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.
Microsoft Advertising
Microsoft Bing is testing large images in Search ads that would substantially increase the visual footprint of sponsored results, with early coverage suggesting a material upside in CTR.
Google Merchant Center
Google is testing a mobile Search format that lists participating advertisers' favicons and domains above sponsored results, with quick action buttons and a "Hide sponsored results" control beneath.
Anthropic
Text generated by Claude models released from 2 August includes an embedded watermark designed to accompany the text, as part of Anthropic's commitments under the EU AI Act's Article 50(2) transparency Code of Practice. Within a day, an open-source "watermarks-remover" tool appeared claiming to strip such marks from Claude, Gemini, and OpenAI output.
Google Ads
Google plans to remove campaign-level language targeting from Search in late September. Performance Max's Search inventory is affected; other channels retain the setting.
Microsoft Advertising
Microsoft’s Conversions API provides a server-side route for sending conversion events. Review access, event mapping and duplicate handling before adding it to an existing UET setup.
Google Ads
Google's 17 August change affects budget-limited campaigns that outperform their CPA or ROAS targets. Optmyzr modelled possible conversion losses rather than a universal observed result.
Anthropic
New Claude Code sessions on Pro, Max, and Team plans will run in Auto mode from 14 August, routing every action through a safety classifier instead of asking approval per command.
Amazon Ads
TikTok now offers warehousing and 3PL fulfilment, letting sellers store inventory and fulfil orders across multiple sales channels.
Looker Studio
Google added Conversational Analytics inside Looker Studio, carrying a preview badge and available on the free tier. Questions in plain language return analysis of connected data.
Industry
Ask Maps lets users query Google Maps conversationally, described by analysts as the strongest local UI change of the AI era and a product that keeps local queries inside Google's ecosystem.
Industry
The AI Office can now levy penalties of up to 5% of average daily worldwide turnover, per day, against systemic AI providers including Google and Meta, as the AI Act's general-purpose model obligations harden. This continues the enforcement start covered in Week 31.
Meta Ads
Meta is replacing Conversion Leads with Qualified Leads for campaigns using website forms, and the change is functional, not cosmetic. Selecting Maximize number of qualified leads now requires a sequence of two events: an initial Lead, such as a form submission, followed by a higher-value final event: with the ad credited only when both occur in order.
ChatGPT Ads
A monitoring project logged ChatGPT's ad payload across shopping queries: 54,899 placements from 1,844 advertisers, with 73.6% of questions returning an ad in the answer. Separately, 2,882 UK advertisers ran ChatGPT Ads in July.
Google Merchant Center
Google Merchant Centre product listing ads show a new experimental annotation named Deal Ends. Time-limited urgency reaches Shopping surfaces natively.
Industry
Uber's advertising business added $1bn to its annualised run-rate in about fifteen months, growing from $1.5bn in May 2025 to more than $2.5bn.
Amazon Ads
Amazon's Q2 results crossed the $200bn headline, with the everyday essentials business and same-day grocery pointing at where healthcare and consumables ecommerce is heading.
Meta Ads
Meta rolled out a bundle of changes across bidding, measurement, forms, and payments. For you, this means value-based bidding and lead quality both gain precision, so review which of these touch your setups.
Industry
From 14 August, HubSpot lets you set a max limit on Marketing Contacts, ending the silent auto-upgrades triggered when contact counts passed your tier.
Microsoft Clarity
Microsoft Clarity's Citations dashboard adds segmentation and filters separating branded from non-branded queries, with branded labels in the interface.
Google Analytics
Multiple unrelated GA4 properties show Direct suddenly gaining revenue from 2 August, with consistent patterns suggesting an attribution bug rather than a tracking change.
Amazon Ads
Even Amazon gets its own Net PPM definition confused, and Martin Heubel's explainer sets out the correct calculation for vendors. For you, this means margin negotiations rest on the right formula, so align your team on the definition before annual talks.
YouTube
A new ad format appears while a video plays on mobile in horizontal mode, occupying half the screen: the opposite of a Pause Ad. YouTube is also testing image ads in horizontal mobile playback.
Industry
A New Mexico judge ordered Meta to pay $567m and imposed a 90-hour monthly usage ceiling for under-18 accounts, while a California federal judge ruled minors' algorithmic feeds are not protected speech, letting a law default teen feeds to one hour of chronological content proceed, with age verification due 1 January 2027.
Industry
A solar company lost its GDPR challenge over Schufa credit checks run on prospects before any site visit, with the court holding that scoring leads through a credit bureau before first commercial contact lacked a lawful basis.
Google Ads
The new customer acquisition setting now offers a third option: report on acquired customers without changing your bidding. Previously, the new-versus-existing customer split required selecting a bid-higher or new-customers-only mode.
Google Ads
Google renamed the Local Services platform policies document to Local Services Ads requirements, and published guides explaining how to set up, target, and optimise Performance Max campaigns with pay-per-lead goals. Both continue the migration covered in Weeks 30 and 31.
Microsoft Advertising
Brodie Clark ran a Bing product feeds experiment in which free listings only began showing after ads were enabled. He highlights Bing feeds' growing importance as grounding data for LLMs, including ChatGPT.
ChatGPT Ads
ChatGPT is testing a descriptive heading directly above the ad unit in results, similar to what Google's AI Mode already shows.
Industry
An analysis of 3,900 Google ads across 65 accounts found Ad Strength does not correlate with CPA. The grade reflects headline volume, keyword relevance, asset uniqueness, and pinning rather than performance.
Amazon Ads
Amazon Ads introduced a dedicated Ad Groups tab that brings ad groups from Sponsored Products, Sponsored Brands, Sponsored Display, and Multimedia Solutions into a single centralised view. The interface currently appears on UK accounts, with a broader marketplace rollout expected.
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