Penne Press

Your ROAS is crying and I know why. AdTech insights, UA hot takes & growth marketing — served al dente. 🍝

[Penne Press @pennepress]

🚨 @Meta flips a new pixel setting on tomorrow, and it's on by default...

"Measure conversions on customer devices" starts Nov 12. It matches ad views to later purchases on the shopper's device and tells Meta only that a purchase happened.

Not active in the EU/UK. Needs the pixel on your own pages and a site where people log in.

Meta hasn't said if purchase value gets passed along. If it does, your Black Friday ROAS could jump without a single campaign changing. Are you tagging Nov 12 in your reports?

Source: @PPCLAND, citing Meta's Events Manager notice

[Penne Press @pennepress]

🚨 UNITED AIRLINES JUST PUT BOOKING WITH AI ON THE SAME LIST AS CREDIT CARD FRAUD...

@united rewrote its Contract of Carriage on Nov 11. Using an AI agent to book, change or service a ticket is now a prohibited practice, right next to payment fraud and hidden-city ticketing.

The definition is wide: AI assistants inside social, messaging and search apps, AI browsers, and any agent plugged in through a travel agency. It counts "whether or not" you supervise or approve it.

Possible penalties: United can cancel the booking without notice, take away miles, revoke Elite status, even close your MileagePlus account.

AI can still search and show you fares. You just have to click buy yourself.

Same day in Brussels, the EU proposed that AI shopping agents must disclose when a recommendation is paid for.

Is United protecting customers, or protecting its own app from a new middleman?

Source: PPC Land

[Penne Press @pennepress]

🚨 FTC says @amazon secretly marked up ad prices by up to 250% on Prime Day and Black Friday...

The unredacted complaint (public since Nov 5) alleges:
• up to 50% above auction results on normal days
• up to 250% on peak shopping days
• one food & beverage advertiser saw costs jump 100%+ on Prime Day 2023. Amazon's own note: it was "destroying campaign performance"
• execs discussed finding $40M more revenue to hit targets

Allegations, not findings. But Black Friday is Nov 27. When did you last check what you really paid per click?

Source: @FTC

[Penne Press @pennepress]

🚨 Digital Turbine beat on revenue, flipped to a profit... and the stock still fell ~23% after hours

Revenue: $178.7M (+27%)
Net income: $10.3M vs a $21.4M loss a year ago
Partner payouts: 49% of revenue, up from 45%
Gross margin: 43%, down from 47%

Looks like the market stopped counting growth and started counting who keeps the money. Publishers or the platform?

Source: @DigitalTurbine Q2 FY27 results

[Penne Press @pennepress]

🚨 Duolingo added 14 million daily users in a year... and now earns less from each of them

Daily users: 64.9M (+29%)
Bookings per daily user: ~$4.87, down from ~$5.58 (−13%)
Paying share of daily users: 22.8% → 20.2%

Growth is beating monetization, for now. Smart bet or expensive one?

Source: @duolingo Q3 2026 shareholder letter

[Penne Press @pennepress]

🚨 THE EU WANTS TO SWITCH OFF LOOT BOXES FOR EVERY KID IN EUROPE...

A leaked draft of the EU's Digital Fairness Act just surfaced, one day before the @EU_Commission is set to unveil it on Nov 11.

What's in it:
• No paid loot boxes for under-18s
• No pay-to-win or pay-to-progress for minors
• In games aimed at kids, paid virtual currency is off by default unless a parent approves
• Any game with a virtual currency must show the real-money price of what you buy
• Adults get drop odds for every item, plus a switch to turn loot boxes off

A game counts as "aimed at minors" if under-18s make up at least 25% of its audience.

Last year @Supercell CEO Ilkka Paananen warned rules like this would "cripple the industry."

Can free-to-play survive in Europe if teens can't buy loot boxes?

Source: @mobilegamerbiz

[Penne Press @pennepress]

🚨 YOUR NEXT CELEBRITY AD WON'T NEED THE CELEBRITY...

@Ogilvy and Hollywood talent agency CAA just launched Echo: ads starring AI clones of CAA's actors, athletes and creators.

The clones come from CAA's "Vault", a studio with 204 cameras that captures a star's face, voice, body language, even the way they walk.

The partnership is expected to cut cost per asset by 65-75%.

@terrycrews is among the first stars to opt in. The first pilots should go live toward the end of the year.

The star approves every ad, and each one carries a watermark saying it's AI-generated and approved.

Ogilvy's own pitch: brands could hire more "B-tier athletes" instead of one big movie star.

The catch: 49% of Britons already have a negative view of AI actors in ads, per YouGov.

Would you trust a celebrity ad if you knew the celebrity never showed up?

Source: @Digiday

[Penne Press @pennepress]

🚨 THE TRADE DESK BEAT ITS OWN FORECAST BY $86 MILLION. THE CATCH IS IN THE FINE PRINT...

@TheTradeDesk reported Q3 last night.

Revenue: $736M. The company had guided to at least $650M.
Year over year: down 0.5%.
Net income: $38M, down from $116M.

The fine print, from the earnings call: about 3 points of growth came from one strategic partner, and the CFO says they don't expect it to recur.

Q4 guidance: at least $755M. And the CFO said they're "not expecting the normal seasonal uplift."

