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
Axel Falck has spotted a new native view in Performance Max called "Channel performance over time," displaying how each channel (Search, YouTube, Display, etc.) contributes to results as a stacked time-series graph, with a filter to toggle between performance metrics and investment. The view was previously only available via custom scripts.
ChatGPT Ads
OpenAI has confirmed that its ChatGPT advertising pilot in the United States crossed $100 million in annualised revenue within six weeks of launch, with over 600 advertisers now active on the platform. While roughly 85% of users are currently eligible to see ads, fewer than 20% are shown ads daily: leaving significant headroom to grow monetisation within the existing user base.
Amazon Ads
Destaney Wishon has confirmed that the Amazon and Winn-Dixie fulfilment partnership is live, with Winn-Dixie fulfilled offers now visible and driving conversions in the Amazon app: selected at least once as the fastest available shipping option for a product. The partnership, announced in late 2025, allows Amazon to leverage Winn-Dixie's physical store network for same-day or scheduled delivery without building its own physical infrastructure.
Microsoft Advertising
Microsoft’s 1 October 2026 milestone reserves new API features and enhancements for REST. Its SOAP API is scheduled for full deprecation on 31 January 2027. These are separate dates for integration planning.
Google Ads
Thomas Eccel has identified that Google Ads is now displaying AI-generated analysis prompts directly below the performance chart in the account overview: with clickable suggestions such as "Compare top campaigns performance," "Brainstorm ideas to improve results," and "How to improve conversions." Clicking any prompt opens Ads Advisor, Google's Gemini-powered AI agent, which gathers campaign data, browses the web, and scans the advertiser's website before delivering a contextual analysis.
Google Tag
Cory Liseno has published episode 2 of the Ads DevCast podcast, focused on the Data Manager API with Product Manager Melissa Ng. The episode covers how the unified ingestion API enables first-party data to be sent to multiple Google advertising products: Google Ads, DV360, and others: in a single API call, reducing engineering overhead and the need for fragmented pipelines.
Meta Ads
Meta has introduced a 6-second video view optimisation option, sitting between the existing 2-second continuous view (low intent, cheap) and ThruPlay (high commitment, expensive). The addition reflects a broader platform shift toward attention-quality metrics: TikTok already uses 6-second signals implicitly, and Reddit for Business has explicitly launched 6-second engaged video-view optimisation.
Meta Ads
Google has released Gemma 4, a family of fully open-source models under Apache 2.0 built on the same research as Gemini 3. The family spans four sizes: 2B (on-device), a 26B Mixture of Experts model (activating 3.8B parameters during inference), and larger models up to 31B dense: all with native multimodal reasoning across video, images, OCR, and charts.
Meta Ads
Frederick Vallaeys: Google's first AdWords Evangelist and CEO of Optmyzr: has published The AI-Amplified Marketer: Digital Marketing in a GenAI World. The book is framed around closing the gap between AI hype and practical leverage for PPC practitioners, covering how to use generative AI as a force multiplier for existing expertise, how to build AI-powered workflows without a technical background, and how to maintain control as platforms become more automated.
OpenAI
Carrefour has become the first major European retailer to make products directly purchasable through ChatGPT, targeting France's 26 million ChatGPT users. The integration enables AI-mediated basket building: ChatGPT handles meal planning, dietary filtering, and product selection on behalf of the shopper without a traditional search results page.
Meta Ads
Google's Search Central Blog has published a detailed explainer on Googlebot's crawling infrastructure, clarifying the 2MB fetch limit for HTML pages (64MB for PDFs). If an HTML document exceeds 2MB: including HTTP headers: Googlebot stops fetching at exactly that point, passing only the retrieved bytes to the indexing system and Web Rendering Service.
Meta Ads
Bram Van der Hallen has identified a significant change to how Meta handles creative media selection for ad placements. Previously, advertisers chose the correct media crop for each placement during upload.
Microsoft Clarity
Matteo Zambon has flagged that Microsoft Clarity now supports a Cloudflare integration for AI visibility without requiring a Cloudflare Enterprise plan: previously a barrier for smaller teams. The setup connects via a Cloudflare API token through a guided wizard, enabling Clarity to access Cloudflare-level signals directly from the CDN layer.
Google Merchant Center
Navah Hopkins has flagged a new self-serve capability in Microsoft Advertising Merchant Centre: advertisers can now update their store name and domain directly from the platform, without requiring support intervention. Store name changes require editorial review before going live, with ads continuing to serve under the existing name during review.
Microsoft Advertising
Sachin Patel has spotted two simultaneous Microsoft Advertising display tests on Bing. The first shows a significantly enlarged sponsored product section in a double-row carousel alongside organic results: a substantial increase in ad inventory density on the Shopping SERP.
