Practical insights from the front lines of AI-driven marketing. No fluff.
Google's latest AI Max updates - AI Brief, text disclaimers, and expansion into Shopping and Travel - represent a meaningful shift in how much visibility advertisers get into AI-driven campaign decisions. For PPC teams, understanding what these controls actually do is more important than welcoming them at face value.
Google is testing the ability for some Performance Max advertisers to choose whether their ads run across the search partner network and Google Display Network - a notable shift in transparency for a campaign type that has historically offered very little of it. For advertisers who have long suspected poor-quality placements are diluting their PMax results, this development deserves serious attention.
AI Max for Shopping signals a fundamental shift in how Google thinks about the relationship between search intent and product discovery. For retailers running paid search, the implications stretch well beyond campaign setup.
Google is testing a persistent 'Ask Anything' prompt that stays fixed to the screen as users scroll through AI Overviews and search results. This changes how users move through a search session - and it has direct implications for how brands need to think about AI visibility.
After a sustained period of declining organic click-through rates on pages featuring AI Overviews, new data suggests that trend may be reversing. For brands investing in AI visibility, the timing matters - and so does understanding what changed.
Google has confirmed that some Demand Gen image ads are sitting in review for several days rather than hours, creating real problems for time-sensitive campaigns. This is not a minor inconvenience - it exposes a structural dependency that too many paid media plans quietly ignore.
Google's April Demand Gen updates signal a clear shift: YouTube is no longer just an awareness channel, it is expected to pull weight at the conversion stage. Understanding what that means for creative, bidding, and audience strategy is now essential for any serious paid media operation.