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CMO TLDR: Your Weekly Marketing Brief

Weekly Digest - August 1, 2025

Author

Peter Brendan
August 01, 2025

CMO TLDR: Meta's Ad Boom, Criteo's Cool-Down, and Why You Need MER Now

Earnings Roundup

Meta's Ad Engine Powers 22% Revenue Jump Despite AI Spending Spree

Meta delivered second-quarter revenue of $47.5 billion, beating expectations with 22% growth, as its advertising business remained resilient despite the company's investments in artificial intelligence. The Facebook parent's net income hit $18.3 billion, sending shares up more than 9% after hours as investors cheered the strong performance from its core ad platform. CEO Mark Zuckerberg continues his aggressive AI talent acquisition strategy, recently spending $14 billion for a stake in Scale AI and offering hundreds of millions to top researchers as he builds a new Superintelligence lab to catch up in the AI race.

Criteo's Retail Media Growth Cools as Company Loses Key Accounts

Criteo's retail media division generated $60 million in net revenue during the second quarter, growing 11% year over year but marking a sharp deceleration from 2024's 24% pace as the ad tech company grapples with client departures, including Uber Eats and Roundel. The French company still managed to beat expectations with total net revenue of $292 million, prompting management to raise its full-year growth outlook to 3% to 4% from previous "low-single-digit" projections. CEO Michael Komasinski attributed the retail media slowdown partly to economic uncertainty.

The Bottom Line

Advertisers Embrace Marketing Efficiency Ratio as Alternative to ROAS

Marketing professionals are increasingly adopting the Marketing Efficiency Ratio, which divides total revenue by total marketing spend, as a broader alternative to traditional return on ad spend metrics that measure individual campaigns. The metric, sometimes called "blended ROAS," provides a holistic view of marketing performance by capturing halo effects and organic growth that platform-specific ROAS calculations often miss or overstate. Furniture brand James & James now uses MER as its primary benchmark after discovering that impressive platform ROAS numbers from Google and Meta didn't reflect actual bottom-line impact, illustrating why marketers are seeking macro-level measurement tools in an increasingly complex attribution landscape.

Amazon has abruptly stopped spending on Google Shopping ads as of July 23, creating opportunities for rival retailers like Walmart and Target to capture increased market share at lower costs per click while prompting speculation about the e-commerce giant's strategic motivations.

CMOs are increasingly seeking better measurement tools to justify rising sports sponsorship investments, with 76% of marketers struggling to calculate ROI despite 39% planning to increase spending in 2025, prompting brands like Mobil1 and Bero to experiment with shoppable ads and data partnerships to bridge the gap between brand exposure and sales performance.

IAB Tech Lab has upgraded its Supply Chain API+ with a new feature that allows advertising sellers to quickly identify unauthorized publisher listings and audit their supply chain partnerships across over 8 million publishers and 480,000 apps.

TikTok is launching Engaged Session, a new advertising tool that tracks user behavior after they leave the app by measuring whether people spend at least 10 seconds on websites following ad clicks, offering brands deeper post-click insights without relying on traditional pixel technology.

Nielsen faces renewed industry criticism over data inconsistencies in its Big Data + Panel ratings product, with TV programmers and advertisers questioning demographic accuracy issues that could benefit competing measurement companies like VideoAmp, iSpot, and Comscore during upcoming ad buying cycles.

Ad-blocking company Eyeo appointed Douglas de Jager as CEO and cut 40% of its workforce as it pivots from developing ad blockers to building privacy-focused tools that block tracking by default for both consumers and advertisers.

Key Article Takeaways - TLDR

  • You should really start calculating your Marketing Efficiency Ratio (MER). A furniture brand mentioned in the newsletter realized the great ROAS numbers they were getting from Google and Meta weren't actually reflecting their bottom line. MER is simpler and more honest: it’s your total revenue divided by your total marketing spend. It's being called "blended ROAS" because it provides a holistic view by capturing the halo effects and organic growth that platform-specific metrics often miss.

  • If you're in e-commerce, now is the time to jump on Google Shopping ads. Amazon abruptly stopped all its spending on Google Shopping ads as of July 23rd. It's worth checking your campaigns to see if you can take advantage and if CPCs have dropped at all