Soku AIBlog
Insights, tutorials, and updates from the Soku AI team.
Agentic Advertising: How AI Agents Plan, Launch and Optimize Campaigns
What makes advertising agentic: an AI agent that plans a campaign, launches it through the platform's API and keeps optimizing it against a goal. How Meta, Google, TikTok and OpenAI each shipped an agent surface in 2026, the agent-to-agent standards reshaping programmatic, and a guardrail reference architecture with the real thresholds Soku enforces. Verified 2026-10-19.
18 min read · October 19, 2026
ChatGPT Ads in Image Generation: The Multi-Image Visual Ad Format Explained
OpenAI's Ads in ChatGPT help article now says it is testing a multi-image visual ad format during image generation, cuts the below-response wording to one ad unit, and drops its Atlas sentence. The exact old and new wording, what the 2026-10-16 advertiser email adds, where sources disagree, who is affected and what not to plan around. Last verified 2026-10-19.
16 min read · October 19, 2026
Google Ads Campaign Types Explained (2026): Search, PMax, Demand Gen, Video, App
Every Google Ads campaign type that still exists in 2026, checked against Google's Help Center on 2026-10-19: Search, Performance Max, Demand Gen, Video, Shopping, App, Display and Smart, plus AI Max as a setting rather than a type. Which one to pick by goal, what Google has retired, and which types an AI agent can actually build through the API.
16 min read · October 19, 2026
Google Display Ads in 2026: Setup, Sizes and AI-Generated Creative
How Google display ads work in 2026 now that Display is moving into Demand Gen: how to set up a campaign either way, the responsive display ad and Demand Gen asset specs side by side (30 vs 40-character headlines, 1.91:1, 1:1, 4:5, 9:16), targeting, bidding, placements and measurement, plus an asset pack we generated from one brief and what went wrong with it. Verified 2026-10-19.
17 min read · October 19, 2026
ChatGPT Ads Conversions API Guide: Server-Side Setup, Deduplication and Why OpenAI Now Says Use Both
On 2026-10-14 OpenAI rewrote the intro of its ChatGPT Ads Conversions API docs. It no longer calls CAPI more reliable than the pixel alone; it now says use both, with deduplication. This guide quotes the old and new wording, then covers the full server-side setup: endpoint, auth, batches, event and user fields, oppref and obref forwarding, app events, the dedup key, a Pixel vs CAPI decision table and a pre-launch dedup test plan. Last verified 2026-10-14.
18 min read · October 14, 2026
What Does a Creative Strategist Do? The Paid Social Creative Strategy Playbook
A creative strategist decides what a paid social ad should say, to whom, and why, then proves it with a test. This playbook defines the role against designers, media buyers and creative directors, walks through a weekly creative-strategy loop with the five artifacts it produces (research doc, hook bank, brief, test matrix, learnings log), defines hook rate, hold rate, CTR and CPA by concept from Meta and TikTok documentation, and covers tools, pay data and hiring.
22 min read · October 14, 2026
How Much Do YouTube Ads Cost in 2026? CPV, CPM and Budget Examples
What YouTube ads cost advertisers in 2026, format by format: which ads bill per 30-second view, per 10-second Shorts view or per impression, what Google's help center says about budgets, the few benchmarks with a named sample ($0.05 CPV and $9 CPM in a $1.04M B2B dataset; CPMs down 21% year over year in Q1 2026 per Tinuiti), and budget examples you can rerun. Verified 2026-10-14.
18 min read · October 14, 2026
ChatGPT Ads Manager User Roles and Permissions: Admin, Member, Viewer and Agency Access
How access to ChatGPT Ads Manager actually works: the five roles OpenAI documents (global admin, Ads admin, and the per-account Admin, Member and Viewer), Ads SSO policies, SCIM groups, the highest-role rule, safe offboarding, and how agencies should structure client accounts, API keys and multiple Pixel IDs. Includes a role-by-task matrix, an agency setup checklist and an access audit. Last verified 2026-10-13.
17 min read · October 13, 2026
Meta Advantage+ Catalog Ads: Setup, Feed Fixes and Creative Overlays
How to set up Meta Advantage+ catalog ads (formerly dynamic ads) from Meta's own documentation, plus a step-by-step diagnostic for the classic problem: a 2,000-SKU catalog where only about 50 products ever get delivery. Includes a feed-field checklist, a troubleshooting table and the three ways to add price overlays. Verified 2026-10-13.
19 min read · October 13, 2026
What Is Media Buying? A 2026 Guide for In-House and Agency Teams
Media buying is the work of purchasing ad placements and running them against a budget and a goal. This 2026 guide covers media buying vs media planning, the four ways to buy (programmatic guaranteed, deals and auctions, direct IOs, remnant), how Google and Meta auctions actually price ads, CPM vs CPC vs CPA vs CPV, in-house vs agency, the KPIs, a worked budget example, and a Monday-to-Friday media-buying week marked task by task.
19 min read · October 13, 2026
ChatGPT Ads Conversion Value: Per-Unit Item Amounts, Event Totals and ROAS
OpenAI redefined contents[].amount in the ChatGPT Ads Pixel and Conversions API: it is now the price of one unit, and the event amount is the value of the whole event. What changed word for word, who sent the wrong number, how purchase value and ROAS depend on it, and a step-by-step audit with JPY and multi-item examples. Last verified 2026-10-12.
16 min read · October 12, 2026
TikTok Ads Cost in 2026: Minimum Budgets, CPM and Bidding by Campaign Type
What TikTok ads cost in 2026: a $4.08 median CPM and $17.07 median CPA across 5,900+ e-commerce brands (Triple Whale, third-party), and the minimum budgets TikTok documents per campaign type: $50 per campaign, $20 per ad group, and 10x to 50x your CPA to get through learning. Covers Smart+, GMV Max and Spark Ads, plus a budget planning template. Verified 2026-10-12.
17 min read · October 12, 2026