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).
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
The Performance Max Search Partners and Display Network exclusion option flagged by Thomas Eccel as a test in Week 18 has now rolled out to a broader pool of accounts. Jason King has confirmed seeing the option live in his accounts, framing the rollout as a brand-new Google Ads option now widely available.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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).
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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2026 newsletter archive: 38 editions and 1,562 distinct updates through Week 36. Source descriptions, credits and media are preserved; missing details remain marked.
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