Podcast - Champions of Performance Marketing - interview with Newsbreak - Katie Mulliken

[CPV Lab Pro]

Hi everyone,

We recently recorded a conversation with Katie Mulliken from NewsBreak (she previously worked in Ad Ops at TikTok), and we got so many practical answers.

A lot of media buyers are curious about NewsBreak right now, but also confused about how to approach it.
It looks like native… but behaves closer to social.

Here are the main takeaways that stood out to us, and we recommend you to watch the entire interview, because for sure you will find it useful:

1. Start simple (seriously simple)​

Their recommended starting structure:

1 campaign → 2 ad sets → 3-5 ads per ad set

Many affiliates overbuild campaigns in the beginning.
On NewsBreak this actually slows learning.

Broad targeting works better than trying to “outsmart” the algorithm.

2. Creative matters more than targeting​

This was probably the biggest point.

The platform already does a lot of the targeting internally.
So performance differences mostly come from creatives, not interests.

UGC style ads and native-looking images usually perform best.

3. The algorithm needs conversion data​

We also talked about tracking and this part was very clear.

If you don’t send conversion data back to the platform, the system cannot learn