Google Ads News
🚨BIG UPDATE IN PMAX🚨
DATA EXCLUSIONS!With this feature, you can exclude any of your Website Visitor Lists OR Customer Match Lists!This will seemingly exclude all remarketing lists (it’s not just an audience signal).
Spotted by Callie Kessler
Demand Gen January Updates
January Demand Gen updates – key takeaways
Demand Gen is rolling out several features into general availability that were previously previewed, expanding its role as a full-funnel discovery and conversion channel.
Shoppable CTV is now powered by Demand Gen
Advertisers can enable interactive shopping experiences on YouTube TV screens, allowing viewers to browse and purchase products directly from their TV. Campaigns that include TV inventory drive on average 7% more conversions at the same ROI, reinforcing CTV as a performance contributor, not just a reach play.
Attributed Branded Searches for Demand Gen
Advertisers can now see how many branded searches on Google and YouTube are driven by Demand Gen campaigns. This helps quantify upper-funnel impact that previously sat in a blind spot. Activation currently requires contacting a Google representative.
Travel Feeds for faster booking journeys
Travel advertisers can connect their Hotel Center feed to Demand Gen to automatically generate dynamic video ads with live pricing, ratings, and availability. This shortens the path from inspiration to booking, especially in discovery-led formats like YouTube.
Proven performance versus paid social
Case studies (e.g. LG Electronics) show Demand Gen delivering 24% higher conversion rates than paid social, while reaching high-value users at 91% lower CPA, positioning it as a strong alternative or complement to social discovery campaigns.
Bottom line
Demand Gen continues to evolve from a reach-heavy product into a measurable, performance-driven channel especially with stronger CTV monetization, better branding attribution, and more vertical-specific feed integrations.
Campaign experiments
Google Ads: Campaign Mix Experiments (Beta)Spotted by Dario Zannoni, and this one looks very promising.
Campaign Mix Experiments let you test different campaign combinations, even across multiple campaign types.
For example: • Search + PMax • Search + Demand Gen
• Search + PMax + Demand Gen
Finally, a way to answer these questions with controlled, statistically valid tests, instead of gut feeling.
If the flexibility holds up, this could become a very powerful tool inside Google Ads.
ChatGPT Fee
Later this month, Shopify is opening up its commerce software to ChatGPT. OpenAI will charge a 4% fee on sales made through ChatGPT. Will this inflate prices?
Ads Bug
Some Google Ads advertisers are seeing a bug that causes the option to add notes to disappear from the account change popup, making it harder to document optimizations and performance shifts.
Expanded Text Guidelines
Google Ads has expanded its Text Guidelines feature to support all supported languages as of January 23, 2026.
Previously limited to English and a small group of other languages (including Spanish, French, German, Japanese, Italian, Portuguese, and Dutch), the feature is now available globally across all languages supported in Google Ads, according to Google’s official help documentation.
Source: Hana Kobzová & Christian Schwarz
Moment of Conversion
CrackPPC – Digital Marketing Agency – Google Shopping & Merchant Specialists discovered that we can now view “by moment of conversion” metrics directly!
Gambling policy
From 23 March 2026, Google Ads is tightening its Gambling & Games certification rules.
Advertisers must now show strong policy compliance (“good policy health”) across all gambling and gaming categories to qualify for certification.
Repeated violations or certificate revocations will make both MCCs and managed accounts ineligible, and existing certifications can be revoked.
Certification will not be granted if:
– The site is hosted on a free platform- It uses a subdomain of a third-party platform
– The advertiser doesn’t own and operate the second-level domain
– The site has no real association with gambling
This is a mandatory service announcement from Google Ads, sent by Google Ads Team (Google Ireland Ltd).Bottom line: Google is raising the bar hard. One-off compliance isn’t enough anymore your entire account history and domain ownership now matter for gambling eligibility.
UCP
Google has launched Universal Commerce Protocol (UCP) in Merchant Center, enabling AI agents to complete purchases on behalf of users.
Setup isn’t documented in standard Merchant Center guides and currently lives in Content API developer logs. Activation requires supplemental feeds or custom attributes (feed rules not supported).
Merchants keep full control of customer data and don’t need custom AI integrations.
The update was shared by Emmanuel Flossie , who also published a paid setup walkthrough.
DV360 Update
Campaign and Insertion Order targeting will be fully removed from the Display & Video 360 API and Structured Data Files (SDFs) on February 23, 2026, aligning with the earlier removal in the DV360 UI.
