Last Updated on 17 July 2026
A weekly-ish roundup of what’s changing in digital advertising, curated for UK charities. Estimated read time: 6 minutes.
In this week’s feed
- 📺 YouTube is being swept into the UK’s under-16 social media ban, here’s what it means for your campaigns
- 🛡️ Ofcom’s new scam ad rules could help stop fraudsters impersonating your charity
- 🤖 ChatGPT Ads can now target your supporter list, here’s the audience size you actually need
- 💡 This week’s tip: why your ROAS target is a dial, not a destination
- 📌 Quick notes
YouTube is being swept into the UK’s under-16 social media ban, and it changes how you should plan youth and family campaigns
On 15 June, the UK government confirmed it will ban under-16s from accessing social media platforms, coming into force spring 2027. Unlike Australia, where YouTube was initially exempted from an equivalent ban, the UK version includes YouTube alongside Snapchat, TikTok, Instagram, Facebook and X.
For charities that rely on YouTube to reach families, parents, or younger supporters (youth charities, family support services, student-facing fundraising drives, awareness campaigns for issues affecting children), this matters because YouTube has been one of the few places left to reach under-16 audiences and their households at scale within video content. eMarketer forecasts the wider ban could remove £1.3 billion from projected UK digital ad spend in 2027.
There’s also a bigger shift in how “youth” campaigns get judged. Campaigns built on broad targeting, loose audience data, or creator partnerships with heavy school-age followings will come under scrutiny as a brand safety question, not just a targeting inefficiency.
What to do:
- If any paid YouTube or social campaigns target parents, families, or under-18s, review how much of that reach genuinely sits above 16.
- Spring 2027 gives you time, but media plans built around under-16s or ambiguous “family” audiences on YouTube need a rethink before then.
- Watch how Ofcom’s implementation guidance defines age verification for advertisers, not just platforms.
(Source: eMarketer · IT Brief UK)
Ofcom’s new scam ad rules could make it harder for fraudsters to impersonate your charity
On 10 July, Ofcom opened a consultation on a new Fraudulent Advertising Code of Practice, nearly 40 safety measures that major platforms will be legally required to adopt under the Online Safety Act. Over half of UK adults say they’ve encountered a potentially fraudulent ad online, and scam ad losses in the UK run over £200 million a year.
One measure worth flagging to your finance and comms teams: the draft code targets “intercepting imposters who pretend to represent legitimate businesses.” Charity brands are a common target for this: fake collection pages, cloned donation ads, copycat appeals using a real charity’s name. If adopted, platforms face a legal duty to catch more of this, with fines up to £18 million or 10% of global revenue for platforms that fall short.
Nothing changes for advertisers immediately. The consultation runs to 2 October, with final rules expected next year.
What to do:
- If you’ve previously reported an impersonation ad or fake donation page and had a slow response (or none at all), this consultation is a reasonable moment to flag it. Ofcom is gathering evidence now.
- No account changes needed. As always the devil will be in the detail and in the actual enforceability (if that’s even a word…).
(Source: Ofcom · Advanced Television)
ChatGPT Ads can now target your supporter list, here’s the audience size you actually need
OpenAI has added custom audience targeting to ChatGPT Ads, letting advertisers upload email or phone lists to include or exclude people in a campaign, or apply bid adjustments for known audiences, similar to custom audiences on Meta or Google.
The number worth knowing: the actual hard minimum is 25,000 matched users, not the 100,000 you may see quoted elsewhere. OpenAI recommends audiences of at least 100,000 for the best performance, but a list only needs to clear 25,000 matched users (after duplicates and unmatched entries are removed) to move from “Too small” to “Ready” and become usable in a campaign.
That’s a meaningfully lower bar. A number of mid-size UK charities, particularly those with active email fundraising programmes, will have supporter or donor lists in that range even if they’re nowhere near 100,000.
What to do:
- Check the size of your email or phone supporter list before ruling this out. If you’re close to or above 25,000 contacts, it’s worth uploading and testing, bearing in mind OpenAI recommends 100,000+ for best performance.
- Uploads accept CSV or TXT files up to 500MB and 5,000,000 identifiers, and can use email, phone number, or SHA-256 hashed versions of either if you’d rather not upload raw personal data.
- Audiences can’t be edited once created, so get your list deduplicated before uploading. Updating one later means creating a fresh audience and archiving the old one.
(Source: openai.com)
This week’s tip
This week’s tip, from a Google Ads specialist: a ROAS or CPA target isn’t the outcome you’re hoping for, it’s an instruction that tells Google how aggressive or conservative to be with your bids. If every campaign in your account is set to the same target, that’s often a sign that real performance differences between campaigns are being missed. A campaign already beating its target can usually take a slightly more aggressive setting to unlock more volume; a campaign falling behind benefits from a more conservative one to protect efficiency. Worth a five-minute check next time you’re in your account.
📌 Quick notes
- Meta’s older organic reach and impressions metrics (Page Reach, Video Impressions and around 85 similar legacy figures) fully stopped updating on 15 June, completing the reporting change flagged a few weeks ago. If any of your dashboards have gone blank for reach data, this is why. (Source: Meta for Developers)
- Meta has quietly extended the retention window for website custom audiences from 180 days to 365 days, meaning donor and supporter audiences built from your website traffic can now stay “warm” for longer before they need refreshing. No action needed. (Source: Meta for Developers)
- WhatsApp marketing message rates in the UK move to standalone pricing from 1 October, separate from the per-message rate changes that took effect on 1 July. If you use WhatsApp for charity marketing messages, worth checking your provider’s updated pricing ahead of the autumn. (Source: Meta Newsroom)
In the Feed is kmac digital’s weekly-ish roundup of digital advertising news for UK charity advertisers. Have questions about how any of this affects your campaigns? Get in touch.