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 updated Claude Cowork with scheduled tasks that run on a schedule you set once, such as morning briefs, weekly spreadsheet updates, or Friday team recaps. Plugins make Cowork more useful by letting Claude work as a specialist in your domain.
OpenAI
Juozas Kaziukėnas shared images of the ChatGPT ecommerce merchant dashboard, currently live only for invited retailers. The interface allows merchants to set up product feeds via SFTP push or URL pull, similar to Google Merchant Centre.
Industry
Google has made Video Reach Campaigns with Non-Skip ads generally available globally in Google Ads and Display & Video 360. The format is optimised for CTV delivery and ensures your message is delivered in full.
Google Merchant Center
Google Merchant Centre has introduced a new "build to order" value for the availability attribute, specifically for vehicle listings. This applies to vehicles that aren't in dealership inventory but can be customised and ordered directly by customers.
Industry
Salesforce has launched Tableau Desktop Free Edition with no subscriptions, no data restrictions, and no limits on creativity. The analytics platform runs permanently on your machine.
OpenAI
OpenAI is abandoning its Instant Checkout feature for ChatGPT shopping, reverting to redirecting users to retailer websites rather than in-app purchases. Staff realised that while users researched products in ChatGPT, they were not using it to actually buy.
Industry
Google Ads requires advertisers to confirm whether their campaigns contain European Union political ads by March 31, 2026. The setting can be confirmed in Campaign Settings under "EU political ads," in bulk from the Campaigns section, or set once at account level to apply across campaigns.
OpenAI
Criteo has announced that it is joining OpenAI's advertising pilot for ChatGPT, expanding its commerce media capabilities to conversational AI surfaces.
Anthropic
Anthropic has released a comprehensive curriculum of free courses covering Claude Code for CLI automation, MCP Mastery for building custom tools in Python, a complete API guide, AI Fluency frameworks for safe collaboration, and Claude 101 for core features.
Industry
OpenAI has released GPT-5.3 Instant, focused on smoother and more useful everyday conversations.
OpenAI
OpenAI released GPT-5.4, combining GPT-5.3-Codex's coding skills with improved reasoning, tool use, steerability, and computer capabilities. It scores 83% on GDPval for professional knowledge, includes built-in computer use for software operation, a 1M-token context window, and higher efficiency.
Industry
Google Cloud has published its AI ROI 2025 report, based on a survey of 3,466 senior leaders. Key findings: 52% of organisations using generative AI already deploy AI agents in production, 39% have launched more than 10 AI agents, 74% report ROI on at least one generative AI use case, and 88% of early adopters see positive ROI.
Anthropic
Anthropic has published the AI Fluency Index, its first empirical measurement of how people collaborate with AI. The research tracked 11 behaviours across thousands of Claude.ai conversations, including how often people refine and iterate on work with Claude, question Claude's reasoning, and fact-check outputs.
OpenAI
OpenAI has published details on its advertising and privacy policies. Key points: contact syncing is optional for finding friends using OpenAI services, ads may appear for Free and Go plan users while Plus, Pro, Enterprise, Business, and Education plans remain ad-free, ads are clearly labelled and do not influence ChatGPT responses, advertisers never see chats or personal details and only receive aggregated data like clicks or views, and age prediction helps provide safer experiences for younger users.
Anthropic
Anthropic has launched the Claude Marketplace, allowing enterprises with existing Anthropic spend commitments to apply budget toward Claude-powered solutions from partners including GitLab, Harvey, Lovable, Replit, Rogo, and Snowflake.
Industry
Miles Ryan at Smarter Ecommerce has published an 18-page report on AI Max for Search Campaigns, covering 10 topics including feature comparisons with legacy tech, automation overlap, why AI Max will officially replace DSA, real-world performance data, and known pitfalls. The report includes a new script, designed with Ivan Petrov, that filters and scores the AI Max search term and landing page report data, from best to worst performers.
YouTube
YouTube has added an interactive quiz option for videos, allowing creators to add quiz elements directly into their content.
Industry
Google has refreshed its Help Centre homepage to display your assigned Google Ads support representative's contact details, including their email address and a direct call scheduling option. The change streamlines how advertisers connect with support, removing previous barriers to finding the right contact point.
Google Merchant Center
The Video Assets section in Google Merchant Centre, first announced at Google Marketing Live 2025, is now actively populating with content from external sources, such as YouTube. Previously appearing empty in many accounts since its September launch, videos are now being automatically pulled in.
Google Merchant Center
Google's Creator Partnerships section in Google Ads is now populated with searchable creator profiles, making it a free influencer marketing platform. The feature includes search filters by keyword and views, a centralised dashboard for creator communications, and built-in access to email addresses.
Industry
In the latest Ads Decoded newsletter, Ginny Marvin interviewed Abby Butler (Product Manager, Ads UI) and Adam Bullock (UX Design Lead, Search Ads) about how Google tests new Search ad designs. Key takeaways include: new "content-forward" ad experiences are coming that use AI to synthesise information from advertisers and third-party sources; Google is experimenting with third-party endorsement badges in ads below the description; and every test follows a "five in the box" protocol with input from product, engineering, UX design, UX research, and data science.
Industry
Google has expanded beta access for text guidelines to all advertisers globally in AI Max for Search and Performance Max campaigns. The feature allows advertisers to define specific terms to exclude or concepts to avoid using natural language rules, such as "don't imply our products are cheap" or "don't use language like 'only for'."
Industry
Jason King, a Google Ad Grants consultant, has observed steady improvements in CTR across 20 Ad Grants accounts since the AI Max rollout. Average CTR has risen from 4.8% in mid-December to 8.2% currently, the highest since AI Overviews launched in August 2024.
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
Claude's free plan now includes four features previously only on paid plans: file creation (Word docs, Excel, PowerPoints), web search, connected apps, and Projects.
OpenAI
Adobe is expanding its partnership with OpenAI as a pilot partner in the Ad Pilot Program, now testing with logged-in users 18 years and older in the US on the free and Go tiers. As part of the pilot, Adobe will run ads for Acrobat Studio and Adobe Firefly.
Google Business Profile
Google is updating the Business Profile verification flow. The new interface asks users to self-identify their business model before proceeding.
Industry
Meta has launched Dear Algo on Threads, an AI feature that lets you adjust your feed by posting "Dear Algo" followed by what you want to see more or less of. Preferences apply for three days, and you can repost someone else's Dear Algo request to try their settings.
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