Changes to search campaigns, bidding and ad delivery. Follow announcements and account observations, with practical checks for your next campaign review.
Google Ads
Google has added support for custom labels in Demand Gen campaigns, flagged by Emmanuel Flossie. Custom labels: long available in Shopping for segmenting products by attributes such as margin, season, or bestseller status: can now be used to organise and report on Demand Gen, giving advertisers a familiar lever for structuring campaigns around product groupings.
OpenAI
Juozas Kaziukėnas has flagged a third iteration of ads inside ChatGPT, with the format evolving to carry a larger image while taking up less horizontal space: a layout that would allow multiple ads side by side, though only one ad shows at a time so far. He notes that more ad formats are coming, specifically for shopping.
Google Ads
Google has updated its Gambling and Games policy to allow online lottery advertisements in Peru from 8 July 2026, in its advertising policy help centre. Eligible advertisers must hold a favourable technical opinion from Peru's Ministry of Women and Vulnerable Populations (MIMP) and complete Google's country-specific certification before running ads.
Google Ads
Google has released version 24.2 of the Google Ads API, announced on the Google Ads Developer Blog and flagged by Arpan Banerjee. Alongside the multi-party approval requirement for sensitive actions, the release adds the ability to programmatically tag AI-generated creatives with transparency labels ahead of the EU AI Act's disclosure requirements, and introduces granular Performance Max placement visibility.
Google Ads
Google is testing new "Strongest match" and "Strong match" labels on Search ads, flagged by Arpan Banerjee. The labels surface a match-quality signal on sponsored results, indicating how closely an ad is judged to match the query.
Google Ads
Google has added three new columns to Google Ads reporting, flagged by Arpan Banerjee: Unique Search Categories, alongside related search-term insight metrics that reveal gaps in an account's search coverage. The column surface shows where a campaign is and is not appearing across search categories on Google Maps, giving advertisers a clearer view of unaddressed demand.
Google Ads
Google has issued a reminder on the Google Ads Developer Blog that version 21 of the Google Ads API will sunset on 5 August 2026. After that date, all v21 requests will begin to fail, so integrations still on v21 must migrate to a newer version to avoid disruption.
Google Ads
Google is rolling out its mandatory financial-services advertiser verification programme to every member state of the European Union and the European Economic Area, announced on the Ads & Commerce blog by Keerat Sharma, VP & GM of Ads Privacy and Safety. The programme requires advertisers promoting financial services to verify their identity and authorisation before running ads, aiming to stop scams before they reach users.
Google Ads
Google has announced on the Google Ads Developer Blog that, from 3 August 2026, advertisers will no longer be able to create new Smart Campaigns through the Google Ads API. Existing Smart Campaigns will continue to serve and can still be updated, but new ones must be built another way.
Google Ads
Google is updating how bidding strategies are labelled to clarify the difference between volume-focused and target-focused goals, announced on the Google Ads Developer Blog. Target CPA and Target ROAS are being decoupled from Maximise conversions and Maximise conversion value, reverting to their previous standalone naming.
Microsoft Advertising
Microsoft Advertising has expanded its Model Context Protocol server into an open pilot. The move brings Microsoft into line with Google by granting external AI tools structured access to the advertising platform, allowing agents and assistants to query and manage Microsoft Ads campaigns through the MCP standard.
Google Ads
Google has updated its Gambling and Games policy to allow Daily Fantasy Sports advertising in Colorado from 1 July 2026, as reported by PPC News Feed. Only operators certified under Colorado state regulations will be eligible, and advertisers must complete Google's certification before running ads.
Google Ads
Bob Meijer has built and released a free Chrome extension that hides the clutter that the Google Ads interface has accumulated: AI performance summaries, auto-pop-up notifications, educational cards, Ads Advisor callouts, and "you're viewing this data range" reminders: leaving the tables and charts that carry the performance data visible. There is one toggle per element or a master switch to strip the whole interface back to a focused view.
OpenAI
Two data points this week underline AI's steady encroachment on discovery. Vladimir Hanzlik noted that ChatGPT continues to add roughly 3 million new US site visitors per month, with its share of US internet users still climbing and no sign of a slowdown despite pressure from Gemini in the consumer market and Claude in the business market.
