Weekly Hacks #1: what's new in Meta, TikTok, Google and ChatGPT ads

"Weekly Hacks" is our new column. Once a week we briefly cover what changed in Meta, TikTok, Google and AI-assistant advertising and explain right away how to use it. Only what is confirmed by sources; we mark separately what is already live and what is still in testing.

Meta: AI tools from Advertising Week

On October 6 Meta presented new tools for advertisers. The key points:

• Customer Lifecycle Strategy — available to everyone. You can tell a campaign whom it is looking for: new customers, existing ones or both. Recommendations and automatic changes adapt to this goal.
• Video from static images — available to everyone. Advantage+ creative builds a video ad from your banners and photos. According to Meta, over 60% of time on Facebook and Instagram is spent watching video.
• Ads Creative Studio — opening more widely. One place shows which creatives work and lets you fix the hook, music, captions and ending of a video.
• Catalog video — beta for some advertisers: a video made from product photos.
• AI assistant in Ads Manager — in testing. Soon it will create campaigns and change targeting and budgets on request in a chat. Meta says advertisers who accept its recommendations get 5% more conversions at the same cost. Meta has not disclosed the methodology, so for now this is a platform claim.
• AI audience discovery in Detailed Targeting is promised by the end of 2026.

A hack for schools and courses. Split your goals: one campaign looks only for new students, the other sells the next course to people already studying. This used to require excluding audiences by hand; now you just pick the goal in the setting. While you're at it, feed your 2–3 best static creatives into video generation and compare cost per lead: it's a free way to get a video format without a shoot.

Meta: new ad terms from October 30

Meta has updated its Commercial Terms and Self-Serve Ad Terms. You don't need to accept them separately: if you keep running ads after October 30, you have accepted the new terms. According to reviews by lawyers and agencies, the key points are:

• The advertiser is responsible for AI content, even if the image or text was created by Meta's own tool.
• AI watermarks and metadata may not be removed.
• Meta may test pricing, targeting, delivery, reporting and creatives without notice.
• Meta gets a broad right to crawl your website and use its content to develop and train its products.

What to do. Before October 30, read the terms in full in Ads Manager. Check every creative generated in Advantage+ with your own eyes: if the AI invents a "guaranteed result" promise, you will be the one answering for it, not Meta.

TikTok: ad network, an AI agent for leads, and search

On October 5 TikTok also presented at Advertising Week:

• TikTok Ad Network, formerly Pangle: nearly 400,000 third-party apps worldwide. Launched straight from TikTok Ads Manager, but for US advertisers only for now. Important: Smart+ campaigns can pull this network in automatically, so it's better to test it in a separate campaign.
• Agentic Leads: an AI agent that talks to people in TikTok direct messages and in the form on your website, asks follow-up questions and filters out unqualified leads. No launch date has been given.
• Smart+ Creative Selection: your creatives, videos from Symphony AI and creator content in a single approval window; only what you approve goes live.
• Buy Direct and Shopping Assistant: one-click purchase straight from the feed and a chat assistant for products. No dates or countries yet.
• MCP connector for AI agents: according to TikTok, the number of advertisers managing campaigns through it has grown by more than 200%.

A hack that works right now, in any country. According to TikTok's internal data, 57% of users use in-app search and 23% start a search within 30 seconds of opening the app. Put exactly the words your customer searches for into the video, caption and subtitles: "English classes for kids Warsaw", not "we teach with love". That way the video gets impressions both in the feed and in search.

Google: ads inside AI answers

• Ads in AI Overviews and AI Mode run in the US. Ads from Performance Max, Shopping, AI Max for Search and broad match Search get there; you don't need to switch anything on separately.
• Only broad match gets inside the AI answer. Exact match shows above or below the answer, but not inside it.
• New formats in testing: Conversational Discovery (Gemini writes the ad copy for a specific question) and Highlighted Answers (your ad inside the AI's list of recommendations). Both are labeled as ads.
• No separate reporting: impressions in AI answers are part of overall search figures, and you can't bid on or exclude this placement separately.

What this means for Ukraine and Europe. For now this is a US market, but Google usually expands such formats to other countries. If you sell in the US, check that you have a broad match or AI Max campaign: without one you won't get into AI answers. Everyone else should already be working on getting AI assistants to recommend them for free, which is GEO.

ChatGPT Ads: more than 60 countries

On September 23–24 OpenAI added seven Asian markets: Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, Vietnam and Taiwan. ChatGPT Ads now run in more than 60 countries, including 31 European ones. According to OpenAI, ad revenue reached a $1 billion annual run rate in under 200 days after launch. Only Free and Go users see the ads. We covered how to launch and what it costs in our ChatGPT Ads guide.

What is live and what is still in testing

Five things to do this week

1. Turn on Customer Lifecycle Strategy and split campaigns between new and existing customers.
2. Feed your 2–3 best static creatives into Advantage+ video generation and compare cost per lead with the originals.
3. Read Meta's new terms before October 30 and check every AI creative before launch.
4. Rewrite your TikTok captions and subtitles around what your customers search for.
5. If you sell in Europe or the US, set aside a small test budget for ChatGPT Ads: competition there is still lower than on Meta and Google.

Sources

1. Social Media Today — Meta introduces new AI-powered tools at Advertising Week
2. Relevant Audience — Meta's Advertising Week 2026 tools: live vs testing
3. Common Thread — Meta's new ad terms from October 30, 2026
4. PPC Land — TikTok opens an ad network of nearly 400,000 apps
5. Music Ally — TikTok's Advertising Week 2026 announcements
6. Zozimus — ads inside the answer: Google AI Mode and ChatGPT Ads
7. Mixed News — ChatGPT Ads now run in more than 60 countries
8. Meta for Business — Meta Ads AI Connectors