Microsoft Advertising has expanded custom columns to support all Microsoft Advertising conversion metrics: closing a gap that practitioners had been requesting through community feedback channels. Navah Hopkins has flagged the launch with the practical scope: advertisers can now create custom metrics based on all conversions or primary conversions data, with revenue and ROAS metrics anchored to the values set at the conversion-goal level.
Google Merchant Centre has detailed new requirements for local inventory ads and free local listings. A new pickup_cost attribute lets merchants specify pickup costs for in-store products, enabling accurate total costs to be shown on local inventory ads and free local listings.
Google has launched Search campaigns for Travel, consolidating previously fragmented travel campaign types into a single AI Max-powered workflow. Travel advertisers had been managing different campaign types across separate interfaces: Hotel campaigns, Search ads with travel-specific feeds, and other vertical-specific formats: each with their own setup, reporting and optimisation patterns.
Emirhan Bayutmuş has spotted a new Results tab appearing inside Google Ads Recommendations, surfacing the actual performance impact of changes: budget updates, bid adjustments: that the advertiser has accepted. The tab is rolling out gradually and is not yet available in every account.
Google has confirmed via direct email to advertisers a new data retention policy for Google Ads, effective 1 June 2026. Hourly, daily and weekly performance reporting will be available for the most recent 37 months only.
Google Ads has improved the precision of urban-rural targeting in India, enabling advertisers to achieve tighter control over delivery across the country's varied geographic and economic segments. The update lets campaigns specifically target urban or rural areas, allowing for sharper segmentation of audiences that previously fell into mixed targeting buckets.
Google has marked AI Max for Search's first anniversary with two practitioner-facing additions. AI Brief is a Gemini-powered control layer that lets advertisers steer AI Max in plain English across three dimensions: Messaging Guidelines (what ads should and should not say, e.g. "never mention prices"), Matching Guidelines (which searches to capture or avoid, e.g. "prioritise searches for healthy pantry staples"), and Audience Guidelines (tailored messages for specific cohorts).
Google Ads will automatically switch call recording to "Yes" on 1 July 2026 for any account that has not actively selected a setting. Accounts that want to keep recording disabled must change the setting to "No" before 30 June; otherwise, the auto-default will apply.
Microsoft Advertising has added conversion and spend metrics to the Performance Max Website Publisher URL report, addressing a transparency gap that had limited the report's usefulness. Navah Hopkins has flagged the change and notes the practical use case: advertisers can now identify which publisher placements are converting and at what spend level, then build Audience Ads campaigns specifically targeting the winning placements.
Google has rolled out two updates to Demand Gen as part of the April Demand Gen Drop. Demand Gen in Commerce Media Suite extends retailer first-party catalogue and conversion data into Demand Gen inventory in Google Ads, building on existing Display & Video 360 and Search Ads 360 support.
Google has simplified the keyword forecast metrics method in the Google Ads API, consolidating previously fragmented forecasting calls into a streamlined GenerateKeywordForecastMetrics method. The change supersedes the prior multi-method approach for keyword and campaign forecasting and aligns the forecasting API with the broader v24 simplification work.
Alphabet's Q1 2026 results show Google Cloud revenue up 63% to $20.0 billion, with operating income tripling from $2.2B to $6.6B year-on-year. Search queries are at an all-time high, with AI features cited as driving continued usage.
Microsoft has reported Q1 results showing Bing and ad revenues up 12% year-on-year. Total revenue grew 18% to $82.9B, Azure grew 39% in constant currency, and the AI business reached an annualised run rate of $37B, up 123% year-on-year.
Jasmine Vyas has flagged a new class action lawsuit against Meta in Washington D.C., using the District's unfair and deceptive practices (UDAP) law. Internal Meta documents published in December 2025 showed Meta projected $16 billion in revenue from scam and banned product ads: the basis for the legal argument that Meta has knowingly profited from advertising it should have prevented.
OpenAI has updated its privacy policy, effective 30 April 2026, to allow the sharing of user data with advertisers. The change lands as ChatGPT uninstalls have surged, and as OpenAI is in court with Elon Musk over allegations that the company has abandoned its founding principles.