Google Ads
Google is testing partner selection in Performance Max, flagged by Arpan Banerjee. In an alpha, advertisers can choose whether their Performance Max campaigns serve on Search Partners: third-party search sites and apps beyond Google: and across the Google Display Network.
Microsoft Advertising
Microsoft has made Microsoft 365 Copilot Cowork generally available worldwide, flagged by Jack Rowbotham. Cowork executes complex, long-running, multi-tool tasks: the user defines the work, and Cowork runs it end-to-end, returning a completed result.
Google Ads
Arpan Banerjee's public post of 9 September describes receiving access to Google Ads Promotion Mode. His account observation adds practical detail to the Promotion Mode beta previously included in Google's broader bidding and budgeting announcement.
Microsoft Advertising
Google is adding a server-side GTM control that blocks the browser calls made by Google Ads and Floodlight tags, flagged by Simo Ahava. The change relates to Google Ads' shift in how it responds to the consent state and to Google Signals when linked to a GA property.
Microsoft Advertising
The European Parliament has approved proposed amendments to the AI Act, flagged by Luiza Jarovsky. The changes adjust the timeline for high-risk AI obligations: applying from 2 December 2027 for systems listed in Annex III and from 2 August 2028 for those embedded as safety components under EU sectoral legislation: and set AI-generated content labelling obligations from 2 December 2026.
Google Ads
Google has expanded product reporting in the Google Ads API as of 15 June 2026, as flagged by Loveleen Joao and announced on the Google Ads Developer Blog. Cost and conversion metrics now return at the product level for Video, Demand Gen, and App campaigns, where previously only impressions and clicks were available.
Google Ads
Google has launched a beta that brings Google-hosted form leads into the Conversions section, flagged by Arpan Banerjee. Raw, qualified, converted, and lost leads are now tracked in one place, giving advertisers a clearer view of lead quality without the need to export to a separate system.
Google Ads
Google is enabling conversion-based customer lists for eligible accounts as of 17 June 2026. The feature applies to advertisers already using both Enhanced Conversions and Customer Match and automatically builds audience lists from conversion data.
Google Ads
Google has added Text Disclaimers as a dedicated asset in Google Ads, flagged by Arpan Banerjee. Built for regulated industries such as finance, healthcare, insurance, legal, and gambling, the asset gives advertisers a compliance-specific way to surface mandatory disclaimer text.
Microsoft Advertising
SpaceX has agreed to acquire AI coding startup Cursor for $60bn in stock, days after the company's record IPO. The deal is intended to help SpaceX's AI division: built around Elon Musk's xAI, which SpaceX merged with earlier this year: catch up to the major AI labs, and is expected to close in the third quarter.
Microsoft Advertising
Microsoft Advertising has set out its "AI economy" vision ahead of Cannes Lions on its blog, centred on Web IQ. Introduced at BUILD 2026, Web IQ is a suite of AI-native grounding APIs that connect AI systems to fresh, real-world intelligence from web pages, news, images, and videos, and is already used by assistants such as Copilot and ChatGPT.
Google Ads
Google has rolled out the ability to view product-level performance for a specific asset group inside the Performance Max Products report, flagged by Yash Mandlesha. Advertisers can now select an individual asset group and see how its products perform, rather than manually filtering and cross-referencing.
Microsoft Advertising
The UK's Competition and Markets Authority has imposed two new conduct requirements on Google's search services. Under the Fair Ranking requirement, Google must rank organic results: including in AI Overviews, but not sponsored results: using objective and non-discriminatory criteria, give businesses advance notice of significant ranking changes, and create a clear process for businesses to raise concerns.
Microsoft Advertising
Google has updated its documentation to advise that, for domain migrations, site owners should add all domain variants to the Change of Address tool, flagged by Barry Schwartz. The guidance is a small but practical clarification for anyone moving a site between domains, where missed variants can cause signals to transfer incompletely.
Anthropic
Anthropic has updated Claude Design to stay on-brand with a team's design system across projects, announced on its Claude account. It can import a design system from a repository, design files, or a codebase, build with a team's real components, and check its own output against the design system before a user sees it.
Microsoft Advertising
Microsoft Advertising has published a June 2026 update to its Gambling and Games policy in its advertising policy help centre. The update refines where and how gambling and games ads may run, consistent with Microsoft's market-by-market approach, in which advertisers must be licensed in the target market and complete the gambling enablement process before serving ads.
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