From that date:API calls that retrieve or manage targeting directly at the Campaign or Insertion Order level will return 404 errors.
The advertisers.lineItems.The generateDefault API method will also return a 404 error.All targeting columns in Campaign and Insertion Order SDFs will be empty on download and must remain empty on upload, uploads with populated targeting fields will fail.
In short: targeting must now be handled at the Line Item level only, and any workflows, automations, or SDF processes relying on Campaign or IO targeting need to be updated before February 23, 2026.
Gambling Update
Google Ads has updated its Gambling and Games policy for Ethiopia, disallowing all online gambling advertising targeting the country.
Fake Invites
More new fake invites, please check them… spotted by Jonathan Cottrell
New pop-up
Arpan Banerjee saw that PMAX asset group now reminds to add Message and Call assets!
Google Bug
Heads-up: there’s currently a Google Ads Performance Max bug affecting asset groups.If you’re seeing an error when trying to edit and save existing asset groups, you’re not alone. This has been happening for several days now and changes won’t save in the Google Ads UI.
Google has confirmed they’re aware of the issue and are investigating. In the meantime, the only reliable workaround I’ve found is to make the edits in Google Ads Editor and upload the changes from there.If you’re managing PMAX accounts, this one’s worth flagging internally to avoid wasted time in the UI.
Thanks for sharing Chelsea Harding
2025 Q4 Results Google
In Q4 2025, spending on Google Search ads increased about 13% year-over-year, up from roughly 10% growth in the previous quarter.
Search ad clicks reached their highest level in around five years, showing strong advertiser engagement and demand.
Average cost-per-clicks (CPCs stayed mostly flat or even slightly declined, making the click growth more cost-efficient for advertisers.
AI-driven search experiences and query growth expanded overall search volume, including commercially relevant queries earlier in customer journeys.
Shopping ads also saw healthy performance, with spend and clicks rising, and CPC pressure remaining mild.
Broader advertising formats like Performance Max and video placements (e.g., YouTube) contributed to overall ad ecosystem growth.
Competitive shifts such as reduced participation from some major retailers in Google Shopping auctions helped ease CPC inflation and reshaped auction dynamics.
The bottom line: Google’s search advertising market showed robust growth in both clicks and spend in Q4 2025, with relatively stable CPCs and evolving demand patterns driven by AI and shopper behavior.
Subscribe and Save
Hana Kobzová discovered that “Subscribe and Save” is now Live in Google Merchant Center!
🚨 NEW GA4 Update 🚨
Google has just introduced some significant upgrades in GA4, particularly if you’re concerned about budget planning, attribution, and cross-channel performance.
Here’s what matters:
Cross-channel budgeting (Beta)You can now plan and forecast performance across paid channels in one place.
With projection plans, you see if your spend, conversions, and revenue are on track.
With scenario plans, you can test different budget levels and see how ROI changes.
This finally lets you answer questions like:
– Is my spending pace correct?
– How many conversions will this budget realistically drive?
– Where should I shift the budget to maximize ROI?Improved conversion management for Google Ads users (Beta)
You can now set attribution models per conversion, not just globally.
This means:
– Better alignment between GA and Google Ads numbers
– Fewer reporting discrepancies
– More control over how each conversion influences bidding
They also added stronger cross-channel reporting with new dimension filters for deeper analysis.
New conversion attribution analysis report (Beta)A new report in the Advertising workspace shows the real role of each channel across the journey.
Two key views: Assisted conversions (Last Click)
See which channels helped earlier but didn’t get the final click perfect for proving the value of upper-funnel like YouTube or Demand Gen.
Refined funnel analysis (Data-driven)Touchpoints are grouped into Early, Mid, and Late stages.
Single-touch journeys are separated from multi-touch paths, so you can see:
– Which campaigns close complex journeys
– Which ones work as standalone drivers
From today, you might have major data issues with Shopify
If your store is on Shopify and you use pretty much any ad platform tracking, your data could start getting restricted as of 1/20.
Shopify rolled out an update that automatically decides which Customer Events Pixels are allowed to receive data and which ones aren’t.
That means some of your tracking can quietly stop or get filtered without you noticing.
To avoid data issues:Go to Shopify Settings → Customer Events
Find your Pixels. Set them to “Always On” to keep unfiltered data sharing active
Do this now if you care about clean attribution, stable optimization, and not flying blind in your ad accounts.
Picture credit: Antanas Krimelis
Week 4 finished
