Scale & Strategy
This is Scale & Strategy, the newsletter that doubles as your own personal team of business obsessed researchers, tasked with hunting down daily insights.
Here’s what we got for you today:
- Facebook ad costs are a mixed bag in 2025
- GOOGLE ADS
- Inside the Push to Make EVs Roar Like Sports Cars
Facebook ad costs are a mixed bag in 2025
Meta’s ad platform is still the same old rollercoaster—just when you figure out the algorithm, the benchmarks shift and everyone’s scrambling again.
So what’s the 2025 scorecard?
Traffic campaigns are looking solid: CTRs climbed 8.23% YoY, while average CPCs dropped 6.67% to $0.70. Shopping, collectibles, and gifts are leading the pack, proving that eye-catching creatives still pull clicks.
But lead campaigns? Whole different story. Cost per lead jumped nearly 21% to $27.66, and conversion rates dipped across 80% of industries. Painful.
Still, perspective helps—Facebook’s $27 CPL looks cheap next to Google Ads, where the average CPL is $70.11 and CPCs hover around $5.26. So yes, Meta’s still expensive… just less expensive than the other guy.
Bottom line: People are still clicking, but turning those clicks into quality leads is costing more. The ride’s not stopping—it’s just getting pricier.
GOOGLE ADS
New budget toys, app–web alignment, and fresh Performance Max metrics
Over in Mountain View, Google’s keeping advertisers guessing too.
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Budget control gets a glow-up. A new Sales & Promotions feature bundle (for Performance Max, Search, and Shopping) lets you:
- Lock in a fixed budget for 3–90 days.
- Flip on Promotion Mode to prioritize volume over efficiency—even with tROAS/tCPA bidding.
- App + web finally sync. Unified workflows and reporting now bridge the gap between app and web campaigns. Expect nudges, streamlined conversion tracking, and a combined overview card.
- Performance Max grows some transparency. Two new metrics now show where AI is actually pulling traffic—whether it’s broad-match keywords it invented or landing-page matches you didn’t expect.
Takeaway: Both Meta and Google are still moving the goalposts. You’re not getting off this ride anytime soon.
Inside the Push to Make EVs Roar Like Sports Cars
Electric cars were supposed to quiet the streets. Instead, they’re starting to sound like V8s on steroids.
Mercedes, Dodge, BMW, Porsche—and soon Ferrari—are all engineering fake engine sounds to give EVs the same swagger as their gas-burning predecessors.
- Mercedes-AMG is testing a “V8 mode” that pipes engine growls through speakers in the headlights. Engineers literally did a “wine tasting” of V8 noises to fine-tune it.
- Dodge made its new Charger Daytona EV obnoxiously loud on purpose. Their brief: make it growl like the Hellcat. “It’s supposed to be a little obnoxious—that’s the fun,” said product chief Kevin Hellman.
- BMW went Hollywood, enlisting Hans Zimmer to compose futuristic tones for its EV lineup. Think Gladiator, but in traffic.
- Porsche took a more authentic route, recording the natural whirs and hums of its Taycan on test tracks. They packaged the results into a $520 add-on called Porsche Electric Sports Sound.
- Polestar went the opposite direction: “No fake engine noise.”
Ferrari’s first EV drops in October. The only thing they’ve promised? It won’t be silent.
Of course, there’s a catch. Regulators already require EVs to have acoustic alerts at low speeds for pedestrian safety, and critics worry about turning parking lots into sound mashups of synthetic roars, hums, and growls.
But for carmakers, the sound is the brand. A quiet Ferrari is unthinkable.
The big question: will buyers pay six figures for an EV that doesn’t just look like a supercar, but sounds like one too?
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