Women ran an experiment to see if LinkedIn's new algo was being sexist and thought they proved it. But there's more complexity involved, experts say.

Retro's new feature, Rewind, lets you look back at your photo memories and scroll through them with a dial.

Reddit, one of the world's largest social platforms, is arguing that it doesn't meet the definition of "social media platforms" as it seeks to overturn Australia's law banning children under 16 years of age from social media.

Verified users will actually be notable figures, not just people who paid for the checkmark.

LinkedIn is rolling out new ad tools that help you boost brand awareness, personalize your messages, and speed up creative work so you can reach potential buyers earlier in the funnel.

What’s new. LinkedIn announced these new features:

• Reserved Ads give your brand prime placement in the LinkedIn feed, delivering premium visibility, predictable impressions, and a greater share of top-of-feed attention than competitors. The format works across Video, Thought Leader, Single Image, and Document Ads, helping brands maximize creative impact.
• Ad personalization lets messages adjust dynamically using profile data such as first name, job title, industry, or company. It matters: 71% of consumers expect personalized messaging, and 76% get frustrated when it’s missing (McKinsey).
• AI-powered creative tools make it easier to test multiple ad variations. AI Ad Variants generate fresh, on-brand copy from one seed input, while Flexible Ad Creation (rolling out in early 2026) lets marketers upload multiple assets that LinkedIn will automatically mix, match, and optimize for performance.

Why we care. LinkedIn’s updates may make it easier for brands to get noticed, personalize their ads, and produce creative faster. Reserved Ads guarantee top-of-feed placement, while Ad Personalization adjusts messages based on a person’s name, company, or job title to make them feel more relevant. New AI tools also help create and test ads quickly, improving engagement and reaching early-stage buyers more efficiently.

What’s next. B2B advertisers should experiment with Reserved Ads, ad personalization, and AI-driven creative tools to strengthen top-of-funnel impact, refine messaging, and optimize performance – all without adding significant manual effort.

LinkedIn’s announcement. How New LinkedIn Features Help You Scale Personalized Creative and Boost Awareness

Pinterest attracts users who want inspiration and solutions, not passive browsing. 

The platform now reaches 600 million monthly active users, many of whom arrive with clear intent to research, plan, or purchase. 

That makes its ad formats especially valuable for marketers who want to appear in moments when people are actively looking for ideas and products. 

Here’s how each format works and when to consider it.

Ad formats explained

Pinterest Ads offers a variety of ad formats, many of which aren’t available on other social media platforms.

Let’s take a look at what formats they offer and when you might want to consider using them.

Carousel ads

Carousel ads are an interactive format that showcase two to five cards (images), where users can swipe through the cards, tap a card to open a close-up view, or click through to a destination URL.

This format is a great way for advertisers to showcase multiple messages or products and encourage users to engage with the ad via the swipe capabilities.

Example: A wedding planner could use multiple cards to share statistics on the U.K. wedding market and rising costs of the average wedding, with the final card promoting an ebook on how to reduce costs, which is available to download for free on their website.

Collection ads

Similar to carousel ads, collection ads allow advertisers to show multiple products in one ad.

The ad starts with a “hero” creative (either an image, a video, or a slideshow), which sits above three smaller images. 

When the user clicks on the ad and opens close-up mode, they are presented with up to 24 additional images or products.

This format can be used by advertisers who want to showcase multiple products, such as a specific collection or a product catalog.

Example: A jewelry store could use a looping video of a woman putting on a gold set of jewelry, with the three smaller images showing product images of each item. 

Once the user clicks on the ad, they are presented with the full range of gold jewelry sold by the business.

Idea ads

Idea ads are made from a single full-screen image or video and appear on the homepage, in searches, and alongside related pins.

This is an ideal format for advertisers who want their ads to have a more native feel while still being shoppable or facilitating site visits.   

---

Standard ads

This is the most basic ad offering on Pinterest, with the ad made from a single static image.

Standard ads are a great option for advertisers looking for a simple format, can offer a visually compelling image, and want to take users directly to their site.

Example: A CrossFit gym could use a photo from a recent shoot of one of its classes in action, with clear, bold text stating “Join us,” the logo in the top right corner, and a call to action to “Book your free class.” 

Video ads

There are two types of video ads available on Pinterest: standard and max-width.

