Meta Advertiser Field Notes
Wednesday observations from inside Meta ads
There’s a whole lot going on. I documented several important things that Meta advertisers might find interesting from the past week. Some are new features or things I discovered. Others come from specific projects I’m working on. None warranted a full post on their own, but all are worth paying attention to.
- Short, living references for Meta advertisers
- Meta ad revenue increases 24% YOY
- Add Threads account to Business Portfolio
- ChatGPT ads $200,000 minimum commitment
- Where did Page Transparency go?
- Impression count in Ad Library
- Conversion count reporting fixed
- Test Flight and a Meta ads scam
Let’s get to it…
1. Ad Briefs: Short, Living References for Meta Advertisers
I know how overwhelming Meta advertising can be for those looking for direction. There are conflicting opinions everywhere. And even my own content is a lot to digest — not to mention the problem of constantly evolving best practices.
That’s why I created Ad Briefs. I developed briefs for 18 of the most important, confusing, and controversial topics. Ad Briefs include:
Each Ad Brief is a living document, regularly updated to reflect my recommended approach and best practices. A brief consists of a written summary, key takeaways, and linked sources to learn more.
You can view an example here for Simplified Campaign Construction, my recommended approach to creating campaigns. This is a free preview. To get access to all 18 Ad Briefs (and more, as needed), go here to join my membership.
2. Meta Ad Revenue Increases 24% Year Over Year
Meta’s Q4 2025 earnings are out. If you expected trouble, you haven’t been paying attention. Meta consistently beats expectations.
Here are a couple of highlights related to advertising…
Ad revenue for Q4 exceeded $58 billion, which was up 24% over Q4 in 2024.
Peaking in Q4 during the holidays isn’t a surprise. But the 24% increase is greater than the 20% increase seen from Q4 2023 to 2024. Performance wasn’t limited to one part of the world, as revenue increased 22% in the US and Canada, and 27% in Europe.
Ad impressions increased 18% worldwide, driven most by a 24% increase in Asia-Pacific.
And while costs are up slightly overall, the biggest increase is coming from “Rest of World” (not the United States, Canada, Europe, or Asia-Pacific), which is up 15%.
So, Meta is making more money from ads, driven both by increased impressions and costs. And those increased impressions are at least partially due to continued user growth (if that seems possible).
That’s right. Nearly half the planet is on a Meta app.
3. Add Threads Account to Business Portfolio
For a while now, Meta advertisers have been able to utilize the Threads Feed placement and run ads from their Threads accounts in Ads Manager. And now Meta is allowing advertisers to add Threads accounts to Business Portfolios.
If you want to add your public Threads account to your Business Portfolio, you’ll first need an Instagram Business account. If you want to add a new Threads account created after January 29th, and its username matches your Instagram’s, you’re in luck. Your Threads account will be added automatically to the same business portfolio as the associated Instagram account. You’ll inherit the same user permission settings that applied to the Instagram account.
If you want to add a new Threads account created after January 29th, you’ll need to do so manually in your Business Portfolio. Learn how here.
4. About Those ChatGPT Ads…
A couple of weeks ago, we received the news that ChatGPT ads are coming soon. That got me pretty excited and eager to be part of the initial rollout.
Yeah, I might need to wait. OpenAI is telling advertisers that they’ll need to commit to spending at least $200,000 on ads. Up front.
This comes a week after rumors surfaced that initial CPM costs are expected to be around $60. Honestly, that doesn’t bother me. If the ads are as relevant as they could be, most advertisers would be willing to pay more.
But I don’t have $200,000 sitting around to experiment. So I guess I’ll need to wait for a later phase.
5. Where Did Page Transparency Go?
One of the easiest ways to snoop on another brand to see what ads they were running at any given moment was via the Page Transparency section of that brand’s Facebook page.
Maybe I’m blind, but I’m not seeing it in the About section, or anywhere else on the page…
That information is still available in the Meta Ad Library, of course. But it’s interesting that it appears this information is now more difficult to find.
6. Impression Count in Ad Library
Oh, yeah, about that. I’ve heard from a few advertisers now who have noticed that the Ad Library is providing a bit more insight into the distribution of an ad. Any ads getting fewer than 100 impressions will be labeled as such.
Interesting? Maybe. If you’re busy copying your competitors’ ads, you may want to stop short of swiping ideas that haven’t proven to work.
7. Conversion Count Reporting Fixed
Late last year, Meta rolled out the ability to customize Conversion Count in the ad set. Instead of optimizing for the standard All Conversions, you could optimize for First Conversion.
There was one pretty big problem, though: Even if you changed optimization to First Conversion, Meta was still reporting all conversions by default.
Meta said the problem would be fixed by the end of January, and they followed through. You may have seen this message in Ads Manager…
I’m still not convinced optimizing for First Conversion makes sense. But if you do, know that the default reporting will be representative of that optimization going forward.
8. Test Flight and Meta Ads Scam
One of my biggest worries about LLMs is that scammers, long ridiculed for their easily spotted schemes, would be able to write more persuasive emails. We’re seeing that now.
I’m not typically an easy mark for these folks. I do everything I can to resist clicking links in emails, especially from people I don’t know. But this one almost had me.
The scam itself isn’t particularly new (here’s a post on Reddit about it from two years ago). But the email is far more convincing.
First, the email certainly appears to be coming from [email protected]. Second, well done on buttering me up. And third, it seems reasonable that this might be an exclusive opportunity to test out Meta AI Ads.
But luckily, I took a very close look at that link and saw “testflight” in the URL. I’ve received several similar invitations during the past few months for supposed test runs of ChatGPT ads using Test Flight.
As I said, the scam itself is reasonably well known. They get you to access their app and give up all of your details or something (I don’t know exactly, but I’m not going to do it).
I’ve generally learned to be ultra skeptical of anything that seems just a bit off. But in the world of LLMs, you have to be extra vigilant now. It’s getting tougher.
Stay safe out there, kids.
More to Come
I’ll be sharing observations like this every Wednesday, as long as Meta keeps shipping changes faster than they explain them.
