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
Thomas Eccel and Tamás Geiger have both flagged a wave of phishing emails targeting Google Ads advertisers, using a "synchronisation error in your Google Ads account" pretext to trick recipients into clicking a malicious link that purports to fix the synchronisation issue. The emails are sophisticated enough to bypass standard spam filters and reach advertisers' primary inboxes.
Google Ads
Dario Zannoni has flagged a quiet but consequential update to Google's Help pages: primary conversion actions not used for bidding optimisation may be treated differently than expected. The clarification updates the public documentation to explicitly state how primary conversions feed (or don't feed) into Smart Bidding optimisation when they're not selected as the optimisation goal.
Google Ads
Vivek Gupta has flagged that Google Ads will require Passkeys for certain sensitive actions starting 15 July 2026, as part of the broader Security Agent/authentication overhaul covered in Week 18. The requirement applies to specific high-risk operations rather than to all account access.
Microsoft Advertising
Microsoft has scheduled Microsoft Advertising Activate for 19 May 2026: sitting between Google I/O and Google Marketing Live in the May product-announcement crunch. Hana Kobzová has surfaced the event in her weekly digest.
Microsoft Advertising
Microsoft Advertising has expanded transparency controls for Performance Max campaigns, detailed in a May 2026 blog post. The update gives advertisers clearer visibility into PMax campaign behaviour, closing the same transparency gaps practitioners have been flagging across Google's Performance Max product for the past year.
Meta Ads
Meta has launched the Meta AI Developer Assistant for Business Messaging: a new developer-facing AI assistant that helps developers build, debug, and optimise code for WhatsApp Business and Messenger integration. The assistant runs within the Meta for Developers environment and surfaces contextual help, code suggestions, and troubleshooting guidance for the Business Messaging APIs.
Meta Ads
Brendan Ashe has published a structural analysis of Meta's revenue trajectory: Meta needs to find 30%–50% more revenue per user over the next 5 years to offset rising AI infrastructure costs against its 2026 capex guidance of $116 billion. The math is sharp.
Meta Ads
Meta has launched AI-powered translation for paid ads, extending the AI translation feature that has been live for organic Reels and videos. Matias Axel Ramayo has flagged the launch: a new "Translation" option appears in the ad creation flow that uses Meta's AI to translate ad creative (audio and on-screen text) into multiple target languages.
YouTube
YouTube has run its annual Brandcast 2026 advertiser event, with Google publishing the full set of advertiser-facing announcements alongside the consumer-facing Brandcast highlights. The announcements span three structural pillars.
Google Ads
Google has released Google Ads API v24.1 on 13 May, with five practitioner-relevant additions. Mobile Device Platform segmentation lets queries segment campaign and customer reports by iOS or Android: a feature previously requiring workarounds for bid adjustments and OS-level performance analysis.
Google Ads
Ahead of Google Marketing Live, Google has published practitioner guidance on getting more value from ad creatives inside Google Ads, surfaced by Ginny Marvin (Product Liaison). The four recommendations cover the full creative lifecycle.
Meta Ads
Meta's free, one-click Conversions API setup (first flagged in Week 18) is now appearing in materially more Meta Ads Manager accounts, surfaced by Ulusal Çağdaş Çalım with the practical visibility note: advertisers without an existing advanced CAPI configuration are now seeing the one-click setup option directly in Ads Manager. The launch has progressed from limited availability to broader rollout in the past month.
Google Analytics
Arpan Banerjee has surfaced a substantial GA4 expansion: Google, Meta, and LinkedIn budgets are now optimisable from inside Google Analytics 4: moving cross-channel budget management from a manual cross-platform exercise into a unified GA4 surface. The update includes Projection plans (channel-by-channel expected pace), Budget allocation across channels, and Cross-channel optimisation recommendations based on GA4's attribution data.
Google Analytics
Google has opened alpha access to cross-channel conversion reporting in the Google Analytics Data API. Arpan Banerjee has surfaced the alpha along with the technical details; ADworld Experience has flagged the same release.
Google Tag
Google has expanded the Data Manager API with new connector support, detailed in the Google Ads Developer Blog. The expansion lets advertisers combine the foundational Google tag with richer customer signals: such as store sales, CRM events, and offline conversions: through a single API surface rather than the previously fragmented per-source integrations.
Google Merchant Center
Google Merchant Centre has documented a new agency account conversion request workflow, giving agencies a structured path to convert legacy Merchant Centre accounts into the unified agency account model. The workflow lets agencies submit conversion requests for client accounts they manage, and Google reviews and processes each request to align the account with the current agency account architecture.
