Paid Media News (Week 18)
Paid Media News (Week 18)
Explore every update from this edition, with the original reporting and contributor credits.
A digest of the original edition. Updates and availability reflect what was reported at the time.
AI Max introduces AI Brief and text disclaimers as the product turns one
Google has marked AI Max for Search's first anniversary with two practitioner-facing additions. AI Brief is a Gemini-powered control layer that lets advertisers steer AI Max in plain English across three dimensions: Messaging Guidelines (what ads should and should not say, e.g. "never mention prices"), Matching Guidelines (which searches to capture or avoid, e.g. "prioritise searches for healthy pantry staples"), and Audience Guidelines (tailored messages for specific cohorts).
Read this update in detail →AI Max expands to Shopping campaigns to capture conversational queries
Google has launched AI Max for Shopping, extending the AI Max model from Search into the Shopping campaign type. The system uses Merchant Centre feeds to transform product data into dynamic Shopping ads that answer conversational queries: capturing the long-tail searches that standard Shopping campaigns historically miss because they fall outside literal product keyword matches.
Read this update in detail →Search campaigns for Travel consolidate fragmented travel formats into AI Max
Google has launched Search campaigns for Travel, consolidating previously fragmented travel campaign types into a single AI Max-powered workflow. Travel advertisers had been managing different campaign types across separate interfaces: Hotel campaigns, Search ads with travel-specific feeds, and other vertical-specific formats: each with their own setup, reporting and optimisation patterns.
Read this update in detail →Google Ads granular reporting capped at 37 months from 1 June
Google has confirmed via direct email to advertisers a new data retention policy for Google Ads, effective 1 June 2026. Hourly, daily and weekly performance reporting will be available for the most recent 37 months only.
Read this update in detail →Google Ads switches call recording to "Yes" by default from 1 July
Google Ads will automatically switch call recording to "Yes" on 1 July 2026 for any account that has not actively selected a setting. Accounts that want to keep recording disabled must change the setting to "No" before 30 June; otherwise, the auto-default will apply.
Read this update in detail →Performance Max tests Search Partners and Display Network exclusion
Thomas Eccel has flagged Google testing the option to exclude Search Partners and the Google Display Network from Performance Max campaigns. The change marks Performance Max's transition out of full-channel format and toward what Thomas describes as a hybrid campaign type, with partial channel control returning to advertisers for the first time.
Read this update in detail →Performance Max adds the Channel performance over time report
Yash Mandlesha has spotted a new Channel performance over time report inside Performance Max, showing how spend distributes across Search, Display, Gmail, and other surfaces over time and how that mix fluctuates day-by-day. The report addresses one of Performance Max's longest-running transparency gaps: overall performance has always been visible, but the dynamic channel mix underneath it has not.
Read this update in detail →Demand Gen Drop adds Commerce Media Suite support and view-through optimisation
Google has rolled out two updates to Demand Gen as part of the April Demand Gen Drop. Demand Gen in Commerce Media Suite extends retailer first-party catalogue and conversion data into Demand Gen inventory in Google Ads, building on existing Display & Video 360 and Search Ads 360 support.
Read this update in detail →Albertsons brings retail signals to YouTube via Google's Commerce Media Suite
Google has announced a new partnership through which Albertsons Media Collective brings first-party shopper data to YouTube and third-party inventory in Display & Video 360. Brands can reach high-intent shoppers on YouTube and across premium publishers, and measure impact with SKU-level sales reporting.
Read this update in detail →Brand Lift Studies adds a new Association metric
Thomas Eccel has flagged a new metric appearing in Google Ads Brand Lift Studies, called Association. The metric lets advertisers select a concept, category, or attribute and measure how strongly users associate the brand with that concept after exposure to the campaign: a measurement type previously available only through bespoke brand-tracking research with separate vendors.
Read this update in detail →Google Ads adds the Results tab to Recommendations
Emirhan Bayutmuş has spotted a new Results tab appearing inside Google Ads Recommendations, surfacing the actual performance impact of changes: budget updates, bid adjustments: that the advertiser has accepted. The tab is rolling out gradually and is not yet available in every account.
Read this update in detail →Google Ads improves urban-rural targeting in India
Google Ads has improved the precision of urban-rural targeting in India, enabling advertisers to achieve tighter control over delivery across the country's varied geographic and economic segments. The update lets campaigns specifically target urban or rural areas, allowing for sharper segmentation of audiences that previously fell into mixed targeting buckets.
