Ad war for short video

Google has escalated the fight for short video ads by hiring Khartoon Weiss, TikTok’s former North America ads leader, into a Google sales role focused on commerce. (businessinsider.com) Weiss joined Google as vice president of United States mid-market sales for commerce, according to an internal memo reported on April 12, 2026. Bloomberg had reported on April 7 that she was leaving TikTok after leading its advertising business. (businessinsider.com) (bloomberg.com) The hire lands as Meta is forecast to pass Google in digital advertising revenue by the end of 2026. Emarketer said on April 13 that Meta is on track for $243.46 billion in worldwide net ad revenue this year, ahead of Google at $239.54 billion. (emarketer.com) (reuters.com) Short-form video is a big part of that contest because it is where social platforms are trying to capture brand budgets that once flowed more heavily to search feeds and longer video. Meta’s forecast share for 2026 is 26.8% of global digital ad spending, versus Google’s 26.4%, according to Emarketer. (emarketer.com) (finance.yahoo.com) Google has been telling investors that YouTube Shorts is no longer just an audience product. Alphabet said in its 2025 fourth-quarter earnings call that Shorts now averages more than 200 billion daily views, and that in some countries, including the United States, Shorts earns more revenue per watch hour than traditional in-stream YouTube. (abc.xyz) (blog.youtube) Meta has been making the same case from the other side. On its 2025 third-quarter earnings call, the company said the annual run rate of revenue tied to its end-to-end automated ad tools had reached $60 billion, and Mark Zuckerberg said Reels had an annual run rate of more than $50 billion. (s21.q4cdn.com) (tubefilter.com) Meta has also kept adding creator and monetization tools to feed that inventory. On March 18, 2026, it launched Creator Fast Track on Facebook, with new earnings metrics aimed at helping creators grow views and income faster. (about.fb.com) TikTok still has the format that forced rivals to respond, but its United States business has been operating under political and ownership pressure for more than a year. In that setting, a senior ad-sales move from TikTok to Google gives Google a veteran who knows how brands buy vertical video at scale. (bloomberg.com) (businessinsider.com) The next test is whether advertisers keep shifting money into Reels and Shorts fast enough to change the pecking order in 2026. The numbers now say that race is close enough for executive hires to matter. (emarketer.com) (abc.xyz)