Latest Digital / Social Media Marketing News & Insights

​Presented by Neal Schaffer​

In this week's newsletter:

• The most credible ad on LinkedIn might not come from your brand at all.
• How do you catch your brand’s impersonators way before your customers do?
• Facebook clicks got cheaper this year (down 14.29%).

Hey Reader,

My daughter called from college to ask whether she should pay for LinkedIn Premium. I have written three books about the platform, so she probably expected a yes. I told her no, then asked what she was actually trying to do. She wanted to reach alumni from her school, which takes more than five personalized invites a month, and the free plan caps that. So she upgraded. A few months later she cancelled, because the need went away.

Here's the thing, though: that same question sits underneath most of this week's issue. I have never spent a dollar on TikTok ads, and writing this week's post is what finally made me work out why. A new study of 214 companies puts ChatGPT Ads at the lowest acquisition cost of any channel, and another piece this week argues you should test it now and still keep most of your budget on Google and Meta. Both are right. The question is never whether a platform is worth paying for. It's what job you are hiring the money to do, and for how long.

Which paid channel are you least sure about right now? Hit reply and tell me.

Let's get into this week's updates!

Please note: Some links in this newsletter are affiliate links. If you make a purchase through them, I may earn a small commission—at no extra cost to you.

This Week's News

How To Think Like A Filmmaker: AI Video With Seedance - Most AI video looks cheap for one reason: vague prompts. This tutorial walks you through a filmmaker's workflow. Develop a concept, build a storyboard of 6 to 12 keyframes, then use Seedance's time-segmented prompts to choreograph each beat. My favorite tip is the cost hack. A 30-second 1080p clip runs $28 to $32, but generating at 480p and upscaling delivered near-4K quality for about $9. Start with short, low-resolution clips this week, before one ambitious render eats your budget. Social Media Examiner​

The Lowest CAC Marketing Channels: 2026 Report - ChatGPT Ads just posted the lowest B2B acquisition cost of 30 channels in a study of 214 companies: $468, about 42% below paid search. Before you move budget, know that the figure climbed 76% in just seven weeks as advertisers piled in, so treat it as a testing window. The finding most of you can act on today: email marketing was both the cheapest organic channel and the fastest to a first customer. And the channel getting pricier fastest? LinkedIn Ads, up 31.2% since 2024. First Page Sage​

Instagram Stories Ads Examples: What Actually Works In 2026 - I've been writing about Instagram since it was a square-photo app, and too many advertisers still treat Stories as leftover inventory. That's a costly habit: Stories carried 43% of all Instagram ad impressions in Q4 2025, more than Reels or Feed. In my latest post, I tear down a real Stories ad from my own feed, then share six ad shapes worth copying and the creative rules that apply only to this placement. Pick one shape, build it vertical, and put the payoff in the first second. Neal Schaffer​

LinkedIn Shares Tips On Thought Leader Ads - The most credible ad on LinkedIn might not come from your brand at all. Thought Leader Ads let you put paid reach behind posts from any member who speaks well of you, and LinkedIn just published fresh tips on using them. The case is strong: 71% of decision-makers say thought leadership beats conventional advertising, and B2B marketers report 1.6 times higher engagement than with single image ads. Borrowed credibility is fast becoming the way B2B brands buy attention. Social Media Today​

TikTok Advertising: What It Costs, What's Unique, And Whether You Need It - I've never spent a dollar on TikTok ads, and after six books on social media marketing, I wanted to know whether I should. So I dug in. TikTok won't launch a campaign under $50 a day, while my Facebook account runs on a dollar and my cost per lead stays under a dollar. What TikTok offers that nobody else does is TikTok Shop ads that amplify your organic and affiliate videos. My conclusion: organic first, then paid. Which side of that line is your business on? Neal Schaffer​

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More Recommended Reads

Brand Protection In AI Search: How To Audit And Defend Your Brand's Identity - If an AI answer hands your customers a fake support number, the damage is done before you ever notice. This guide shows you how to audit your brand across search and AI, running the same prompts several times in fresh sessions across ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, and others, and logging every claim and source. It then matches each problem to the right fix, from correcting outdated profiles to reporting impersonators, plus alerts for lookalike domains. The cheapest takedown is the impersonator you catch before your customers do. Search Engine Journal​

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Facebook Ads Benchmarks 2026: NEW Data, Trends, And Insights For Your Industry - Facebook clicks got cheaper this year. Across almost 1,800 campaigns, the average cost per click for traffic campaigns fell to $0.60, down 14.29%, while click-through rates rose nearly 13%. Lead campaigns improved too, with cost per lead holding steady at $27.39, broken out by industry from $12.30 for career and employment to $61.56 for dentists. If you've ever stared at your Meta dashboard wondering whether your numbers are any good, this is your benchmark. Wordstream​

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ChatGPT Ads Are A Tactical Bet, Not A Platform Strategy - ChatGPT Ads can be worth your money even if ChatGPT loses the long game. User growth flattened from September 2025 while Gemini rides Google's distribution, and only 5% of ChatGPT's audience doesn't overlap with Google's. Yet competition is thin, with one ad per prompt and a single advertiser holding 13.56% of all ads in one study. Test now while inventory is cheap, and keep most of your budget on Google and Meta. The smartest short-term bet can sit on the shakiest long-term platform. Martech​

What I Built With Muse, Meta's New AI Agent - Meta launched its Muse AI agent last week, and this is the most practical first look I've seen. The author set it to check Meta's Help Center every Monday for changes, then fed it his own content and built a live ad decision tool in one evening with zero code. It took plenty of back-and-forth to get the logic right. For any marketer who has wanted calculators or diagnostics without hiring a developer, that capability is now within reach. Jon Loomer​

My Favorite Content Tools Don't Write A Word - Generative AI made copy cheap and infinite, so the question that matters now is whether anyone sees what you publish. This content lead's favorite tools don't write a word. Her stack tracks whether ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, and AI Overviews cite your pages, using Search Console, Ahrefs, and Otterly at about $29 a month, then connects the data to Claude to find pages Google ranks but AI ignores. Keep measuring rankings alone and you'll miss where half your discovery now happens. Practical eCommerce​

​Digital Threads​

Digital Threads is a practical guide for small business owners, entrepreneurs, and creators who want to grow their online presence with confidence. Learn proven digital marketing strategies, make the most of social media and AI tools, and build your brand without a massive marketing budget.

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