Agency investments drop amid Meta’s progress toward AI ad automation

By the end of 2026, Meta aims to launch tools for brands to design and target Instagram and Facebook advertisements entirely with Meta AI tools, according to a Wall Street Journalreport published Monday. 

“In the not-too-distant future, we want to get to a world where any business will be able to just tell us what objective they’re trying to achieve, such as selling something or getting a new customer, how much they’re willing to pay for each result and connect their bank account and then we just do the rest for them,” explained Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg at an annual shareholder meeting last week.

While Meta already provides AI tools for brands to tweak existing advertisements, its new AI tools will create entirely new video image and text advertisements, along with targeting ads with geolocation and personalization capabilities. Following theWall Street Journalreport of Meta’s planned AI advancements on Monday, early trading shares for agencies fell dramatically. 

WPP’s early trading shares dropped 3%, Publicis Groupe’s dropped 3.9% and Havas’ dropped 3%. Since then, Publicis Groupe’s shares have nearly recovered, while WPP’s have remained mostly stagnant.

TikTok bans #SkinnyTok 

Upon searching “SkinnyTok” in TikTok’s search bar, videos telling fans that “mindlessly grazing on snacks is giving farm animal” or “a stomach growling doesn’t mean hunger, it’s just your body applauding you” used to appear. However, a “SkinnyTok” search now results in a link to the National Alliance for Eating Disorders’ hotline number and a message reminding TikTok users they’re not alone if they’re struggling with body image issues. 

On Monday, TikTok banned the global hashtag, #SkinnyTok, which hosted videos promoting weight loss and extreme diets. Criticism from policymakers in Paris and Brussels first sparked the ban — France’s digital minister Clara Chappaz declared the banning of #SkinnyTok a “victory” for protecting children online — and the move overlaps with an EU Digital Services Act investigation of TikTok’s algorithms for promoting harmful activities or spreading disinformation.

TikTok “blocked search results for #SkinnyTok since it has become linked to unhealthy weight loss content,” explained TikTok spokesperson Paolo Ganino in a statement on Monday.

Nvidia dethrones Microsoft for the world’s most valuable company

AI chip manufacturing company Nvidia became the world’s most valuable company on Tuesday when its market cap of $3.45 trillion passed Microsoft’s market cap of $3.44 trillion. This week marks the first time Nvidia’s been the world’s most valuable company since January — Apple, Microsoft and Nvidia have all taken turns with the title since last June.

Following Tuesday’s news, Nvidia’s shares rose 3% in one day, and other AI chip companies have benefited — Broadcam’s shares also rose 3% and Micron Technology’s shares increased by 4%. Over the past month, Nvidia’s stock increased 24% while the company grew despite tariff concerns and export control barriers. 

Companies such as OpenAI purchase Nvidia’s AI chips to develop software such as ChatGPT; and Microsoft, Meta, Amazon, Google and Oracle have all bought Nvidia’s AI accelerators to build computers for AI progress.

App Updates

TikToklaunched self-care features, Manage Topics and Keyword Filtering, on Tuesday. Manage Topics allows users to adjust their For You page by selecting how often they’d like to see topics from 10 categories including sports, travel and creative arts. The AI-powered Keyword Filtering tool gives users control over content they’d like to avoid by detecting over 200 keywords and their synonyms. 

Uberpromoted Andrew Macdonald to COO on Monday, the same day the rideshare app’s SVP of mobility, Pierre-Dimitri Gore-Coty, left the company.

Microsoftlaunched a Bing AI Video Creator tool within Bing mobile apps, where users can type a description to generate a five-second video. Similar to OpenAI’s Sora tool for ChatGPT’s paid subscribers, Bing AI Video Creator is the first platform providing this AI video generation tool for free.