Read this update in detail →Pickup cost and minimum order values become required in UK, Switzerland and the EEA from 30 September
Google Merchant Centre has detailed new requirements for local inventory ads and free local listings. A new pickup_cost attribute lets merchants specify pickup costs for in-store products, enabling accurate total costs to be shown on local inventory ads and free local listings.
Read this update in detail →Crypto and complex financial product certifications move into Google Ads accounts
Google has updated its certification process to allow advertisers to apply for cryptocurrency and complex speculative financial product certifications directly inside their Google Ads account, starting May 2026. The new in-account flow covers four certification categories: cryptocurrency exchanges and software wallets, cryptocurrency hardware wallets, cryptocurrency coin trust, and complex speculative financial products.
Read this update in detail →Google Ads API v24 product reporting changes for upgraded Shopping campaigns
Google has detailed product reporting changes in the Google Ads API for advertisers running upgraded Shopping campaigns. The changes affect how product-level data flows through the API once Shopping campaigns are migrated into Performance Max or AI Max, and adjust the resource model for product segmentation in reporting queries.
Read this update in detail →Google Ads API simplifies keyword forecast metrics
Google has simplified the keyword forecast metrics method in the Google Ads API, consolidating previously fragmented forecasting calls into a streamlined GenerateKeywordForecastMetrics method. The change supersedes the prior multi-method approach for keyword and campaign forecasting and aligns the forecasting API with the broader v24 simplification work.
Read this update in detail →Google Ads API v20 sunset reminder
Google has issued a sunset reminder for Google Ads API v20, prompting teams still running on the older version to migrate to a supported release. v20 will stop accepting requests after the announced sunset date, and integrations that have not been migrated will begin returning errors against the older endpoints.
Read this update in detail →Microsoft PMax Website Publisher URL report adds conversion and spend metrics
Microsoft Advertising has added conversion and spend metrics to the Performance Max Website Publisher URL report, addressing a transparency gap that had limited the report's usefulness. Navah Hopkins has flagged the change and notes the practical use case: advertisers can now identify which publisher placements are converting and at what spend level, then build Audience Ads campaigns specifically targeting the winning placements.
Read this update in detail →Google Ads adds a Connect a data source option for first-party tag integration
Natasha Kaurra has spotted a new "Connect a data source" option appearing inside Google Ads under Form Submission Conversion Goal, allowing advertisers to feed BigQuery or SQL-level data directly into the Google tag. Govind Singh has confirmed the same option appearing in his accounts.
Read this update in detail →Meta launches no-cost, one-click Conversions API setup
Meta has rolled out a no-cost, one-click Conversions API setup, simplifying CAPI deployment for advertisers without a dedicated technical resource. Bram Van der Hallen has flagged the launch and notes the practical scope: advertisers with an active advanced CAPI configuration already in place do not need to change or update their setup.
Read this update in detail →Meta releases official MCP and Ads CLI for AI-driven ad management
Meta has released official infrastructure to connect AI clients directly to Meta Ads, addressing the same problem set that led to the unofficial-MCP ban wave covered in Week 17. The launch has two components.
Read this update in detail →Meta auto-enables Related Media on existing ads
Belita Ribeiro has flagged that Meta is automatically enabling "Related Media" on new and existing ads, pulling additional creative assets into ads without operator approval. The feature mixes creatives from different funnel stages: prospecting and remarketing assets: in a single ad unit, often surfacing older creatives that no longer reflect current messaging or positioning.
Read this update in detail →Meta tests multi-form A/B testing inside a single ad
Matias Axel Ramayo has flagged a new Meta Ads feature that lets advertisers test multiple lead forms inside a single ad. Meta duplicates the ad, applies a different form to each duplicate, and then assigns budget across the variants to determine the winning configuration.
Read this update in detail →Meta refreshes campaign setup interface with simpler objective structure
Emirhan Bayutmuş has flagged that Meta has refreshed the campaign setup interface with a simpler objective structure and cleaner navigation. The objectives: Awareness, Traffic, Engagement, Leads, App Promotion, Sales: are now presented more clearly at the entry point, with a tightened design through the rest of the setup flow.
Read this update in detail →Meta updates transparency requirements for ad-buying solutions
Meta has updated its developer policies covering separate ad accounts and transparency for ad-buying solutions, with the transparency provisions taking effect on 3 February 2027. The updated Separate Ad Accounts policy continues to require that end advertisers be kept in distinct ad accounts, with an exception: ad-buying solutions implementing vendor_id and/or brand fields in their Product Catalogue and/or Pixel and CAPI integrations are exempt from the separate-account requirement, provided the fields are properly implemented, and other terms are met.
