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
Message Ads with RCS for Business is a new Search ad format that lets users move from a Search ad to a verified text thread with the advertiser via RCS (Rich Communication Services). Google AI instantly qualifies leads through text conversations, and the brand maintains visibility in the user's messaging app for ongoing nurture.
Industry
Universal Commerce Protocol (UCP): the open standard that makes Search, Gemini, Gmail, and YouTube into shoppable surfaces: is expanding into two new categories. Hotel booking integration is coming soon with launch partners including Amadeus, Booking.com, Expedia Group, Hilton, Marriott, Trip.com, Accor, Choice Hotels, IHG, and Wyndham.
Google Ads
As a reminder, Thomas Eccel recalls the material spend impact of the new ad schedule changes: from 1 June 2026, Google will change how it paces campaign budgets based on ad schedules. Today, Google paces around active scheduled days (e.g., 22 weekdays per month for a weekdays-only campaign); from 1 June, Google will pace toward the full monthly cap (30.4x daily budget): speeding up spend on active days.
Google Ads
Creator videos in the asset picker is a new Demand Gen feature that surfaces a library of suggested creator partnership videos directly in the Google Ads asset picker during campaign setup. The system automatically identifies relevant creator content tailored to the brand, increases campaign authenticity via trusted creator voices, and reduces creative production time by pulling existing video content into the campaign.
Microsoft Advertising
Sachin Patel has spotted Bing testing a new way to show prices in search ads. The test surfaces pricing as a more prominent visual element within the standard text ad format: an evolution beyond the existing Price extension surface, which has been live for years.
Meta Ads
Bram Van der Hallen has consolidated six Meta Ads updates landing in May 2026.
Google Ads
View-through conversion optimisation is a new bidding enhancement for Demand Gen that lets campaigns include and optimise for view-through conversions alongside click-based conversions. The mechanic accelerates results by capturing conversions when users see an ad and convert later without clicking; scales conversion volume by allowing Google AI to bid on users most likely to convert via either path; and drives strategy alignment by adopting comparable approaches to paid social platforms, where view-then-buy behaviour is prevalent.
Walmart Connect
Daniel Sodkiewicz has flagged a Walmart Marketplace update changing Expected Ship Date calculations for seller-fulfilled orders. Previously, sellers with fulfilment lag time greater than 0 days could benefit from order cutoff times: orders placed after the cutoff could sometimes receive an extra business day before shipping.
Google Ads
Leads in Google Ads is a new, lightweight CRM surface inside Google Ads that consolidates Google-hosted form leads into a single interface. The feature centralises lead management (no prospect falls through the cracks), syncs quality signals back into Google Ads to optimise bidding, surfaces lead-stage progression (raw → qualified → converted → lost), and feeds high-value conversion data into Smart Bidding strategies.
Google Ads
Google Maps inventory is now available in Demand Gen as a selectable channel, allowing advertisers to reach high-intent users in Browse, Directions, and Entity/Place Details modes within Maps. The format uses non-disruptive Promoted Pins with channel controls to opt in or out based on brand or campaign needs.
Amazon Ads
Daniel Orkun Duzgun has flagged that Amazon's Product Opportunity Explorer now includes AI-powered insights: auto-generated analyses covering search-term behaviour patterns, pricing sweet spots, review sentiment analysis, and product feature trends. The most actionable data is Brand Click Share Distribution, which shows top brands' click share within a category.
Gemini
Asset Studio is launching as the centralised creative hub inside Google Ads: bringing existing brand assets together, generating new creative with Google AI, and enabling one-click testing. The 2026 expansion includes four structural additions: Brand Guidelines (PDF Upload): upload free-form marketing briefs and PDFs to act as a permanent anchor for the brand's style, colour, and business info; Google Assets ingestion from Merchant Center, YouTube Studio, and Pomelli; Third-Party Assets integration with Adobe and Canva via the Google Ads API; and Asset Generation in the Google Ads API for programmatic integration into custom campaign platforms.
Industry
Missed opportunity reporting is now generally available globally: a new reporting layer that visualises how much performance has been left on the table due to bid and budget constraints. The reporting surfaces interactive weekly charts contrasting actual performance against potential, campaign-level reporting across Search, Shopping, PMax, Demand Gen, YouTube, App, and Hotel Ads, and a Recommended Action column with real-time bid and budget suggestions tailored to current seasonality and auction dynamics.
