Three things changed on Meta and TikTok this quarter, and most founders are still briefing against the old rules. I spent the last few weeks pulling apart the ads actually winning right now. Here's what holds up.
Ads don't open like ads anymore
Focus Town (@studyingwkristen on Reels) is the cleanest one I've seen. She closes her eyes, drags her finger across a flight tracker, lands on a 13-hour flight, and goes ok, that's how long I'm studying today. The app itself doesn't show up until second 14. 9.2M views. I watched it twice before I clocked I was being marketed to.
That's the move now. The bit is the video, and the product just rides inside it. If your frame one reads like an ad, you already lost.
Save rate passed hook rate
Everyone's still obsessed with the 3-second hook rate. Meanwhile the platforms quietly moved the goalposts. With GEM rolling out, Meta cares way more about what you do after the watch — saving, sharing, rewatching — and TikTok's been like that forever.
Same Focus Town ad: a 33% save rate against a 2-5% baseline. Call it 6 to 10x normal, and that's the loudest thing the algo hears when it decides who else gets to see you.
So there's a new line on every brief now: is there any real reason to save this? Usually there isn't. That's the gap.
On cold traffic, comprehension beats persuasion
Cold buyers don't need convincing. They just need to get you in one line. Verso (@carys.musictips) ran how long has there been a Spotify for parents? and that's the entire ad. You hear it and you already know: music app, filters the explicit stuff, built for parents. Six seconds, no explainer. Borrow something people already understand and bolt your difference onto it.
And then there's Zestr, which keeps turning up in these "found phone" videos. It pops up eleven times in one clip and never once tells you what it is. People rewatch just to count. The comments do the selling.
Here's what's underneath all of it: the best ads now hide the ad inside the ad.
You don't catch it til halfway through, or the end, or your third rewatch — and by then it's already in your head. None of that is new. Attention has always worked this way.
What's new is the volume. People see something like 50% more ads than they did five years ago, and most of it is noise they scroll right past. So you have to get weird enough to break the pattern. But weird on its own won't save you.
The ads that actually convert still run on what worked before the internet existed: a real want, a hook that earns the next second, a reason to act now. Dress it up however you want. The basics didn't change.