• Standard video ads are the same size as a standard pin and consist of a single video.
• Max-width video ads expand across both column feeds when viewed through the Pinterest app, making them twice the size of standard video ads.

Due to their autoplay nature, these formats are ideal for grabbing users’ attention and for advertisers who are able to tell a story with video content. 

Shopping ads 

Shopping ads use a single, static product image, but unlike standard ads, they also show product details including price.

This format is ideal for ecommerce brands looking to showcase products through a shoppable format and those with a dependable product feed.

Quiz ads

Quiz ads enable advertisers to build a quiz with two to three questions and, depending on the answers given, show users two to three results. 

The results consist of a visual asset, a headline, and a description, from which the user can click through to a website to continue their journey.

This is another interactive format, ideal for advertisers looking to offer users a more customized experience.

Example: A beauty brand could use the quiz format to guide users to the product page for the right range for their skincare needs. 

This helps address users’ wants and needs and provides a more personal experience than sending them to the website homepage.

Local inventory ads

Local inventory ads help advertisers promote their products alongside real-time pricing for in-stock items. 

They require advertisers to set up store locations and local product information via a store feed and a local inventory supplemental feed.

This format works well for advertisers looking to drive store visits and promote their convenience to local platform users.

Dig deeper: Cross-platform, not copy-paste: Smarter Meta, TikTok, and Pinterest ad creative

Ad formats in beta

Pinterest ads regularly offers new ad formats, with the following two currently in beta

Top of Search ads

In September 2025, Pinterest began testing Top of Search ads, which appear within the first 10 slots of search results and related pins.

Top of Search ads have a 29% higher average CTR than other campaigns, according to Pinterest’s test data. This is a promising format for advertisers looking to quickly and effectively capture the attention of high-intent users.

Lead ads

Lead ads are designed to help advertisers reach prospects on Pinterest by enabling them to collect information through a lead form, making them an ideal format for lead generation.

Advertisers can choose what text appears in the descriptions, questions, and confirmation card, giving them control over the information they want to collect.

The case for investing in Pinterest ads in 2026

Pinterest Ads offers a mix of visual and interactive formats that help brands stand out in front of a high-intent audience.

As the platform expands its ad lineup, marketers gain additional ways to support research, inspiration, and purchase journeys with creative built for how people use Pinterest.

With more formats in development and a growing user base, 2026 presents a clear opportunity for advertisers to build or deepen their investment in the channel.

In 2026 and well beyond, a core part of the performance marketer’s charter is learning to leverage AI to drive growth and efficiency. 

Anyone who isn’t actively evaluating new AI tools to improve or streamline their PPC work is doing their brand or clients a disservice.

The challenge is that keeping up with these tools has become almost a full-time job, which is why my agency has made AI a priority in our structured knowledge-sharing. 

As a team, we’ve honed in on favorites across creative, campaign management, and AI search measurement. 

This article breaks down key options in each category, with brief reviews and a callout of my current pick.

One overarching recommendation before we dive in: be cautious about signing long-term contracts for AI tools or platforms. 

At the pace things are moving, the tool that catches your eye in December could be an afterthought by April.

AI creative tools for paid social campaigns

There’s no shortage of tools that can generate creative assets, and each comes with benefits as well as the risks of producing AI slop. 

Regardless of the tool you choose, it must be thoroughly vetted and supported by a strong human-in-the-loop process to ensure quality, accuracy, and brand alignment.

Here’s a quick breakdown of the tools we’ve tested:

• AdCreative.ai: Auto-generates images, video creatives, ad copy, and headlines in multiple sizes, with data-backed scoring for outputs.
• Creatify: Particularly strong on video ads with multi-format support.
• WASK: Combines AI creative generation with campaign optimization and competitor analysis.
• Revid AI: Well-suited for story formats.
• ChatGPT: Free and widely familiar, giving marketers an edge in effective prompting.

Our current tool of choice is AdCreative.ai. It’s easy to use and especially helpful for quickly brainstorming creative angles and variations to test. 

Like its competitors, it offers meaningful advantages, including:

• Speed and scale that allow you to generate dozens or hundreds of variants in minutes to keep creative fresh and reduce ad fatigue.
• Less reliance on external designers or editors for routine or templated outputs.
• Rapid creative experimentation across images, copy, and layouts to find winning combinations faster.
• Data-driven insights, such as creative scores or performance predictions, when available.

