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.
Anthropic
Anthropic has launched Routines in Claude Code in research preview across all paid plans. Routines allow a prompt, repository, and connectors to be configured once and run on a schedule, triggered by an API call, or fired by a GitHub webhook.
Display & Video 360
Satya Nadella has announced that Copilot in Microsoft Word now tracks changes and leaves comments directly inside documents, operating as a collaborative in-document coworker rather than a separate assistant pane. The feature is grounded in an enterprise context via Work IQ.
Gemini
Google has published its 2025 Ads Safety Report. Gemini-powered detection tools blocked or removed over 8.3 billion ads and suspended 24.9 million advertiser accounts: including 602 million ads and 4 million accounts associated with scams.
OpenAI
OpenAI has updated its Agents SDK with a more capable harness for building agentic workflows. New capabilities include: configurable memory, sandbox-aware orchestration, filesystem tools, MCP tool use, shell execution, and file editing support.
Google Business Profile
Barry Schwartz has confirmed that the Google Business Profile Posts repeat option: which allows businesses to republish or repeat an existing post: is now officially live.
Anthropic
Anthropic has released Claude Opus 4.7, which is generally available across all Claude products, the API, Amazon Bedrock, Google Cloud Vertex AI, and Microsoft Foundry. The model delivers improved performance over Opus 4.6 in advanced software engineering: particularly for complex, long-running tasks: with better vision capability (more than three times the resolution) and higher-quality output in professional documents, slides, and interfaces.
OpenAI
OpenAI has released a major update to Codex. Codex can now work across your computer, use apps and tools, generate images, remember preferences, and handle repeatable background tasks.
OpenAI
OpenAI has released ChatGPT Skills and Apps in Excel in beta. Two default skills are available at launch: a Corporate Finance / FP&A Spreadsheet Skill for budgets, forecasts, and KPI packs; and a Financial Modelling Skill for three-statement models, DCFs, LBOs, and comparables.
Display & Video 360
Google has expanded its spam policies to explicitly prohibit back-button hijacking: using scripts or browser history manipulation to prevent users from returning to the previous page. The practice is now classified under the malicious practices spam policy, meaning sites may face manual spam actions or automated ranking demotions from June 15, 2026.
OpenAI
Juozas Kaziukėnas has reported that Shopify has released a ChatGPT app that enables product search across millions of Shopify merchants and links directly to product pages. The app does not yet support checkout or shopping carts.
Google Business Profile
Darren Shaw and Ben Fisher have flagged that Google updated its GBP review guidelines on April 17, explicitly prohibiting: asking customers to mention specific employees in reviews; and requiring staff to collect a set number of reviews. Both are now classified as rating manipulation.
BigQuery
Axel Thevenot has flagged that Google Cloud has launched BigQuery Graph capabilities in Preview, enabling Graph Query Language (GQL) to be used directly within BigQuery on existing tables with no ETL required. SQL and GQL can be mixed in the same workflow, built-in graph visualisation is included, and the feature is optimised for large-scale analytical queries.
Industry
Jawad Ahmed has highlighted the Export Session feature in Google Tag Manager's Preview mode, which downloads a full debugging session as a JSON file containing Data Layer events, tag firing status, variables, and consent state: enabling reproducible debugging sessions to be shared without requiring live account access.
Microsoft Clarity
Microsoft Clarity has released a Conversion tab in its heatmaps tool, showing the percentage of sessions that converted after interacting with a specific element or section on a page. Previously, heatmaps showed attention and click data but provided no direct link to conversion outcome: making it impossible to determine whether a specific component was contributing to or suppressing sales.
Display & Video 360
Google used NewFront 2026 at Pier 57 on March 23 to reposition Display & Video 360 as a Gemini-powered end-to-end media buying platform: the "Gemini Advantage": framing it as the only ad tech stack where the same AI model that powers the products also owns the inventory.
Anthropic
Anthropic has shipped MCP integrations accessible directly in the Claude mobile app, allowing users to connect to and query tools such as Figma, Canva, and Amplitude from their phones. Charly Wargnier flagged the update as a significant shift: MCP-powered workflows: previously limited to Claude Desktop and Claude Code: are now available on mobile, removing the constraint that agent-connected workflows required a desktop session.