Read this update in detail →TikTok lets creators add and remove keywords from post metadata
TikTok has rolled out an update letting creators add and remove keywords from post metadata, giving brands and creators direct input into how content surfaces in TikTok search. The change addresses one of TikTok's longest-running discoverability gaps: content has historically surfaced based on caption text, hashtags, and inferred topics, with no explicit keyword layer for creators to control.
Read this update in detail →Amazon launches Auto Buy for shoppers
Isaac Gross has flagged Amazon's launch of Auto Buy, which lets shoppers set a target price and have Amazon automatically purchase the product when it reaches that price. The mechanism converts price-sensitive lookers into automated buyers: shoppers who would previously have bounced because the price was not right at the time of visit can now lock in their intent and wait passively for the price drop.
Read this update in detail →Amazon adds High Price label to product listings
Oleksandr Kovalov has flagged that Amazon has added a "High Price" label to product listings that triggers when three conditions are met: the price is higher than the product's recent history, lower prices are available elsewhere, and the listing is less competitive than similar products. The label appears publicly on the product page, before the Add to Cart button: making the gap between a listing and its competitive set explicit to the shopper at the moment of decision.
Read this update in detail →Amazon List Price validation goes live
Oleksandr Kovalov has separately flagged that Amazon's List Price validation went live on 23 April. Strikethrough "was $X" prices must now reflect either a recent sale at that price at another retailer, or actual customer purchases at that price on Amazon as the Featured Offer.
Read this update in detail →Amazon tests the Hear the Highlights AI podcast feature on product pages
Mansour Norouzi has flagged that Amazon is testing "Hear the Highlights": a feature that auto-generates short audio conversations between two AI hosts about a product listing. The hosts discuss product features, pull review themes, and answer shopper questions in real time.
Read this update in detail →Amazon tests Rufus-first search experience on mobile
Ivan Marynych has flagged Amazon testing a new mobile search flow that redirects some users away from traditional product results to Rufus, the AI shopping assistant. The test is currently limited to a small percentage of mobile searches, but the direction of travel is clear: Amazon is moving discovery from keyword-matched results toward conversational, AI-mediated shopping journeys.
Read this update in detail →Amazon adds personalisation profile that may reshape homepage discovery
Daniel Orkun Duzgun has flagged Amazon's addition of a personalisation profile feature that lets shoppers share preferences for lifestyle, needs, and shopping habits. The profile is stored permanently and applied to every future interaction, meaning two shoppers with different profiles will see materially different results: different products, different ranking, different visual emphasis: without typing a single keyword.
Read this update in detail →Amazon Unmet Demand report surfaces low-conversion search clusters
Isaac Gross has flagged Amazon's Unmet Demand section inside the Product Opportunity Explorer report, which highlights keywords where search volume is surging but conversion rates are low: indicating shoppers are actively searching but not finding the right product. The data is first-party Amazon shopper behaviour, not scraped or estimated, which makes it materially more reliable than third-party tooling for this kind of opportunity discovery.
Read this update in detail →Alphabet Q1 2026: Google Cloud up 63%, paid subscriptions reach 350 million
Alphabet's Q1 2026 results show Google Cloud revenue up 63% to $20.0 billion, with operating income tripling from $2.2B to $6.6B year-on-year. Search queries are at an all-time high, with AI features cited as driving continued usage.
Read this update in detail →Microsoft Q1 results: Bing and ad revenues up 12%, AI ARR reaches $37B
Microsoft has reported Q1 results showing Bing and ad revenues up 12% year-on-year. Total revenue grew 18% to $82.9B, Azure grew 39% in constant currency, and the AI business reached an annualised run rate of $37B, up 123% year-on-year.
Read this update in detail →Hotels on Uber launches as Uber expands into travel booking
Uber has launched Hotels on Uber, announced at its premiere consumer event, GO–GET. The product extends Uber's existing role in the travel journey: airport transfers, in-city transport, food delivery: into hotel booking, with the goal of making Uber the single app a traveller uses across the full trip.
Read this update in detail →OpenAI updates privacy policy to share user data with advertisers
OpenAI has updated its privacy policy, effective 30 April 2026, to allow the sharing of user data with advertisers. The change lands as ChatGPT uninstalls have surged, and as OpenAI is in court with Elon Musk over allegations that the company has abandoned its founding principles.
