The IT Nerd

New Billo data shows Meta ad competition rising about 40% and the cost to reach 1,000 impressions climbing roughly 18% between August and the November Black Friday peak. Brands that wait until fall to plan their campaigns enter an auction that is already crowded and expensive, with the outcome largely shaped by creative built weeks earlier. Black Friday and Cyber Monday together make up the single largest ecommerce advertising event of the year, and the brands that prepare earliest tend to capture a disproportionate share of that spending.

Billo, which connects brands with creators to produce social video ads for platforms including TikTok, Meta and YouTube, has tracked the same pattern in its own client data. Donatas Smailys, co-founder and CEO of Billo, said brands that enter Black Friday without tested creative end up paying more for weaker results, regardless of how much they spend.

Why August Is the Right Time to Start

September and October are when brands learn which ads actually convert, and that testing takes weeks. August gives brands exactly enough time to brief creators, film several options, and get results back before Black Friday begins.

Brands that follow this approach typically produce three to five short variants per product, each testing a different angle: a different opening line, a different creator, or a different pain point. The variants that perform best organically become the ads brands scale with paid budget once Q4 begins.

Methodology

Figures are based on Billo client Meta ad data, tracked monthly from June through December 2025. Comparisons reflect August 2025 against the November 2025 peak, and where noted, December. Cost per 1,000 impressions reached is a derived figure, calculated as total spend divided by total impressions, multiplied by 1,000; it is not a reported column in the underlying data.

LinkedIn, Snapchat, YouTube, TikTok, Meta, Google and Reddit have introduced measures within months of one another to limit, label or demote content generated entirely by artificial intelligence. The platforms are not coordinating, and their methods differ, but the outcome converges on a single rule: content shaped by a real human keeps its place in the feed, while content with no human input gets pushed down, flagged or removed.

The convergence leaves brands running paid social campaigns with one test for every piece of AI-assisted creative: how much of it was made by a real person. Donatas Smailys, CEO of Billo, a leading UGC marketplace connecting brands with creators, said the shift is forcing a rapid reassessment of how brands approach content production at scale.

“Everyone chased AI because it made video almost free to produce. What they missed is that it raised the cost of getting that video seen, as well as the cost of getting it wrong. Europe just put a number on that: as of this month, EU rules require disclosure on AI-generated ads and deepfakes, with fines up to €15 million or 3% of global revenue. Social platforms are already demoting or labeling the same content that regulators are now fining brands for.”

How Each Platform Responds to AI-Generated Content

Each has taken its own approach, but all seven fall into one of three categories: demoting AI-generated content, requiring disclosure, or leaving enforcement to their communities. Here’s how each category breaks down:

Platforms demoting AI-generated content

• LinkedIn. Added a “seems like AI slop” report button on July 30, 2026, and rolled out classifiers that reduce such posts in recommendations, with posts that read as inauthentic flagged privately. It also pulled its own AI “enhance your post” writer, replacing it with a proofreading tool that preserves the user’s voice.
• Snapchat. Made wholly AI-generated videos ineligible for recommendation on Spotlight starting August 2, 2026, while videos edited or enhanced with Snapchat’s AI tools remain eligible and keep their transparency indicators.
• YouTube. Terminated 16 channels with a combined 35 million subscribers and 4.7 billion lifetime views in January 2026 under its renamed “inauthentic content” policy, then clarified in July 2026 which types of content cannot be monetized. The policy targets mass-produced, templated content with no human creative input, not AI-assisted production generally.

Platforms requiring disclosure

• TikTok. Requires visible labels on AI-generated visuals and audio that depict realistic people or scenes, a rule that also applies to ads and branded content. AI-assisted text, such as scripts, captions and hashtags, is exempt. More than 3 billion videos have been labeled so far through TikTok’s labeling and detection systems.
• Meta. Made AI disclosure mandatory and automatic on Facebook and Instagram ads. Since June 1, 2026, its systems scan ad media and label images or video made or edited with generative AI – whether the tools are Meta’s own or a third party’s – and advertisers cannot opt out. Undisclosed AI content has become one of the leading reasons for ad rejection, with repeat violations escalating to account suspension.
• Google. Switched on a “How this ad was made” panel across Search, YouTube and Discover on July 9, 2026.

Platforms leaving enforcement to their communities

• Reddit. Has no platform-wide AI policy. Enforcement is community-driven, with individual subreddit moderators setting their own AI rules, making Reddit the clearest example of people, rather than algorithms, doing the moderating.

What Brands Should Do Now

Brands should audit their paid social creative and ask, piece by piece, who actually made it. Content with no person involved at any stage is now penalized on all seven platforms, whether a given platform demotes it, labels it, or leaves the call to moderators.

Of the three approaches, disclosure is the one most likely to spread as detection technology improves. TikTok, Meta and Google already require labels on AI-generated ads, and LinkedIn, Snapchat and YouTube have built their own detection to catch the same thing from the other direction. For brands, that means two conditions matter now: a person involved in making the creative, and AI use disclosed wherever a platform requires it. Creative that meets both holds up under every one of these rules. Everything else is exactly what these systems are now built to catch.

“What platforms are actually cracking down on are ads made entirely by AI, without a single person touching the process, especially the ones running an AI-generated performer instead of a real one. It’s different if you use AI to brainstorm, edit, write captions, or speed up the boring parts of production. What matters the most is the real person has to be on camera,” Smailys said.

About Billo

Billo is the leading UGC marketplace founded in 2019 that connects brands with creators to produce high-performing social video ads. It is based in Lithuania, built for US needs, and led by co-founder and CEO Donatas Smailys. The platform combines the power of UGC content with a streamlined production process, helping brands increase brand awareness, drive traffic, and boost conversions with authentic creator videos on TikTok, Meta, YouTube, and other platforms.