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 will resume certification applications for online gambling advertisers targeting Australia on April 21, 2026, after a pause since August 2025. The update follows Google's March 2026 eligibility changes, which impose stricter account and domain verification standards.
Google Ads
Arpan Banerjee and Thomas Eccel have both identified a new Results tab inside Google Ads Recommendations, showing the actual incremental impact of bid and budget recommendations that have already been applied: enabling advertisers to see whether Google's suggestions moved metrics in the stated direction rather than acting on blind faith.
Google Ads
Jeremy Young has flagged a growing wave of phishing attacks targeting agency Google Ads Manager accounts. The scam involves fraudulent audit invites followed by a phishing email mimicking a read-only MCC access invite.
Google Ads
Arpan Banerjee has spotted that Text Guidelines (Beta): the brand rule system constraining AI-generated ad copy: can now be copied from an existing campaign to a new one in a single click, enabling consistent brand tone and messaging rules to be applied across an account without manual re-entry.
Google Tag
Google has added dedicated channels for the Data Manager API to its Google Advertising and Measurement Community Discord server: #data-manager-api for questions and feedback, and #announce-data-manager-api for product news. Google's Developer Relations team will be actively present on both channels.
Google Ads
Natasha Kaurra has identified that the "Do not assign a value" option has been removed from the Google Ads conversion setup flow. Advertisers must now choose either a fixed value per conversion or dynamic values.
Google Ads
Following the Easter rollout, Google's seasonal Asset Group Theming is now live for Mother's Day. The feature duplicates an existing asset group, applies AI-generated themed images and updated copy, and leaves the original asset group untouched: all changes require approval before publication.
Google Merchant Center
The Merchant API will be available as an Advanced API in the Google Ads Scripts editor from April 22, 2026. The API is modular: sub-APIs cover Product Studio, Reviews, Notifications, and expanded data-source management, including supplemental, local, regional, and promotional data.
Google Ads
Thomas Eccel has spotted a new Beta button in Performance Max asset groups labelled "Copy and edit with AI." The feature duplicates an entire asset group in one click and connects to Google's creative editing tools: Nano Banana 2 for image generation and editing, and Veo 3 for video variations: allowing AI-remixed creative variants to be produced without leaving the Google Ads interface.
Meta Ads
Mike Ryan has published a month-one analysis of JD Group's European entry: available at Smarter Ecommerce: examining how the Chinese retail giant has positioned itself across European markets and what its early presence signals for competitive dynamics in Google Shopping auctions.
Anthropic
Anthropic has launched Microsoft 365 connectors across all Claude plans, enabling users to connect Outlook, OneDrive, and SharePoint directly to Claude conversations, bringing email, documents, and files into context without manual attachment.
Meta Ads
Matias Axel Ramayo has flagged that Make has joined Meta as an official Conversions API partner alongside Zapier. The integration connects CRM data to CAPI via a new contact-creation trigger, available free until March 2028.
Anthropic
Anthropic has announced that Claude Managed Agents are now available inside Notion in private alpha. Claude picks up tasks from a team board, pulls context from PRDs and connected documents, completes work, and surfaces outputs for human review and approval: all inside Notion's interface.
OpenAI
Juozas Kaziukėnas has reported that ChatGPT's browsable product catalogue: a block of four products with a "Browse All" expansion button: is now appearing at the bottom of all shopping conversations. Kaziukėnas draws a direct parallel to Amazon's "Frequently bought together" section, noting that those slots are now entirely sponsored products, and raises the question of how long ChatGPT will hold off from monetising this placement as it scales ad revenue.
Gemini
Awais Nabi has reported that Shopify has launched the Shopify AI Toolkit, which connects AI agents: including Claude Code, Cursor, Gemini CLI, VS Code, and OpenAI Codex: directly to a merchant's store via a 2-minute installation. The toolkit enables natural-language instructions to execute store changes: product description updates, conversion funnel analysis, pricing adjustments, inventory management, and collection restructuring: through the agent rather than the admin interface.
