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
Google has published its June Demand Gen Drop on the Ads & Commerce blog, detailing how it is expanding Demand Gen capabilities on YouTube. Video enhancements now support broader aspect-ratio transformations: vertical to square, vertical to landscape, and square to landscape: making it easier to adapt a single asset across placements.
Google Ads
Google has renamed the brand-safety "Inventory Type" categories within the Content Suitability settings, as Aleksejus Podpruginas flagged. The older "Expanded" and "Standard" labels are retired in favour of clearer names: Maximum inventory (formerly Expanded), Moderate inventory (formerly Standard), and Limited inventory (formerly Limited).
Industry
Google has released the June 2026 spam update to Search, announced on the Google Search Central account. Described as a normal spam update, it rolls out across all languages and locations and may take a few days to complete.
Industry
Google's Brendon Kraham has stated that good SEO remains the foundation for visibility in AI experiences, flagged by Glenn Gabe. Kraham said Google's generative AI features are rooted in the same core ranking and quality systems as traditional Search, and because those AI experiences retrieve up-to-date content from the existing search index, the best formula for success remains foundational SEO.
Google Ads
Google is adding multi-party approvals to the Google Ads API for sensitive account actions, announced on the Google Ads Developer Blog. From 27 July 2026, rolling out over several weeks, certain API calls: such as inviting a new user via the access-invitation service: will require a second administrator to approve before they take effect, mirroring a broader change in Google Ads accounts that now require multi-party approval for sensitive actions.
YouTube
Google has announced a set of Gemini-built insights tools for YouTube at Cannes Lions 2026, on the Ads & Commerce blog. New trending insights in Google Ads Insights Finder give US advertisers a more granular, real-time view of what is popular on YouTube.
Industry
SERP Alert has flagged the first sighting of Google's new autocomplete display: announced at I/O: appearing within AI Mode. The previews Google showed had the feature surfacing in the global search bar with coloured autocomplete, and this is the first time it has been spotted live inside AI Mode, suggesting wider rollout may follow.
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.
Industry
Microsoft has added Skills to Microsoft 365 Copilot in Excel, flagged by Jack Rowbotham. Teams can teach Copilot a repeatable workflow once, then have it follow that process on demand: prebuilt, custom, and developer/partner skills are supported.
Google Ads
Google has launched a set of Agent Skills for Google Advertising and Measurement in its public skills repository on GitHub, announced on the Google Ads Developer Blog. Agent Skills are token-efficient, modular instruction sets that turn AI coding assistants into Google Ads and measurement specialists: for example, guiding an agent through setting up Google Ads API credentials and a client library inside an agentic IDE.
BigQuery
Google has launched update-based triggers in BigQuery, flagged by Johan Strand and Luka Cempre. Scheduled queries can now run when a table changes, rather than only on a schedule, so aggregated tables update as soon as new data lands in the warehouse, not waiting for the next scheduled run.
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.
Anthropic
Anthropic is now reported to generate a substantially higher annualised revenue run rate than OpenAI despite having a fraction of ChatGPT's users, flagged by Endrit Restelica. Anthropic's run rate, around $9bn a few months ago, is now reported at roughly $47bn, compared with OpenAI's roughly $25bn.
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.
Industry
Google has expanded the tips section of its responsive search ads help document with four new recommendations on pinning, reported by Barry Schwartz. The guidance warns against pinning identical or very similar text to the same slot, since it gives Google's system nothing to test and reduces Ad Strength without any offsetting benefit.
Industry
Matt Navarra has argued that the UK's under-16 social media ban is prompting brands to reconsider how they reach younger audiences in a post that sparked wide discussion. His central point: what was called "youth marketing" was, for years, really platform marketing: brands buying placement on the platforms teens frequented, then layering research and targeting on top.
BigQuery
Several practitioners shared opening-day Prime Day data this week. Isaac Gross reported that Day One was notably softer year on year: the opening-day lift over a clean 30-day baseline came in at +55% versus +81% in 2025, around 26 points lower across the same brands: and that Day Two has historically been the event's softest revenue day.
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 Analytics
Google has unified enhanced conversions for web and enhanced conversions for leads into a single setting, flagged by Matteo Zambon. From June 2026, the long-standing distinction between the two disappears from the Google Ads interface, with one toggle now controlling both.
Anthropic
Anthropic has introduced Claude Tag, a way for teams to work with Claude inside Slack, announced on its Claude account. Claude joins a workspace as a team member with access to the channels and tools an admin chooses, so users can delegate tasks by tagging @Claude with a request: writing or merging pull requests, running data analysis, and other work: while focusing on other things.
Meta Ads
Meta has changed the wording of the control that turns off Advantage+ Audience, flagged by Jon Loomer and Bram Van der Hallen. The button at the bottom of the Audience section, previously labelled "Further limit the reach of your ads," now reads "I need a specific audience."
LinkedIn Ads
Matt Navarra has flagged that LinkedIn has launched a Creator Marketplace, with leaked reports pointing to a wider set of creator-monetisation tools in development: subscriptions, events, and the ability to sell paid "experiences" such as advice sessions. He frames it as LinkedIn catching up to platforms like YouTube in building out creator monetisation.
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.
OpenAI
OpenAI has unveiled the GPT-5.6 family: Sol, Terra, and Luna, but general availability is paused at the US government's request. The models are rolling out first to a limited group of trusted partners via the API and Codex, after Commerce Secretary Lutnick reportedly warned Sam Altman not to launch without agency approval.
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.
Amazon Ads
Amazon has introduced a multi-touch attribution toggle in the Sponsored Products reporting console, flagged by Liran Hirschkorn and also covered by Ivan Marynych. In beta for US advertisers, it sits alongside the existing last-touch model and shares sales credit across multiple ads that influenced a purchase, rather than handing all the credit to the last ad clicked or seen.
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.
Microsoft Clarity
Microsoft has added a Violations card to the Bot Analytics dashboard in Microsoft Clarity. For the first time, site owners can see which automated crawlers are accessing pages explicitly disallowed in robots.txt, shown as a percentage of total bot traffic with trends over time and filters by operator, bot name, and activity type.
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.
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