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.
Industry
US senators have introduced a bill that would require social media platforms to verify government-issued identification for advertisers or confirm the legal existence of businesses. The bill follows a report that Meta made up to $16 billion from scam ads in 2024.
Industry
The QA reminder in Google Tag Manager prompts you to schedule a review after publishing a container. Set the reminder's date and time, and GTM Fixer will alert you to check your implementation.
Industry
Anthropic has launched Cowork for Windows, following the macOS release. The desktop tool allows non-developers to automate file and task management using Claude.
ChatGPT Ads
ChatGPT's advertising test is now live in the United States, with users spotting ads appearing in responses. The beta pilot is reportedly closing applications this week with a $200K minimum spend and CPM-based pricing.
Industry
Google Chrome has announced WebMCP in early preview, a proposed standard that would allow websites to expose structured tools to AI agents. The protocol includes a Declarative API for HTML form actions and an Imperative API for JavaScript-based interactions.
Anthropic
Claude can now generate and edit PowerPoint presentations directly. It works inside your template, generates full decks with logical structure, iterates to simplify, and combines slides.
OpenAI
Sam Altman announced that Peter Steinberger is joining OpenAI to drive the next generation of personal agents. Steinberger will focus on multi-agent interactions designed to perform useful tasks for people.
Industry
The European Commission has sent Requests for Information to large advertisers, as it has indications of potential concerns regarding the auctions for advertising on Google and Apple platforms.
OpenAI
OpenAI has announced GPT-5.3-Codex-Spark, an ultra-fast model purpose-built for real-time coding. It's available as a research preview for ChatGPT Pro users in the Codex app, Codex CLI, and IDE extension.
OpenAI
Deep research in ChatGPT is now powered by GPT-5.2. You can now connect to apps in ChatGPT, search specific sites, and track real-time progress with follow-ups.
Industry
The UK Competition and Markets Authority has announced how it intends to proceed with its inquiry into Apple and Google's control over their mobile ecosystems. The investigation focuses on competition concerns in app distribution and mobile browsers.
Industry
You can export GTM Tag Assistant preview sessions and share them with teammates or clients for debugging. The exported file can be re-imported at tagassistant.google.com to inspect variables, payloads, and server-side requests after the fact.
Anthropic
Anthropic has launched Slack integration for Claude on Pro and Max plans. You can search workspace channels, prepare for meetings, and send messages without leaving the Claude interface.
Anthropic
GitHub has added Claude and OpenAI's Codex as agent options within GitHub Copilot for Pro+ and Enterprise subscribers. You can now choose which AI model powers your coding assistant in GitHub and Visual Studio Code.
Industry
Microsoft Advertising and Microsoft AI have launched the Publisher Content Marketplace (PCM), a framework for publishers to license premium content for AI training and retrieval. The marketplace provides transparent economics for content licensing.
Industry
The 11th annual PPC Salary Survey is now accepting responses until February 28, 2026. Your participation helps benchmark compensation across the industry and shapes how agencies and employers understand market rates.
Industry
Google announced the February 2026 Discover Core update, an algorithmic change to improve article quality in Discover feeds. Alongside the rollout, Google updated its Discover documentation to include "Provide a great page experience": warning against overloading pages with intrusive ads and auto-playing content.
Google Workspace
Google Workspace is rolling out Workspace Studio in beta for users with the "join beta" option enabled in their admin console. The feature integrates AI-powered automation and workflow tools directly into Workspace.
Industry
Google reduced its HTML file crawl limit from 15MB to 2MB on February 5, 2026, an 86.7% reduction. Content beyond 2MB will not be indexed.
Industry
SpaceX has acquired Elon Musk's AI startup xAI in a merger valuing the combined company at $1.25 trillion. Musk cited plans to build space-based data centres to meet AI power demands. xAI, which owns the Grok chatbot and previously acquired X (Twitter), is currently burning around $1 billion per month.
Google Merchant Center
Google Merchant Centre is now surfacing recommendations to improve product descriptions, highlighting specific attributes customers search for that are missing from your feed. The suggestions include attributes not yet available as standard feed fields, such as recommended age, playtime, genre, and maximum players for games.
YouTube
Alphabet reported Q4 2025 earnings with annual revenue surpassing $400 billion for the first time. Google Cloud revenue reached $17.7 billion (up 48% YoY) with operating margin jumping to 30% from 17% a year ago.
Anthropic
Snowflake has announced a $200 million multi-year deal with OpenAI, giving its 12,600 customers access to OpenAI models across all major cloud providers. The deal follows a similar $200 million agreement with Anthropic announced in December.
YouTube
Google has rebranded the "Awareness & Consideration" campaign objective to "YouTube reach, views and engagements." The new label better reflects the discrete goals available within YouTube campaigns: reach for broad visibility, views for content consumption, and engagements for interaction: rather than collapsing them under a vague funnel metaphor.
OpenAI
OpenAI has released the Codex app for macOS, a desktop interface for managing multiple coding agents in parallel across projects. The app introduces Skills to extend Codex beyond code generation: including Figma-to-code, Linear project management, cloud deployment, and image generation.
OpenAI
References to "ads shown to the user" have been spotted in the source code of ChatGPT responses, signalling that OpenAI's advertising rollout is imminent. The beta pilot program is reportedly closing applications this week with a $200K minimum spend and CPM-based pricing.
Reddit Ads
Reddit reported Q4 revenue of $726 million (up 70% YoY), with $690 million from advertising (up 75% YoY). Daily active users grew 19% to 121.4 million, and the company announced a $1 billion share repurchase program.
Display & Video 360
Best Buy and Shipt are now sharing commerce audiences across publishers and exchanges in Display & Video 360 as part of Google's Commerce Media Suite. Best Buy audiences target consumers with electronics and tech intent, while Shipt audiences reach in-market shoppers for groceries, beauty, and essentials.
Gemini
Google now uses its Gemini 3 model to power AI Overviews in Search worldwide. The update improves responses to complex queries and enables users to continue conversations via AI Mode for follow-up questions.
Google Tag
Google Tag Gateway (GTG) serves Google tags from your own domain to bypass ad blockers and extend cookie lifetimes. However, GTG only works for Google tags, while server-side tagging (SST) supports all tags and offers a custom loader.
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