The changes that matter to advertisers, with the sources behind them and a practical next step. Pick a topic and catch up at your own pace.
Google Ads
The Google Ads API team has scheduled a release highlights event for v23.1 on February 26 at 11:00 AM EST, available on Discord and YouTube. The release is a minor update with additional features that don't require major migration.
Google Ads
After years of opacity around where Performance Max ads actually appear, the "Where Ads Showed" report is beginning to populate with data in some accounts. Thomas Eccel reports seeing placement information for the first time, including the surprising appearance of Ecosia as a Google Search Partner.
Google Ads
Google has begun notifying advertisers of a significant change to how ad scheduling interacts with budget pacing. Starting in March, the system will attempt to spend the full monthly budget regardless of when campaigns are scheduled to run.
BigQuery
BigQuery Studio now allows users to set a persistent "maximum bytes processed" limit that follows their user profile across projects. The setting acts as a personal safety net, preventing massive data scans triggered by typos or exploratory queries from generating unexpected costs.
Microsoft Advertising
Microsoft Advertising has released a new scenario-based learning path for Performance Max in its Learning Lab, covering setup, optimisation, and troubleshooting across three courses. Advertisers who complete the programme can earn a verifiable badge via Credly to showcase on LinkedIn.
Google Merchant Center
Google Merchant Centre has updated its terminology, renaming "Destinations" to "Marketing methods." The change aims to better reflect the options merchants have to control product visibility and distribution across Google's surfaces.
ChatGPT Ads
The Adthena team has identified the first confirmed ads appearing in ChatGPT for signed-in desktop users in the US. The sighting, which Glenn Gabe compared to "seeing Bigfoot in the wild," confirms that OpenAI's advertising pilot has moved from announcement to execution.
Google Ads
Nonprofits using Google Ad Grants can now set shop visits as an account-level goal - a capability that previously returned an error in Ad Grant accounts. For organisations with physical locations, such as museums, community centres, or service locations, this enables optimising campaigns based on actual footfall rather than proxy metrics.
BigQuery
BigQuery has launched Global Queries in preview, allowing analysts to join datasets across different regions in a single SQL statement without manually moving data. Alicia Williams tested the feature by joining bike-sharing data from Austin (stored in the US region) and London (stored in the EU region) to compare rental patterns by hour.
Reddit Ads
Reddit is testing a new AI-powered search feature that surfaces community-recommended products with pricing, images, and direct purchase links. When US-based users search for product-related queries like "best noise-cancelling headphones," they'll see interactive product carousels at the bottom of search results.
Microsoft Advertising
Microsoft Advertising is expanding its sales outreach through Teleperformance, with representatives now contacting advertisers to offer "free consultations." The approach mirrors Google's aggressive sales tactics that many in the industry have found intrusive.
Microsoft Advertising
Microsoft Advertising is experimenting with a new design in its shopping ads carousel on Bing Search, underlining product titles. The change appears to be a visual test to improve click-through on product listings.
Google AdSense
Google AdSense is introducing additional triggers for vignette ads, including showing ads when users reach the end of an article, are inactive for 30+ seconds, or navigate backwards using the browser's back button. The new triggers will auto-enable on March 9, 2026, unless publishers opt out during the one-month review period.
Google Ads
In her third annual letter, Google VP Vidhya Srinivasan outlined the 2026 roadmap for Ads & Commerce. Google is testing a new shopping ad format in AI Mode that surfaces sponsored retailers alongside organic recommendations.
Meta Ads
Meta has begun rolling out Manus AI tools directly within Ads Manager, embedding generative AI and workflow automation into the campaign management environment. Rather than switching between platforms to access AI capabilities, advertisers can now leverage these tools within the native interface for campaign analysis, report generation, audience insights, and performance recommendations.
Meta Ads
Meta has released Graph API v25.0 and Marketing API v25.0 with significant changes for advertisers and developers. Most notably, Advantage+ Shopping Campaigns (ASC) and Advantage+ App Campaigns (AAC) can no longer be created or updated via the Marketing API from v25.0 onward, with this change extending to all API versions by May 19, 2026.
Meta Ads
The European Commission announced its preliminary view that Meta has infringed competition law by excluding third-party AI businesses from accessing WhatsApp users, and its intention to impose interim measures.
Meta Ads
Jon Loomer reports several Meta Ads Manager changes rolling out:
Google Ads
Google has added visual examples that demonstrate how the "Landing Page Images" optimisation works in Performance Max campaigns. When enabled, the feature allows Google to automatically pull images from your landing pages and transform them into ad creatives - effectively making your website a direct input into the PMax creative system.
Google Ads
Google has changed how it attributes conversions for app campaigns, now crediting the day of install rather than the day of the ad interaction. The shift should reduce discrepancies between Google Ads data and mobile measurement partner (MMP) reporting, which has long been a source of frustration for app marketers trying to reconcile figures across platforms.
Google Analytics
Google Analytics 4 is now surfacing Insights directly on the homepage, providing immediate visibility to automated observations about account performance. Brais Calvo Vázquez expressed scepticism about the value, noting that GA4 Insights have historically generated more noise than actionable signals.
Industry
A reminder surfaced this week about how Google's multi-placement auctions can create misleading performance metrics. When an ad appears at both the top and bottom of the same search results page, it generates multiple impressions but typically only one click, causing CTR to drop even when nothing has changed about campaign quality.
Industry
Microsoft is introducing AI Performance in Bing Webmaster Tools, a new set of insights that shows how your content appears across Microsoft Copilot, AI-generated summaries in Bing, and select partner experiences.
OpenAI
OpenAI has introduced OpenAI Frontier, a significant step forward for enterprise AI adoption. Over 1 million business customers already use OpenAI tools, and Frontier focuses on helping large organisations deploy AI at scale.
Anthropic
Anthropic has extended free access to Claude Opus 4.6 for nonprofits on Team and Enterprise plans. The company's rationale: Nonprofits tackle difficult societal problems with limited resources, and frontier AI tools can help maximise their impact.
Anthropic
Anthropic has released Claude Sonnet 4.6, described as the most capable Sonnet model to date. The release represents a full upgrade across coding, computer use, long-context reasoning, agent planning, knowledge work, and design, with a 1M token context window available in beta.
OpenAI
OpenAI has introduced EVMbench, a benchmark measuring how well AI agents can detect, exploit, and patch high-severity smart contract vulnerabilities. The benchmark tests three capabilities: vulnerability detection in real-world contract code, exploitation in realistic attack scenarios, and safe patching with fixes that hold up under testing.
Amazon Ads
Spotify's new partnership with SeatGeek allows fans to purchase primary event tickets without leaving the app, completing what Dean McElwee describes as a full marketplace strategy. The premise: streaming is lead generation that hauls in traffic, while additional revenue comes from the broader fan economy.
Anthropic
Claude Code can now push prototypes directly to Figma using the latest version of Figma's MCP server. The integration allows developers to take a working prototype built in Claude Code and send it to a Figma canvas, enabling exploration of different design directions without branching code or rebuilding from scratch.
Anthropic
Anthropic has shipped significant updates to Claude Code on desktop, introducing server previews, automated code review, and PR monitoring with auto-fix capabilities. Server previews allow Claude to start development servers and preview running applications within the desktop interface, read console logs, catch errors, and iterate automatically.
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