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This edition of Strategic Shifts brings you the latest platform changes, smarter ad targeting tips, and competitive insights to help your message stay sharp, agile, and ahead of your opponents.
The Competitive Edge of Knowing Your Opponent
When you’re working in public affairs, you’re in it for the long game. You’re looking for the best avenues to get your message out there, and for which message will resonate the best. It’s one thing to know your audience. It’s another thing to know your opposing audience and how to get ahead and stay ahead of the noise. Monitoring the opposition is imperative to making sure your public affairs strategy resonates and breaks through.
Anticipate the Shift
Opposition monitoring allows public affairs professionals to deeply understand their priority targets. In today’s media age, the speed of social media enables narratives to change rather quickly. By continuous and effective monitoring, public affairs teams can stay ahead of misinformation and combat it quickly, before it becomes too loud.
Informing Your Strategy
When you understand what you’re up against, it makes it easier to build a strong strategy. By understanding where the misinformation comes from, we get actionable insights that allow us to refine our approach for maximum impact. Monitoring the opposition will enable us to keep the keyboard warriors at bay and allocate more resources to the broader strategy.
Better Stakeholder Engagement
Sometimes, what the opposition says garners enough attention to prevent your messages from reaching the right audience; by actively monitoring their pushback, you gain insight into their concerns and can speak to them head-on in your messaging. This knowledge can make your message persuasive to stakeholders and show them you know what you’re talking about: no need to listen to the noise when accurate information is making it to the surface.
Now that you’ve mastered the art of your opposition, you’re well-equipped to create a well-informed strategy that’s sure to outlast and outperform.
Culture, Conversion, and Smarter Targeting
Meta is making it easier for brands to meet audiences where culture is happening, turning that meet-and-greet into meaningful, lasting value. Announced at the Brand Building Summit, these updates boost your ability to stay relevant, reach the right audience, and turn buzz into bottom-line results.
Here’s what’s new (and worth knowing):
Reels Trending Ads Are Now Being Offered
Meta is expanding access to Reels Trending Ads (for those who have a Meta sales rep), allowing more brands to run campaigns next to the latest viral content.
Threads Just Got More Ad-Friendly
To help brands show up more seamlessly to Threads’ 400 million+ active users, Meta is simplifying how ads are set up on the platform. Similar to Instagram and Facebook, even if your brand doesn’t have a Threads profile, you can still run ads using your existing Ads Manager account.
Smarter Targeting with Value Rules + Landing Page Optimization
Meta is giving advertisers better ways to improve performance and reduce wasted spend.
- Values Rules let you tell Meta’s AI what’s most important to your brand, such as reaching high-value customers or boosting engagement with a specified audience. You set the priorities, and Meta adjusts delivery to match. Tests have shown that this approach can double the number of quality conversions compared to standard targeting.
- Landing Page View Optimization helps advertisers show ads to people most likely to click and wait for your landing page to load. This is helpful for brands that don’t collect data using the Meta Pixel. Advertisers who have used this setting have seen a 31 percent lower cost per landing page view and better-quality site visits.
Bottom Line: These new updates are helping brands stay relevant and results-focused without having to choose between the two.
LinkedIn’s Data Shift
LinkedIn is rolling out new Terms of Service starting on November 3, paving the way for more ad personalization. For most countries (outside of the EU and UK), LinkedIn will start sharing “non-identifying” usage data with its parent company Microsoft to supercharge targeted ads. The shift does include a promise to members that they can still opt out and control their settings. The takeaway: LinkedIn is helping Microsoft deliver sharper, more relevant promotions, while keeping privacy and choice top of the agenda.
Expanded Verified Companies on LinkedIn Adds Prestige for Brands
LinkedIn is broadening access to its company page verification. This is a valuable opportunity for businesses seeking added credibility but were previously excluded from the program. The badge access does come at an additional cost. LinkedIn’s Premium Company Pages (priced at $99/month) are now eligible to apply for the coveted check mark. This badge signifies professionalism but also helps companies stand out in a crowded digital space. While the verification may take time, joining the line early could be a strategic move to elevate your brand’s presence on LinkedIn. Read more here.
X’s New “Boost” for Revenue
X is rolling out a feature that lets premium users (not just advertisers) pay to amplify organic posts directly in their feed. The “Boost” button presents options like:
- 11k–27k impressions for $50
- 23k–54k impressions for $100
- 116k–272k impressions for $500
- 25k–543k impressions for $1,000
This blurs the line between organic and paid. Brands might use this as a kicker for high-performing organic content (e.g., a brand tweet, announcement, or influencer post). But it also adds noise: nonprofessional users might “boost” posts in unpredictable ways, which could affect feed dynamics and bidding competition for “traditional” ad campaigns. With this update, your uncle’s latest political opinion may just boost itself into virality.
All in on AI
X is moving toward a personalized, AI-powered feed that lets users directly steer what they see. By November or December, the algorithm will be “purely AI,” and fans can soon prompt Grok — “show me more of this, less of that” — to customize their feeds. Elon Musk also says X will open-source the algorithm biweekly. This move may make reach more volatile. If users tune their feeds away from your topics, your posts and ads risk reduced visibility. Mass-appeal campaigns could splinter into uneven outcomes, so advertisers should weigh their options. Updates like this double-down the importance of knowing your audience.
NFL Keeps Wining Big on X
X has invested heavily in NFL and other sports-related content and they’re not stopping. X further updated its NFL Portal for the 2025–26 season to deepen content and ad integration – and advertisers should be ready:
- Personalized Feeds: Live scores and standings tailored to each fan’s favorite teams.
- Event Coverage: Dedicated tabs for Draft, Super Bowl, and other tentpoles with highlights and chatter.
- Real-Time Insights: In-game stats make X a true second-screen companion.
- Discovery + Ads: NFL content now surfaces in Search/Explore, with fresh ad inventory in high-attention spaces.
If you work with sports, entertainment, media, or consumer brands that lean into fandom, these placements could offer better contextual adjacency and reach. The NFL feed is effectively a second screen for fans, and smart ad design and timing could matter more here than volume.
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Strategic Elements is a full-service public affairs, marketing, and media consulting firm based in Iowa. Our team of political operatives, marketing experts, and media strategists helps businesses, organizations, and causes shape public opinion, influence policy, and drive meaningful change.
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