Meta Ads
Google Search Central has flagged that the median mobile homepage has reached 2.3MB: three times its 2015 size. A new podcast episode covers HTML bloat and its implications for the 2MB Googlebot fetch limit, identifying hidden bloat sources including JSON-LD and inline SVGs, and noting that faster networks do not resolve the processing overhead large pages impose on crawling and rendering.
Meta Ads
Ginny Marvin has published a new edition of the Ads Decoded newsletter, focused on Google Merchant Centre data quality as the foundation for modern retail campaigns. It covers feed enrichment for AI Mode and conversational shopping, shoppable ad enablement in Demand Gen and PMax, advanced measurement, and practical agentic commerce-readiness steps.
Meta Ads
Bram Van der Hallen has identified four new Meta Ads updates.
Looker Studio
Sean Zinsmeister has announced that Looker's Self-Service Explores with visual-based modelling and automated LookML generation is now generally available, alongside the Visualisation Assistant (also GA), which uses Gemini to configure charts via natural language. An Expressions Assistant for writing custom calculations is in preview.
Google Ads
Thomas Eccel has flagged a new dedicated Consent Mode card in the Conversion Summary Diagnostics tab (Goals → Conversions → Summary → Diagnostics), sitting alongside the Enhanced Conversions overview. The card shows whether web Consent Mode is rated Excellent, Good, or Needs Attention, with a "View details" link to inspect modelling uplift and domain-by-country breakdowns.
Google Analytics
Bram Van der Hallen has flagged that Meta has published an updated version of its official GTM Pixel template: the new version adds native support for the GA4 dataLayer, mapping ecommerce events (Purchase, AddToCart, ViewContent, InitiateCheckout) automatically without duplicate tagging. The update is available as a template update notification in GTM.
Meta Ads
Luca Fiaschi has published an analysis of a recent IAB measurement survey: MMM at 61%, ghost bids at 46%, multi-touch attribution at 40%, geo-tests at 26%, with only 4% using nothing. The numbers exceed 100% because brands are stacking methods by necessity.
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.
Amazon Ads
Eric Pong has reported that Amazon has expanded 1-hour and 2-hour delivery to 2,000 cities across the US. Pong frames the development as a structural rewiring of ecommerce logistics: the network operates entirely outside the traditional 3PL/fulfilment industry, and as same-day delivery becomes the baseline expectation for Prime members, the competitive threshold for non-Amazon fulfilment continues to rise.
Amazon Ads
Vanessa Hung has published an analysis of how Amazon's Rufus Auto Buy: live for all US Prime members since November 2025: changes the strategic implications of promotional pricing. Auto Buy lets shoppers set a price target; Rufus checks every 30 minutes and executes automatically when the price hits that number.
Amazon Ads
Amazon has added Discover Unmet Demand to Product Opportunity Explorer in beta. The tool surfaces purchase intent clusters where Search Conversion Rate falls below the benchmark for that product type and price band: framed as market gaps.
Amazon Ads
From April 1, 2026, Amazon aligned Multi-Channel Fulfilment and Buy with Prime packaging with standard FBA: ASINs certified under the SIPP programme now ship without an Amazon overbox by default, and SIPP-certified MCF and Buy with Prime shipments receive a discount. Packing slips are also no longer included by default.
Amazon Ads
Vanessa Hung has flagged that Amazon has begun notifying a subset of seller accounts that, as of April 15, 2026, advertising costs will be automatically deducted from retail proceeds, with the backup payment method charged if proceeds are insufficient. No official public announcement accompanied the email rollout.
Amazon Ads
Prem Gupta has described a new Customer Service Insights dashboard in Seller Central, currently in beta for seller-fulfilled orders, covering three metrics benchmarked against average and top-performing sellers: Buyer Contact Rate, Average Contact Response Time, and Buyer Dissatisfaction Rate. The dashboard is integrated with Feedback Manager and is currently informational rather than directly impacting account health.
Amazon Ads
Prem Gupta has identified that Amazon is testing an AI-generated product summary appearing below the listing on the product detail page, automatically generated from existing listing content, including title, bullet points, description, and structured attributes.
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