Meta Ads
Meta has updated Lead Ads to allow Automated Lead Delivery to be configured directly at the ad level, rather than only at the form level. Advertisers can now send leads straight to Google Sheets or a CRM on a per-ad basis, enabling different delivery configurations for different ads within the same form.
Meta Ads
Meta has introduced Ray-Ban Meta Blayzer Optics (Gen 2) and Ray-Ban Meta Scriber Optics (Gen 2): its first AI glasses designed specifically to support nearly all prescriptions, featuring adjustable hinges and optician-adjustable temple tips. Starting at $499, they are available for pre-order in the US from March 31, with availability in optical retailers from April 14.
Google Search Console
Google has admitted that a logging error has been preventing Search Console from accurately reporting impressions since May 13, 2025. The error involved third-party scrapers: including tools such as SerpApi used by AI systems to scrape Google organic results: being incorrectly logged as impressions.
Google Ads
Bob Meijer has flagged that Google Ads experiments now include an auto-apply setting: enabled by default: that automatically applies experiment results to live campaigns. The setting offers configurable confidence thresholds: directional results (default), or statistical significance at 80%, 85%, or 95%.
Meta Ads
Bram Van der Hallen has identified that Meta is now automatically supplementing website Custom Audiences with equivalent on-platform shop audience data for advertisers with a Facebook or Instagram Shop. When creating audiences based on "All website visitors" or specific events (PageView, ViewContent, AddToCart, InitiateCheckout, Purchase), Meta adds people who viewed or interacted with the same products on-platform.
OpenAI
Juozas Kaziukėnas has reported that OpenAI has quietly removed ChatGPT Shopping Research from the main menu: effectively ending a feature launched only four months ago, which used a version of GPT-5 mini post-trained specifically for shopping tasks. The feature was designed to ask clarifying questions, scrape 10–20× more sources than standard ChatGPT, and produce personalised buyer guides: but typically took two minutes to complete, which OpenAI's new commerce product lead cited as incompatible with user behaviour.
Meta Ads
Darren Shaw of Whitespark has flagged that Google is testing a new "Text Message" button directly in the mobile Local Pack, allowing users to initiate a text conversation with a business from the search results page. The test surfaces alongside wider reports of phone numbers disappearing from Google Business Profiles, raising questions about whether Google is engineering the shift from direct calls to mediated messaging: and whether this functionality will eventually be restricted to paid placements.
Meta Ads
Matt Navarra has reported that Instagram is testing a new paid subscription tier called Instagram Plus in the Philippines (65 PHP/month ≈ , $1.05) and Mexico (39 MXN/month ≈ , $2.00). The feature set mirrors Snapchat+ with exclusive perks, including multiple story audiences, story rewatch insights, extended story expiration, super hearts for stories, and story spotlighting.
Google Ads
Google has made vehicle ads available to all vehicle advertisers in Spain, Italy, and Germany, with further country expansion planned. The format allows automotive advertisers to promote their full inventory to shoppers on Google.com, displaying vehicle image, make, model, price, kilometres, and advertiser name.
Google Ads
Vojtěch Audy has identified that Google Ads support email responses are now generated by AI, with the email signature explicitly disclosing "Google Ads Support using AI from Google" and a disclaimer that the content is AI-generated, that account details may not always be accurate, and that user activity may be used to improve the system. The disclosure raises questions about the reliability of responses for complex policy or account-specific issues.
Google Ads
Arpan Banerjee has discovered that Google Ads now offers a direct "Open chat" button inside the campaign setup interface, allowing advertisers to chat with Ads Advisor while building a campaign. The placement surfaces Ads Advisor at the moment of campaign creation rather than requiring a separate navigation step.
Amazon Ads
Amazon has confirmed Prime Day is moving to late June 2026: a calendar shift with implications that extend well beyond promotional planning. Vanessa Hung notes that Amazon's algorithm begins building relevance signals weeks before a major traffic event, meaning the indexing window for catalogue optimisation is already narrowing.
Display & Video 360
Google used NewFront 2026 at Pier 57 on March 23 to reposition Display & Video 360 as a Gemini-powered end-to-end media buying platform: the "Gemini Advantage": framing it as the only ad tech stack where the same AI model that powers the products also owns the inventory.
Meta Ads
Bram Van der Hallen has identified two new filters for Facebook and Instagram custom audiences used in retargeting. The "At least" filter targets users who engaged with an account at least a specified number of times within a specified period, enabling focus on high-intent repeat engagers.
Meta Ads
Matias Axel Ramayo has spotted an updated campaign creation interface in Meta Ads Manager, featuring a new left-side panel that summarises all campaign sections with clickable jump links. The layout allows advertisers to navigate directly to any section of the campaign setup rather than scrolling linearly through the full form.
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