• by Colin Kirkland , Yesterday

Meta has announced multiple ad updates, including a new “Ads Super Burst” format designed to offer brands a planned promotional placement tied to major public events, such as professional sports games and awards nights, planned to be rolled out this month.

Meta is looking to help brands tap into valuable cultural moments, including “the window around a product launch” and “timing a campaign to an external event,” per the company’s announcement.

Ads Super Burst allows a brand to book a window for a duration of 3- to 24 hours to run a promotion without competition from other advertisers, which will not be able to book the same category at the same time. 

“You can plan your Ads Super Burst campaigns in Reach Planner to secure inventory during your desired dates and get an estimate of reach and price,” the announcement explains. 

In early testing, Meta has found that advertisers using Ads Super Burst saw a median 2.9 point lift in ad recall and a 0.6 point lift in intent, reaching a median of 34 million people per launch, or 14% of the U.S. adult online audience per day. 

Meta plans on rolling the ad format out to general availability sometime this month. 

In addition to Ads Super Burst, Meta is testing “First Impression Ads,” a format similar to competing platforms’ offerings, including TikTok’s “TopReach” and Snapchat’s Total Takeover options. 

First Impression Ads places a brand’s promotion in the first ad position in users’ main feeds throughout an entire day. 

Meta is also expanding its “Reels Trending Ads” offering, which initially rolled out to advertisers in Sept 2025. The format uses AI to curate trending and culturally relevant short-form video inventory for brands running campaigns across Meta’s family of apps.

Now, there are 15 standard topics an advertiser can choose from, including newly added Home & Garden and Spanish language content, as well as “seasonal lineups” arranged to target users during holidays and major cultural moments. 

Meta is in the process of expanding targeting capabilities for Reels Trending Ads, planning on the roll out of custom audience exclusions later this year.

Finally, Meta is testing a product called “Aggregated View Time,” which is designed to measure and optimize the total time a user spends with a brand throughout a week for a more holistic approach to campaign creation.