TBD Weekly Marketing Pulse Vol. 1

Trend Radar: The AI Arms Race in Marketing Is Heating Up

The marketing world is at a turning point. In addition to offering AI add-ons, platforms are now baking AI into the core of delivery and creative strategy. Google is pushing Gemini AI into Search campaigns, giving marketers deeper insights and automation capabilities. TikTok is aggressively fusing commerce with creator culture, allowing brands to leverage the full potential of the creator economy to drive sales. Meta is claiming to deepen transparency (finally), giving advertisers more clarity on ad performance and targeting. Meanwhile, The Trade Desk is doubling down on data science through Koa AI, improving programmatic media buying capabilities.

In 2025, "performance" is not just about better ads. It’s about smarter systems. The real differentiator now is executional intelligence: how well you adapt to AI-driven shifts faster than your competitors.

Platform Watch: Fresh This Week

Google Ads – Rolling out May 27, 2025

Google announced its new AI Max features for Search ads, built on Gemini AI. These enhancements are designed to make campaigns more efficient by automating key aspects of ad creation and optimization.

• Predictive audiences: Google Ads will now predict user intent with greater accuracy, allowing you to target potential customers before they search for your product.

• Automatically created assets: Google will automatically generate ad creatives based on campaign goals, removing the need for marketers to manually design every ad.

• New Search themes: New thematic ad structures will improve relevance and engagement.

  
  

This is Google’s strongest move yet to reduce manual optimization.

TBD tip: Use these features in a sandboxed campaign to benchmark performance vs your manual set.

Meta (Facebook & Instagram) – Quiet Iteration Mode

Meta hasn’t released any major updates, but it has quietly enhanced its Ad Library with the following improvements:

• Industry-specific creative insights: Marketers now have access to more specific creative guidelines tailored to different industries.

• Historical performance tracking: Meta has improved its ability to track past ad performance across different campaigns and platforms.

• Reels-first creative benchmarks: Meta is pushing Reels as a central format, offering benchmarks for optimizing Reels-based campaigns.

  
  

TikTok – Q2 2025 Focus: Ecom Meets Creator Economy

TikTok's Shop feature continues to scale at an impressive rate, reportedly hitting $1B in monthly GMV in the US alone. Key updates for 2025 include:

• Deep creator-storefront integration: Creators will be able to directly sell products from their profiles, further blurring the line between content creation and e-commerce.

• Native checkout inside the app: TikTok is now offering a fully integrated shopping experience without users needing to leave the app.

• Discovery algorithm tweaks for shoppable content: The platform has made algorithmic changes to prioritize shoppable content, allowing users to discover products organically within their feeds.

The Trade Desk (TTD) – Koa AI Just Got Smarter

Koa AI by The Trade Desk has rolled out new features designed to improve programmatic advertising performance:

• Lookalike modeling: Koa AI’s enhanced lookalike modeling can identify high-value audiences more effectively.

• Real-time bid optimization: Koa AI now adjusts bids in real-time based on data inputs, ensuring campaigns are always aligned with the best-performing strategies.

• Cross-device user stitching: This allows advertisers to track a user’s journey across devices, providing a more unified view of customer behavior.

Tool Spotlight: Jasper AI 3.0

The new Jasper AI includes:

• Tone-matching via website scan: Jasper now scans your website to match the tone and style of your brand’s content.

• Workflows for ads, emails, and landing pages: Pre-designed workflows make it faster to create content that drives conversions.

• Multilingual and team collaboration: Collaborate with team members, and generate content in multiple languages with ease.

Use Jasper to speed up content creation and free your brain for strategy.

Campaign of the Week: Zalando's AI-Driven Fashion Imagery Campaign

Brand: Zalando 

Campaign: AI-Generated Fashion Imagery 

Date: Q1 2025 

Region: Europe

In early 2025, Zalando took its marketing to the next level by integrating AI-generated fashion imagery in collaboration with its AI-powered fashion tools. This resulted in a 90% cost reduction in image production, as well as a significant boost in efficiency.

Key Metrics:

Reduced image production time from 6-8 weeks to 3-4 days

AI-powered content for approximately 70% of editorial images in Q4 2024

28% increase in user adoption and 48% boost in traffic for fashion campaigns in Q1 2025

Takeaway

Zalando’s use of AI for imagery shows how technology can enable faster response to trends while cutting costs. Marketers, take note. AI isn’t just for ads; it’s transforming creative production.

Source: Reuters

From the TBD Blog

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