This week’s stories point to a market getting more precise about what actually drives value. Meta is tightening what counts as a click, OpenAI’s ad model is taking shape, UK ad investment keeps flowing into more measurable formats, and streaming platforms are pushing harder into commerce-led targeting. Even sustainability is becoming less of a side conversation and more of an operational one.
Meta redraws attribution around link clicks and social engagement
Meta is changing how attribution works, and it matters because it should make reporting a lot cleaner. For website and in-store conversions, click-through attribution will now only count actual link clicks, rather than bundling them with likes, shares, saves, and other social interactions. Those actions will move into a separate category called engage-through attribution, giving advertisers a clearer split between traffic-driving intent and social influence. The update is designed to reduce the mismatch between Meta Ads Manager and tools like Google Analytics, while also acknowledging that social does not work exactly like search. Meta is also shortening its engaged-view window from 10 seconds to 5 seconds, reflecting how quickly people convert from short-form video, especially on Reels.
What this means: This is one of those changes that could make reported performance look worse before it looks better. Some advertisers will likely see attributed conversion numbers fall, but the upside is cleaner measurement and a more honest view of what social engagement is actually contributing. For teams trying to compare platform data with analytics or justify the role of upper-funnel social, that is a meaningful shift.
Criteo joins OpenAI’s ChatGPT ad pilot
The biggest signal in this story is not just that ads are coming into ChatGPT. It is that the ecosystem around them is starting to form. Criteo says it is the first ad tech partner integrating with OpenAI’s advertising pilot in ChatGPT Free and Go in the US, with rollout beginning in the coming weeks. OpenAI has already confirmed that it is testing ads with a subset of logged-in adult users on those tiers, while paid plans remain ad-free. Criteo is positioning this as a commerce-led opportunity, saying users referred from LLM platforms like ChatGPT convert at around 1.5 times the rate of other referral channels in its observed client data.
What this means: The story is moving from rumour to infrastructure. Once ad tech partners start plugging in, the conversation changes from “will ChatGPT have ads?” to “what kind of inventory, targeting and measurement model will emerge around AI discovery?” For performance marketers, that makes this one of the most important stories of the week, even if it is still early.
UK digital adspend hits £40.5bn, with video and retail media driving growth
IAB UK’s latest Digital Adspend study shows the UK digital ad market reached £40.5bn in 2025, up 10% year on year, comfortably ahead of UK GDP growth. Search is still the biggest line in the budget at £17.9bn, or 44% of total spend, but the strongest momentum is coming from formats that better support full-funnel planning and measurement. Video investment rose 20% to £9.3bn, social rose 21% to £11.5bn, and retail media grew 18% to £3.8bn. On social media, video now accounts for 59% of all investment.
What this means: The market is not slowing down; it is concentrating around formats that offer stronger attention, better data, or clearer commercial accountability. Search still dominates, but the real signal is where growth is accelerating. Video, retail media, and socially distributed video formats continue to take more of the budget because they provide marketers with stronger answers on reach, influence, and outcomes.
Netflix brings Amazon shopping data into its ad targeting stack
Netflix is deepening its push into performance-led TV by allowing brands buying via Amazon DSP to apply Amazon Audiences to Netflix inventory in the US from Q2. That means advertisers can use Amazon’s shopping, browsing and streaming signals to reach Netflix viewers based on real-world behaviour, pairing premium streaming inventory with retail-grade audience intelligence. The move also aligns with Netflix’s newer Conversion API, as the platform aims to make its ad tier more usable for advertisers seeking better targeting and clearer downstream measurement.
What this means: This is another sign that CTV is being rebuilt for performance budgets, not just brand budgets. The strategic gap between retail media, programmatic and premium video keeps narrowing. For marketers, the proposition is increasingly simple: if streaming platforms can combine attention-rich environments with better data and better measurement, they become much easier to justify in the plan.
Sustainability maturity is improving, but readiness is still uneven across Europe
IAB Europe’s latest sustainability readiness report suggests the market is moving forward, but not evenly. The 2026 edition expands beyond environmental impact to include social sustainability areas such as privacy, media plurality, accessibility and accountability. It found that social impacts ranked above environmental impacts in terms of combined financial and impact materiality, while 56% of respondents cited AI content ingestion and traffic as the top ecosystem challenge. At the same time, 32% said they have not published sustainability reports and do not plan to, indicating a clear gap between intent and operational readiness.
What this means: Sustainability is becoming more entangled with compliance, media quality, trust and governance, rather than sitting in a separate CSR box. That does not mean every marketer will act on it tomorrow, but it does mean the brief is getting broader. The companies that move first will likely be the ones treating sustainability as a planning and supply-chain issue, not just a reporting exercise.
That’s a wrap for this week.
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