The board added $731M to the buyback. $1B available in total.

The stock jumped as much as 27% after hours, from $14.93. It's still down about 60% this year.

CEO Jeff Green: results were "well ahead of our expectations," but "we are still operating below the level of growth we expect from ourselves."

Turnaround, or one good quarter with help from a single client?

Source: The Trade Desk

[Penne Press @pennepress]

@mobilegamerbiz fun timing: the uk's asa just banned one of scopely's pixel flow ads last week for showing gameplay that isn't in the game

[Penne Press @pennepress]

@harleyf @PhilipQiu5 the scoreboard so far: shopify checkout already runs inside chatgpt, gemini, copilot and meta's muse. amazon went the other way and blocked muse in september

[Penne Press @pennepress]

🚨 THE SAUDI FUND THAT JUST BOUGHT EA IS NOW CIRCLING UNITY. RIGHT AFTER UNITY'S AD BUSINESS STARTED PRINTING MONEY...

Saudi Arabia's PIF and Silver Lake have held early talks to buy @unity for about $25B, Reuters reports. No deal yet.

Same pair that took EA private for $55B. That closed in August.

Silver Lake already owns about 8% of Unity.

The timing: Unity just posted its first GAAP profit since going public in 2020. $122M in Q3.

Most of the growth is ads, not the game engine. Grow, Unity's ad business, did $457M, up from $318M a year ago. Its Vector ad engine grew 126%.

The stock jumped nearly 15% on Nov 5, then another 6.6% after hours on the takeover report.

If the people who own EA also own Unity's ad network, does that change who you buy installs from?

Source: @Reuters via @pgbiz

[Penne Press @pennepress]

@guillemcraft revenuecat's 2026 data shows the same gap at scale: median day-60 revenue per install is $0.55 in north america, $0.33 in europe, $0.11 in india/sea. the us fight is worth it

[Penne Press @pennepress]

@meetblossomapp and they're still buying: $1.4b of their own stock in q3, plus another $3.2b authorized on top

[Penne Press @pennepress]

🚨 EUROPE WANTS TIKTOK TO STOP USING THE ONE SIGNAL ITS ALGORITHM IS BUILT ON...

The @EU_Commission found, preliminarily, that the For You feed on @tiktok_us breaks the Digital Services Act.

Its fix: TikTok should "disable viewing time as an indicator to recommend content."

Viewing time. By the EU's own account, it's what the algorithm prioritises over what users say they want.

The reasoning: the feed pulls people into "rabbit holes" on sadness, isolation and body image. Hitting "not interested" may not be enough to change it.

The EU also wants TikTok to lean on users' explicit preferences and to test its algorithm regularly.

TikTok can still respond. If the findings hold, the fine can reach 6% of global annual turnover.

TikTok called them "fundamentally inaccurate."

It's the third preliminary finding against TikTok this year, after addictive design in February and minors' safety in July.

If watch time stops counting, what happens to every brand that buys reach on TikTok?

Source: European Commission

[Penne Press @pennepress]

🚨 FOX NOW OWNS THE SCREEN 100 MILLION HOUSEHOLDS SEE BEFORE THEY EVEN PICK A SHOW...

Fox closed its $22B deal for @Roku on Friday. Roku stock is off the Nasdaq.

When they announced it in June, they expected to close in the first half of 2027. It took under five months.

The DOJ asked for more information, then let it through.

Fox already owned @Tubi before this. Now it also owns the Roku Channel and the Roku homescreen.

In August, Roku and Tubi together had 4.8% of all streaming viewing. Tied with Disney.

Roku founder Anthony Wood joins the Fox board and co-chairs the new Fox Digital Platforms unit.

Fox promises to keep Roku an "open, partner-friendly platform."

Would you trust a TV network to run the platform its rivals depend on?

Source: @TheWrap

[Penne Press @pennepress]

@TheTradeDesk how much of that ctv share ran programmatic vs bought direct from the networks? that split decides who actually got paid

[Penne Press @pennepress]

@RevenueCat worth knowing before launch: apple approves each message per locale, so you can end up with the offer live in the us and still pending in germany

[Penne Press @pennepress]

@Adweek @amazon @AmazonAlexa and the shelf behind it is getting wider. two days ago amazon let outside merchants link their own stores so their products show up in alexa for shopping too

[Penne Press @pennepress]

@TechCrunch the ad side is the real story. fox now owns tubi and the roku channel, two of the biggest free ad-supported streamers, and anthony wood co-chairs the division running both

[Penne Press @pennepress]

🚨 SNAP IS ABOUT TO STOP LEADING WITH THE ONE NUMBER WALL STREET HAS JUDGED IT ON FOR YEARS...

@Snap buried it in its Q3 release: starting Q1 2027, daily active users stop being its main metric. Monthly users take over.

Regional DAU and regional ARPU go away completely.

Snap's explanation: it "no longer" believes DAU is the best measure of long-term value.

The new monthly count will also include anyone using any Snapchat-branded product. Apple Watch included.

The timing: Q3 daily users came in at 495M, up just 4% and below estimates. Revenue was $1.72B, up 14%, also a miss. Shares dropped after hours.

Better metric, or easier scoreboard?

Source: Snap SEC filing