James Murray
November 09, 2026
Good morning, it's James here. Two weeks ago I told you to get legal to read Meta's new ad terms before Nov. 20. On Thursday, Meta paused them indefinitely. Some say I am a visionary. Others say I overreact. I’ll let you decide.
In Partnership With: Hubspot for Startups
Sales Owns Retention, Not Just Closed Deals
The Lead: Meta Hits Pause on Its AI Ad Terms
What happened. Meta took down the preview of its proposed commercial terms and posted a Business Help Center notice saying the updates "are now paused and will not take effect on November 20, 2026." The pause covers the Commercial Terms, Product Catalog Terms, Self-Serve Ad Terms and Ad Creative Generative AI Terms. "In the meantime, our existing terms remain in effect," the notice says (Nieman Lab).
Courts in Norway and Brazil issued preliminary injunctions against the terms, and Sens. Adam Schiff and Marsha Blackburn wrote to Mark Zuckerberg asking him to withdraw them (Nieman Lab). The UK's Competition and Markets Authority is investigating "whether Meta is abusing a dominant position by imposing exploitative terms on publishers and advertisers," and says it hasn't reached a decision (CMA).
Why CMOs should care. Meta's on-device conversion measurement for the Pixel starts rolling out on Thursday, Nov. 12, and it's already turned on for any advertiser who hasn't opted out (PPC Land). That's 15 days before Black Friday, so Meta could report more purchases while your actual orders stay flat.
Bram Van der Hallen, a Meta ads specialist who works at Edge.be, found a Meta notice saying "eligible promotions can appear with your new ad, even though promotions are turned off for your original ad." The control is a "Detected offers" checkbox in Commerce Manager, under Settings and then Offer merchandising (PPC Land). Meta hasn't announced this, and the only source so far is one practitioner's screenshots.
The take. Before Thursday, have your team record Meta-reported purchases next to your real orders by day for the past month. You'll then be able to tell whether a holiday lift is real or a change in how Meta counts. Untick "Detected offers" unless you want Meta choosing which discounts appear in your ads. The Advantage+ creative enhancements we covered two weeks ago are also unaffected by the pause, so keep reviewing live ads after every account update.
Musical Chairs
McDonald's U.S. CMO Alyssa Buetikofer is stepping down and will stay through Dec. 18. Global CMO Morgan Flatley becomes interim chief creative officer, and Charlie Newberger, who led global beverage strategy, becomes interim U.S. chief marketing and commercial officer (Nation's Restaurant News). Flatley has said McDonald's needs to move away from "borrowed IP," even after hits like the Grinch Meal.
Mattel named Steve Totzke president and COO, overseeing the brand portfolio, sales and consumer products. Roberto Stanichi, president and chief marketing and brand officer, is stepping down (Mattel via Business Wire). The announcement doesn't name a new marketing chief, and the brand portfolio now reports to Mattel's former chief commercial officer.
Osaic, a wealth management firm, hired Manish Shrivastava as CMO. He spent 12 years as CMO of homebuilder PulteGroup (Business Wire).
By The Numbers: 55%
That's how much AppLovin's third-quarter revenue grew, to $2.19 billion. Unity grew 32%. Over the same quarter, Criteo fell 11%, Taboola fell 6.9% and Teads fell 26%, and Criteo's retail media revenue dropped 23% (Digiday). Digiday reads the split as a sign of "the decline of the open web and the resilience of app-based media."
If a big share of your prospecting runs on open-web display or native, ask your agency for this year's CPMs and conversion rates by channel next to last year's.
Brand Spotlight: Prada Draws It by Hand
Prada's holiday campaign, "Drawing Prada: Animated By Hand," mixes live action with hand-drawn characters led by Disney veteran John Pomeroy. "There's a very distinct and purposeful reason to do hand-drawn animation, and that's to see that there's value in it," Pomeroy said (Euronews). Euronews pointed out that Coca-Cola's AI Christmas ads drew criticism in both 2024 and 2025 (Euronews).
After its AI-made Super Bowl spot drew a backlash, Svedka is letting consumers make the next one, with a $500,000 prize and entries due Dec. 1. Sazerac CMO Sara Saunders said "we heard plenty of people say they could do a better job," and entries can still be "AI-led" (Marketing Dive).
Make a list of which holiday assets used AI, and decide who signs off on what you'll say when a customer or reporter asks.
The Reading List
Publishers' ad growth is about to get harder (Digiday) The New York Times' digital ad growth slowed from 20.7% in Q2 to 12% in Q3, and the CEO warns that "the comps get tougher."
Reddit tests ads in search results (TechCrunch) The test is open to "a select group of eligible advertisers," with ads matched to what people search for on Reddit.
AI Mode now shows up to four ads under one answer (PPC Land) The usual count had been one to three. Google hasn't said whether it's a test.
Snap is dropping daily users as its headline metric (Snap) Revenue grew 14% to $1.72 billion, and from Q1 2027 Snap will report monthly users instead.
One More Thing
Three companies changed how they count this week. Meta's Pixel will start matching some purchases on shoppers' devices. Snap will report monthly users instead of daily ones from next year. And Reddit, days after warning that daily users could fall, opened its search results to ads. When a platform changes the metric, last year's benchmark stops being comparable. Note the date of each change next to your Q4 reporting so nobody reads a counting change as a performance change in January.
See you next Monday.
—James