Read this update in detail →Meta faces a class action over scam advertising revenue
Jasmine Vyas has flagged a new class action lawsuit against Meta in Washington D.C., using the District's unfair and deceptive practices (UDAP) law. Internal Meta documents published in December 2025 showed Meta projected $16 billion in revenue from scam and banned product ads: the basis for the legal argument that Meta has knowingly profited from advertising it should have prevented.
Read this update in detail →GPT-5.5 lands in ChatGPT and Codex products
Following the API and Plus/Pro launch covered in Week 17, OpenAI has rolled out GPT-5.5 inside ChatGPT and Codex for Plus, Pro, Business, and Enterprise users. GPT-5.5 Pro is also live for Pro, Business and Enterprise tiers.
Read this update in detail →AWS and OpenAI expand partnership with Bedrock integration
AWS and OpenAI have announced a major expansion of their partnership, bringing OpenAI's latest models into Amazon Bedrock, launching Codex on Bedrock for AI-powered software development at scale, and introducing Amazon Bedrock Managed Agents powered by OpenAI for production-ready agents in the cloud. All three components are in limited preview.
Read this update in detail →Adobe completes Semrush acquisition
Adobe has completed its acquisition of Semrush, consolidating Semrush's SEO, content marketing, and competitive intelligence tooling into the broader Adobe marketing stack. Oliver Ewbank has flagged the completion.
Read this update in detail →Adobe launches Firefly AI Assistant in public beta
Adobe has released the Firefly AI Assistant in public beta, positioning it as a conversational layer over the broader Firefly creative tooling: turning manual editing workflows into chat-driven instructions. Kris Kashtanova has flagged the public beta and notes the practical shift: complete edits that previously required manual layer manipulation can now be issued as a single conversational instruction.
Read this update in detail →Claude adds connectors for Adobe, Blender, Autodesk Fusion, and creative tooling
Anthropic has expanded the Claude Platform with new connectors covering tools that creative professionals already use: Blender, Autodesk Fusion, Adobe Creative Cloud apps, Ableton, Splice, Affinity by Canva, SketchUp, and Resolume. The connectors give Claude direct access to the design, audio and 3D-modelling environments where creative production happens, rather than only the file outputs of those workflows.
Read this update in detail →Claude Cowork and Claude Code are deployable on Bedrock, Vertex AI, and Microsoft Foundry
Anthropic has made Claude Cowork and Claude Code deployable on inference infrastructure from Amazon Bedrock, Google Cloud Vertex AI, and Microsoft Foundry, and has made them available in public research preview. The release means enterprise marketing and engineering teams can run Claude products on the cloud infrastructure they already operate, with the existing security, compliance, and procurement pathways their organisations have already approved.
Read this update in detail →Google open-sources Agent Skills repository for production agent workflows
Google has open-sourced an Agent Skills repository providing a one-command install of seven production-ready skills into Claude Code, Gemini CLI, Codex, or Antigravity. The skills cover the full agent lifecycle: ADK Python (agents, tools, state management), scaffold (project creation and version upgrades), eval (metrics and LLM-as-judge scoring), deploy (Agent Runtime, Cloud Run, or GKE), publish (Gemini Enterprise registration), observability (Cloud Trace and logging), and workflow (model selection and dev loop).
Read this update in detail →Optmyzr and Frederick Vallaeys publish State of Google Ads Q1 2026 study
Optmyzr has published its State of Google Ads Q1 2026 report, with Frederick Vallaeys analysing performance data across 21,425 Google Ads accounts. The headline finding: total impressions are down 11% year-on-year, but CTR is up 21%: traffic is becoming materially more intentional rather than higher in volume.
Read this update in detail →Google publishes a resource on optimising sites for AI agents
Chris Long has flagged a new Google resource on building "agent-friendly websites" on the WebDev resources page. The page treats AI agents as a new type of visitor that takes screenshots, uses the accessibility tree, and combines visual cues with semantic HTML to navigate sites: and provides specific guidance for sites that want to be navigable by agentic AI.
Read this update in detail →Inside Google Ads Live, Toronto, announced for 29 October
Jyll Saskin Gales has announced Inside Google Ads Live: Toronto, a one-day Google Ads conference at the CN Tower on 29 October 2026.
Read this update in detail →The advertiser takeaway
Each update reflects the source reporting at the time. Open an individual update for its full description, original links and media.
Explore the original edition
Every update from this edition is linked above. Explore the original newsletter for its full context, contributor credits and reporting links.
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