Industry
Lily Ray has flagged that Google has rolled out AI Overviews for new query types this week, including many words that previously generated dictionary results. Typing "disregard," "ignore," or "help" no longer returns a dictionary definition: instead, it returns an obedient AI Overview that follows the instruction.
Industry
Universal Cart is Google's new agentic shopping cart, announced at Google I/O on 20 May. Brodie Clark and Juozas Kaziukėnas both flagged the launch as the standout I/O ecommerce announcement.
Industry
Direct Offers: the format that surfaces exclusive promotions directly within AI Mode and Search at the moment of purchasing intent: has expanded materially. New for 2026: Direct Offers move from the AI Mode product viewer to the AI Mode answer itself, allowing retailers to feature discounts alongside other products during exploration.
Industry
Microsoft introduced Conversion Tracking Diagnostics as a new Copilot capability that auto-detects UET tag issues, conversion goal misconfigurations, and tracking gaps. The Conversion Goals view surfaces statuses for each goal: "Recording conversions," "Tag inactive," "No recent conversions," "Unverified": with one-click remediation paths for each issue type.
Industry
Google's cited stat: advertising creative drives nearly 49% of incremental sales and remains the most critical driver of advertising effectiveness (Circana research).
Industry
Microsoft previewed prompt-based Audience generation inside the campaign creation flow. Instead of manually picking attributes, advertisers describe their ideal customer in natural language ("Who's your target audience?
Industry
Google has officially launched Ads in AI Mode, a new generation of ad formats designed for the conversational, multimodal queries that now dominate AI Mode and AI Overviews. Glenn Gabe and Ginny Marvin both flagged the launch as the headline shift from the GML keynote.
Meta Ads
VIVEK GUPTA has flagged a Meta Ads update that makes Audience Label available for Website Custom Audiences: previously available only for Customer List Custom Audiences. The new categories include Engaged Audiences (Qualified Leads, Disqualified Leads, App Users, Trial Users, Other Engaged Users), Customers (High Value, Low Value, At Risk, Disengaged, Customers), and Other Audiences (Other 1, Other 2, Other 3).
BigQuery
Luka Cempre has flagged a new BigQuery Studio capability: Git repositories integration is now available in preview, providing direct integration to remote Git repositories. The setup requires enabling APIs, naming the repository, and authenticating with GitHub: within a few minutes, a GitHub repo is synced with BigQuery Studio.
Google Merchant Center
UCP setup in Microsoft Merchant Centre enables merchants to add new store settings and product feed attributes to activate AI-powered shopping experiences in Copilot. Two-part setup: (1) update store settings (Return policy, Customer support) and product feed attributes in Merchant Centre; (2) set up checkout APIs for Copilot Checkout (closed pilot).
Meta Ads
Matias Axel Ramayo has flagged that Meta has added Instagram Live as a new conversion ad placement. Advertisers can promote an Instagram Live that's currently running or scheduled for the future, with a simple setup in the campaign placement flow.
Google Tag
Data Manager: Google's first-party data connection and management hub: becomes universal as part of GML 2026. The UI is now accessible directly across Google Ads, Search Ads 360, and Campaign Manager 360 (with Google Analytics coming soon).
Gemini
Google announced at I/O that AI Mode is now using Gemini 3.5 Flash globally as its default model. The model upgrade brings improved reasoning capability, faster response generation, and broader language coverage to AI Mode users worldwide.
Industry
iOS App campaigns are getting comprehensive 2026 advancements: improved on-device conversion measurement using event data, deeper Integrated Conversion Measurement (ICM) visibility, an expanded bidding suite (Maximise Conversions, Target ROAS, Ads Revenue Optimisation), bidding-strategy model enhancements, integrated on-device conversion data in Google Ads reporting, and ICM measurement coverage expansion (including EEA, UK, Switzerland users plus web-to-app journeys and view-through conversions).
Walmart Connect
Google Search Central confirmed on 21 May that the May 2026 core update has begun rolling out to Google Search. The rollout may take up to two weeks to complete.
Google Ads
Three Google Ads developer/policy items landed alongside GML:
Google Ads
Two new lead-management tools are now available alongside Leads in Google Ads.
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