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TL;DR: Meta removed Messenger Stories on August 27, and the new v26.0 API already drops it from delivery without an error, so you won't notice unless you go looking. Reporting took a hit too: since August 6, device, hourly, and frequency breakdowns in the Ads Insights API come back empty unless you've opted in. TikTok's news is on the creative side, Dreamina Seedance 2.5 landed inside Symphony on August 3, doubling AI video length from 15 to 30 seconds and raising reference uploads from 9 to 50. Pinterest posted an 18% revenue jump on 640 million monthly active users (reported August 4), while it slowly rolls out simplified campaign objectives that reset the learning phase on anything that migrates. Here's what each one means for your accounts.
Meta
Messenger Stories is gone since August 27, your account probably didn’t warn you about it
Meta's Graph and Marketing API v26.0 shipped July 29th, and it removes Messenger Stories as an ad placement. The full removal lands August 27th across every campaign, but the placement is already acting different before then: any account on the new API version gets Messenger Stories silently dropped from its placement list, with no error or warning. You set up the ad set as usual, it saves fine, and Messenger Stories just isn't in there anymore.
Pull up every Advantage+ campaign and check whether Messenger Stories is still sitting in the placement pool. After it disappears, delivery redistributes on its own, and that's not the same as you deciding where the budget should go. Remove it manually so the reallocation lands where you actually want it.
Your device and hourly reports might be empty, and it's not a tracking problem
Since August 6th, your device breakdown, hourly breakdown, and frequency breakdown reports only pull data if the account has opted in. Everyone else doesn't get an error, they just get an empty report. So if a device or hourly report has looked flat for the past few weeks, check the setting before you start debugging your pixel.
The toggle lives under Additional Breakdowns in Ads Manager's reporting view, there's no help center article on it yet. If you manage several accounts, ask your dev team about enabling it in bulk through the API rather than clicking through each one by hand. History fills back in within about a day.
While you're in there, check your special ad category campaigns too. Housing, employment, and credit ad sets now need an explicit Advantage+ Audience flag under v26.0, or they'll error out instead of just defaulting to one. If anything builds your targeting automatically, make sure that flag is actually being set.
The rest of v26.0 lands in October, and ad prices are still climbing
Two more v26.0 changes go live everywhere on October 27th: Instagram Explore Feed calls will throw a real error instead of just redistributing quietly, and poll ad creation gets blocked. That's two months out, but check now which API version your tools are actually pinned to. An unsupported version doesn't fail loudly, it just gets force-upgraded into the new behavior.
Meta's Q2 earnings, reported July 29, showed the average price per ad up 12% year over year for the second quarter running, on 14% more impressions. The regional split explains more than the average does: price rose 20% in US and Canada but only 1% in Asia-Pacific. If your own CPMs aren't moving the way that 12% suggests, check where your spend actually sits before assuming something's wrong.
Meta also opened its ads MCP server to any developer with a Meta app on July 16. AI agents can now create campaigns, pull reporting, and manage catalogs directly, and it's read and write, not just read. Nothing to do about this yet, but it tells you where Meta expects AI tools to go next.
TikTok
Symphony's AI video just got a lot more useful
Dreamina Seedance 2.5 started rolling into TikTok Symphony on August 3rd for select paid advertisers. It doubles generated video length from 15 to 30 seconds and raises the reference limit from 9 to 50 images, videos, or audio clips per generation. TikTok says products hold up better across scenes too, less packaging and logo drift, fewer manual fixes.
Check Symphony Creative Studio or Symphony Automations in Ads Manager to see if you have access yet. If you do, test a 30-second concept you'd never have shot from scratch, and run it as a real test against a control.
Campaign objectives are getting simpler, and that's not entirely good news
Pinterest is consolidating its campaign objectives in Ads Manager, rolling out gradually through April 2027 (no confirmed date for individual accounts yet). The setup screen gets simpler. The catch is that any campaign that migrates to a new objective restarts its learning phase from zero.
If a campaign is performing well under an objective Pinterest plans to retire, don't rush the migration the second you're prompted. Let it happen, then rebuild it deliberately with the strategy you already know works, instead of getting caught off guard mid-flight.
Pinterest had a strong quarter, and the growth came from volume, not price
Pinterest's Q2 2026 results, reported August 4th, showed revenue up 18% YoY to $1.18 billion on 640 million monthly active users, up 11%. If you're benchmarking Pinterest CPMs, this matters: ad impressions grew 16% year over year, but average ad pricing only rose 1%. The growth came from selling more inventory, not a tighter auction, so don't take Pinterest's revenue growth as a sign your own CPCs should be climbing too.
Pinterest also confirmed its tvScientific acquisition has closed, folding the connected-TV platform into Pinterest Performance+. There's nothing for advertisers to set up yet, but if you run CTV alongside Pinterest, this is the deal that eventually lets you measure both together.
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