The usual caveats apply across all creative tools:

• Build guardrails to avoid off-brand outputs by maintaining a strong voice guide, providing exemplar content, enforcing style rules and banned words, and ensuring human review at every step.
• Watch for accuracy issues or hallucinations and include verification in your process, especially for technical claims, data, or legal copy. 

Dig deeper: How to get smarter with AI in PPC

AI campaign management and workflow tools for performance campaigns

There are plenty of workflow automation tools on the market, including long-standing options, like Zapier, Workato, and Microsoft Power Automate. 

Our preferred choice, though, is n8n. Its agentic workflows and built-in connections across ad platforms, CRMs, and reporting tools have been invaluable in automating redundant tasks.

Here are my agency’s primary use cases for n8n:

• Lead management: Automatically enrich new leads from HubSpot or Salesforce with n8n’s Clearbit automation, then route them to the right rep or nurture sequence.
• UTM cleanup: When a form fill or ad conversion comes in, automatically normalize UTM parameters before pushing them to your CRM. Some systems, like HubSpot, store values in fields such as “first URL seen” that aren’t parsed into UTM fields, so UTMs remain associated with the user but aren’t stored properly and require reconciliation.
• Data reporting: Pull metrics from APIs, structure the data, and use AI to summarize insights. Reports can then be shared via Slack and email, or dropped into collaborative tools like Google Docs.

As with any tool, n8n comes with caveats to keep in mind:

• It requires some technical ability because it’s low-code, not no-code. You often need to understand APIs, JSON, and authentication, such as OAuth or API keys. Even basic automations may involve light logic or expressions. Integrations with less mainstream tools can require scripting.
• You need a deliberate setup to maintain security. There’s no built-in role-based access control in all configurations unless you use n8n Cloud Enterprise. Misconfigured webhooks can expose data if not handled properly.
• Its ad platform integrations aren’t as broad as those of some competitors. For example, it doesn’t include LinkedIn Ads, Reddit Ads, or TikTok Ads. These can be added via direct API calls, but that takes more manual work.

Dig deeper: Top AI tools and tactics you should be using in PPC

---

AI search visibility measurement tools

Most SEOs already have preferred platforms for measurement and insights – Semrush, Moz, SE Ranking, and others. 

While many now offer reports on brand visibility in AI search results from ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, and similar tools, these features are add-ons to products built for traditional SEO.

To track how our brands show up in AI search results, we use Profound. 

While other purpose-built tools exist, we’ve found that it offers differentiated persona-level and competitor-level analysis and ties its reporting to strategic levers like content and PR or sentiment, making it clear how to act on the data.

These platforms can provide near real-time insights such as:

• Performance benchmarks that show AI visibility against competitors to highlight strengths and weaknesses.
• Content and messaging intel, including the language AI uses to describe brands and their solutions, which can inform thought leadership and messaging refinement.
• Signals that show whether your efforts are improving the consistency and favorability of brand mentions in AI answers.
• Trends illustrating how generative AI is reshaping search results and user behavior.
• Insights beyond linear keyword rankings that reveal the narratives AI models generate about your company, competitors, and industry.
• Gaps and opportunities to address to influence how your brand appears in AI answers.

No matter which tool you choose, the key is to adopt one quickly. 

The more data you gather on rapidly evolving AI search trends, the more agile you can be in adjusting your strategy to capture the growing share of users turning to AI tools during their purchase journey.

Dig deeper: Scaling PPC with AI automation: Scripts, data, and custom tools

What remains true as the AI toolset keeps shifting

I like to think most of my content for this publication ages well, but I’m not expecting this one to follow suit. 

Anyone reading it a few months after it runs will likely see it as more of a time capsule than a set of current recommendations – and that’s fine.

What does feel evergreen is the need to:

• Monitor the AI landscape.
• Aggressively test new tools and features.
• Build or maintain a strong knowledge-sharing function across your team. 

We’re well past head-in-the-sand territory with AI in performance marketing, yet there’s still room for differentiation among teams that move quickly, test strategically, and pivot together as needed.

Dig deeper: AI agents in PPC: What to know and build today