Emirhan Bayutmuş has flagged that Meta has refreshed the campaign setup interface with a simpler objective structure and cleaner navigation. The objectives: Awareness, Traffic, Engagement, Leads, App Promotion, Sales: are now presented more clearly at the entry point, with a tightened design through the rest of the setup flow.
Uber has launched Hotels on Uber, announced at its premiere consumer event, GO–GET. The product extends Uber's existing role in the travel journey: airport transfers, in-city transport, food delivery: into hotel booking, with the goal of making Uber the single app a traveller uses across the full trip.
Adobe has completed its acquisition of Semrush, consolidating Semrush's SEO, content marketing, and competitive intelligence tooling into the broader Adobe marketing stack. Oliver Ewbank has flagged the completion.
Belita Ribeiro has flagged that Meta is automatically enabling "Related Media" on new and existing ads, pulling additional creative assets into ads without operator approval. The feature mixes creatives from different funnel stages: prospecting and remarketing assets: in a single ad unit, often surfacing older creatives that no longer reflect current messaging or positioning.
Following the API and Plus/Pro launch covered in Week 17, OpenAI has rolled out GPT-5.5 inside ChatGPT and Codex for Plus, Pro, Business, and Enterprise users. GPT-5.5 Pro is also live for Pro, Business and Enterprise tiers.
Optmyzr has published its State of Google Ads Q1 2026 report, with Frederick Vallaeys analysing performance data across 21,425 Google Ads accounts. The headline finding: total impressions are down 11% year-on-year, but CTR is up 21%: traffic is becoming materially more intentional rather than higher in volume.
Meta has updated its developer policies covering separate ad accounts and transparency for ad-buying solutions, with the transparency provisions taking effect on 3 February 2027. The updated Separate Ad Accounts policy continues to require that end advertisers be kept in distinct ad accounts, with an exception: ad-buying solutions implementing vendor_id and/or brand fields in their Product Catalogue and/or Pixel and CAPI integrations are exempt from the separate-account requirement, provided the fields are properly implemented, and other terms are met.
TikTok has rolled out an update letting creators add and remove keywords from post metadata, giving brands and creators direct input into how content surfaces in TikTok search. The change addresses one of TikTok's longest-running discoverability gaps: content has historically surfaced based on caption text, hashtags, and inferred topics, with no explicit keyword layer for creators to control.
Ahead of Google Marketing Live on 21 May, Ginny Marvin has previewed Google's measurement update set, framing the announcements as a shift from measurement as a report card to a growth engine. The release covers several substantive additions.
OpenAI has updated the ChatGPT ad policy to remove the categorical block on advertising inside medical, legal, and financial advice contexts. Anthony Higman has flagged the change with its practical implication: previously regulated verticals that were structurally excluded from ChatGPT Ads can now bid, provided their creative and landing pages comply with the platform's broader advertising rules.
OpenAI has announced a partnership with PwC to reimagine the CFO's office through AI agents. The partnership delivers a structured set of agentic workflows for enterprise finance teams: building on the broader move (visible across Anthropic's Financial Services Suite, Google's Meridian, and now this PwC × OpenAI partnership) toward production-grade AI in finance functions rather than just experimental tooling.
Mansour Norouzi has flagged that Amazon is testing "Hear the Highlights": a feature that auto-generates short audio conversations between two AI hosts about a product listing. The hosts discuss product features, pull review themes, and answer shopper questions in real time.
Ivan Marynych has flagged Amazon testing a new mobile search flow that redirects some users away from traditional product results to Rufus, the AI shopping assistant. The test is currently limited to a small percentage of mobile searches, but the direction of travel is clear: Amazon is moving discovery from keyword-matched results toward conversational, AI-mediated shopping journeys.
Isaac Gross has flagged Amazon's Unmet Demand section inside the Product Opportunity Explorer report, which highlights keywords where search volume is surging but conversion rates are low: indicating shoppers are actively searching but not finding the right product. The data is first-party Amazon shopper behaviour, not scraped or estimated, which makes it materially more reliable than third-party tooling for this kind of opportunity discovery.
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2026 newsletter archive: 38 editions and 1,562 distinct updates through Week 36. Source descriptions, credits and media are preserved; missing details remain marked.
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