Display & Video 360
DG Media Network has announced a new collaboration with Google Display & Video 360 and YouTube, expanding how brands programmatically access premium YouTube inventory through the DV360 buying surface. The partnership extends programmatic targeting and bidding controls into YouTube inventory that has historically been less accessible through DV360, particularly for advertisers running cross-channel programmatic strategies.
ChatGPT Ads
Juozas Kaziukėnas has flagged the next major feature on the ChatGPT Ads roadmap: custom audiences. The feature will let advertisers upload raw or hashed email addresses and phone numbers to ChatGPT Ads, matching them against ChatGPT user accounts to enable targeting existing customers, retargeting website visitors with known contact details, and excluding current customers from prospecting campaigns.
Microsoft Clarity
Microsoft Clarity has rolled out its AI Citation report to all users, surfacing which Microsoft Copilot and partner AI surfaces are citing the website inside their AI-generated responses. Navah Hopkins has flagged the launch with strategic framing; Josh Silverbauer has provided the practitioner detail: the report uses Microsoft Copilot and partner data (not just Bing) to map AI citations against the website's content, giving operators visibility into AI-referral traffic that has historically been invisible inside web analytics.
Display & Video 360
Google Marketing Platform has confirmed that Costco Retail Media is officially joining Google's Commerce Media Suite, letting brands connect with Costco Wholesale's first-party audience data through Google's commerce media stack. The partnership extends Google's retail media network: which already includes major partners across grocery, big-box, and pharmacy: into Costco's distinctive membership-based audience.
Google Merchant Center
Google Merchant Centre has confirmed that vehicle ads in the United States are expanding to support All-Terrain Vehicles (ATVs), Utility Task Vehicles (UTVs), Recreational Vehicles (RVs), and non-motorised trailers such as travel trailers and campers, starting May 2026. The expansion extends Google's lower-funnel, omnichannel vehicle ad format beyond traditional automobiles into the broader powersports and recreational-vehicle category.
Google Merchant Center
Google Merchant Centre has rolled out a new product source option: Use AI to add products (currently in beta): that lets Google's AI automatically scan an advertiser's website and populate the product catalogue without manual feed files or API integration. Arpan Banerjee has flagged the launch (sourced from Barry Schwartz); the option appears in Merchant Centre's Add Product Source flow alongside the existing "Add products from a file" and "Use Google Sheets" routes.
ChatGPT Ads
Juozas Kaziukėnas has flagged the next major feature on the ChatGPT Ads roadmap: product feed campaigns. The feature lets advertisers enter a feed ID (the same feed used to push product data to ChatGPT) plus a set of filters: brand, condition, category: to define the product set the campaign applies to.
Amazon Ads
Amazon has walked back a portion of the FBA fee increases announced last year, with Jason Mclellan flagging the change as "a big win for everyone in the Amazon community." Last year, Amazon announced plans for material FBA fee increases that would have meaningfully tightened seller margins through 2026; the walk-back reverses or softens specific fee categories in response to community feedback and seller pushback.
Google Workspace
OpenAI for Business is hosting a webinar on building and running workspace agents in ChatGPT Enterprise on Monday, 19 May at 11 am PT: the same day as Microsoft Advertising Activate and one day ahead of Google Marketing Live's I/O kickoff. The webinar covers how to build agents that operate inside ChatGPT Enterprise to automate workflows across team document review, research, and process tasks.
LinkedIn Ads
noyb (the European Centre for Digital Rights) has filed a GDPR complaint against LinkedIn for its handling of profile visit data. The complaint: LinkedIn tracks profile visits but locks the visit information behind the paid subscription tier: users can see who visited their profile only by paying for LinkedIn Premium. noyb argues that this violates the GDPR's right of access provisions, which require data controllers to provide users with access to their personal data on request, regardless of subscription status.
Amazon Ads
Amazon has confirmed Prime Day 2026 for June: earlier than many sellers expected. Vanessa Hung has shared the timing and its operational implications.
Amazon Ads
Jon Elder has surfaced a selective Amazon policy change appearing on some sellers' accounts: Amazon will stop accepting credit cards from selected sellers starting 1 August 2026, with no broad announcement. As compensation, Amazon is offering a $2,500/month credit for 5 months to affected sellers: a transitional cushion rather than a structural fix.
Amazon Ads
Amazon has added a click interaction to the "Sold by" attribution on product detail pages. Where the field previously navigated shoppers off the product page to the seller's storefront, it now opens an in-page popup with seller details, keeping shoppers in the buying flow.
Amazon Ads
Amazon has formalised the integration between its newly-launched price-history "High Price" indicator (covered in Week 18) and the Rufus AI shopping assistant. Vanessa Hung has surfaced the structural connection: pricing history is now an explicit input to Rufus's recommendation algorithm, not just a consumer-facing badge.
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