OpenAI
OpenAI has launched Library in ChatGPT: a new sidebar tab providing a central location for all files uploaded across conversations, with browsing, sorting, search, and direct attachment from the composer. OpenAI reports that more than 1 billion files are uploaded to ChatGPT each week.
Anthropic
Anthropic has launched auto mode in Claude Code, available as a research preview on the Team plan, with Enterprise and API access rolling out over the following days. Auto mode allows Claude Code to handle file writes and bash command permissions autonomously, without requiring approval for each action or disabling safeguards entirely.
Microsoft Advertising
Microsoft has updated the AI Performance Dashboard in Bing Webmaster Tools to surface bidirectional citation insights: advertisers and SEOs can now see which specific pages are being cited for a given grounding query, and which grounding queries are driving citations to a specific page. Aleyda Solís flagged the update as a direct response to community feedback, tagging the Bing team by name.
Apple Ads
Simo Ahava has revised his guide on mapping an IPv6 frontend to a server-side Google Tag Manager load balancer on Google Cloud, following a platform change that now requires a Certificate Map for configuring SSL on multi-frontend load balancers. The updated steps involve configuration steps that cannot be completed entirely within the Google Cloud Platform UI, requiring some manual intervention until Google integrates the flow.
Apple Ads
Apple has announced paid advertising placements inside Apple Maps, launching initially in the United States and Canada. Local businesses will be able to bid on search queries: such as "coffee near me" or "pharmacy": and surface directly in Maps search results, with users able to call, navigate, or order directly from the placement.
Gemini
Google has released Gemini 3.1 Flash Live, described as its highest-quality audio and voice model, now powering Search Live, Gemini Live, and Gemini Enterprise for Customer Experience. The model delivers faster response times than its predecessor, can follow the thread of a conversation for twice as long, and has improved tonal understanding: dynamically adjusting to user frustration or confusion.
Google Merchant Center
Thomas Eccel has spotted a new ad format in Gmail on mobile, displaying overlay ads as a sticky banner with a grey background at the bottom of email threads. The placement differs from existing Gmail ads, which typically appear at the top of the inbox.
Google Merchant Center
Emmanuel Flossie of FeedArmy has published a practical guide for one of the most common Merchant Centre frustrations among Shopify merchants: product data that stops updating in the feed despite changes being made in Shopify. The issue typically stems from configuration in the Google channel app rather than from Merchant Centre itself: feed refresh settings, mismatched attribute mappings, or suppressed sync jobs are the most frequent causes.
Google Merchant Center
Google has updated its Merchant Centre landing page requirements to mandate that the buy button on out-of-stock product pages be visually disabled: greyed out and non-clickable: rather than simply hidden or removed. Emmanuel Flossie of FeedArmy, who identified and detailed the change, notes the distinction is specific: hiding the button or styling it as invisible is no longer compliant.
Google Merchant Center
Starting in mid-April 2026, Google Merchant Centre will begin surfacing data quality issues specific to Vehicle Ads within the account issues interface. The system will evaluate submitted vehicle data against corresponding landing page content and flag discrepancies across six dimensions: availability, visibility, condition, price, mileage, vehicle identification details (VIN, brand, model), and landing page URL validity.
Industry
Google Ads has updated the Asset Optimisation interface with a cleaner design and a new Manage opt-ins page. From this panel, advertisers can now control shorter videos (auto-generated from existing assets), resized videos (in different aspect ratios), and landing page previews (images pulled directly from your landing page).
Google Merchant Center
Google has made Merchant Centre for Agencies generally available in the US and Canada. The interface provides a centralised command centre for managing multiple client accounts, with features for onboarding, portfolio-wide alerts, issue detection, and growth opportunities.
Industry
Google Ads has introduced auto-end screens that display product or service details after video ads finish. The feature pulls information from your campaign, including app name, icon, price, and install link.
Anthropic
Anthropic has launched the Claude Community Ambassadors programme, inviting builders to lead local Claude communities, host events, and partner with Anthropic to shape Claude's future.
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