bidding.
The click tax: The trap of Retail Media fragmentation in LATAM
If you are a mass consumption brand in Latin America, you are not buying advertising; you are paying a "data toll" to each retailer separately. Retail Media is the great promise of the decade, but the lack of standards is creating a black hole in marketing budgets. This post analyzes why your reports from Mercado Ads and Rappi are never going to match and how to avoid being charged three times for the same sale.
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