Google is expanding its Limited Ad Serving policy, previously narrower in scope, to cover all Google Ads. The update was announced on 5 August 2026, and Google says implementation "will begin gradually and will be completed by 2028." The policy limits impressions for advertisers Google does not consider qualified, on searches judged more likely than others to result in negative ads experiences, and Google states that "individual ads will not be disapproved." Seven factors decide qualification: account attributes, user activity and reports, account maturity, ad format usage, history of policy compliance, advertiser industry, and advertiser verification status. Limited accounts receive an in-account notification and can appeal through Google's Limited Ad Serving Appeals Form. Enforcement began in September 2024 and has been applied gradually across YouTube ads; the guidance now names Search, YouTube, Gmail, Discover and the Play Store.Source: Search Engine Land →
Our take: Nothing gets disapproved, so nothing looks broken. An account under limits reads like an account with a demand problem: impressions fall, volume thins, and the only signal is one more notification in an interface full of them. Most of the seven qualification factors are not settings anybody chooses. Verification status and policy history are the two an advertiser works on directly; industry, account maturity, and what users have reported about you sit outside the account.
Google Ads added a "Report on new customers acquired" option inside Customer Acquisition settings, spotted by Thomas Eccel and written up by Search Engine Land on 7 August 2026. Selecting it unlocks the New customers and New customer value columns without applying any bidding adjustment. It replaces a workaround in which advertisers selected "Bid higher for new customers" and assigned a token new-customer value of 0.01, small enough to leave the auction effectively untouched. Google's documentation states that customer acquisition reporting works only with Purchase conversions, and that it depends on a new-customer parameter supplied through the Google tag, Google Tag Manager, Shopify, Firebase, Google Analytics, or offline conversion imports.Source: Search Engine Land →
Our take: The setting is the easy half. New-customer reporting reads Purchase conversions only, and only when your tag is already sending the new-customer flag through the Google tag, Tag Manager, Shopify, Analytics or an offline import. Switch the option on with nothing feeding it and every buyer files as new, which is a worse number than no number. The workaround it retires, a bid bonus of 0.01, at least made it obvious the reporting was a side effect of a bidding setting.
From September 1, 2026, Google Ads begins automatically upgrading eligible Search campaigns that use Automatically Created Assets or campaign-level broad match into AI Max. Campaigns arriving via Automatically Created Assets get search term matching and text customization enabled by default; campaigns arriving via campaign-level broad match get search term matching. Advertisers are being notified by email, and Google frames the change as carrying forward functionality advertisers already rely on.Source: Search Engine Land →
Our take: The upgrade is being described as carrying your settings forward, and it does more than that. Automatically created assets adds headlines Google wrote; text customization lets it rewrite the ones you wrote, which is a different permission and it arrives switched on. Campaigns coming in on campaign-level broad match get off lighter, picking up search term matching alone. Nobody has published whether you can decline, so the step available before September is a list of which campaigns currently run either setting.
OpenAI emailed ChatGPT Ads advertisers with nine product changes. Automatic advanced matching becomes the default for existing web pixels on August 17, 2026: the pixel captures identifiers people enter into site forms, hashes them client-side, and transmits them alongside the conversion event, and advertisers who do not want it must disable it under Tools, then Conversions, then Data Source, then Edit pixel. The release also adds a conversion-optimized CPC beta for product feed campaigns with fixed or manual bidding under a positive conversion bid cap, campaign cloning and bulk creation for oCPC, dynamic URL macros for campaign, ad group, ad and account IDs, Triple Whale and Hightouch measurement integrations, fuller pixel diagnostics, and a multi-product carousel format in testing.Source: PPC Land →
Our take: Default-on collection of what people type into your forms is a consent question before it is a measurement one. Hashing in the browser limits what leaves the page; it does not settle whether your privacy policy and cookie banner already describe the practice. Only advertisers with a pixel already installed are in scope, which is still a short list. For everyone else the weight of this release sits in the oCPC beta, which lets product-feed campaigns be ranked on predicted conversions instead of clicks alone.
Microsoft Advertising added a setting that lets advertisers exclude Audience Ads placements from within a Performance Max campaign. Search Engine Roundtable reported the change on 6 August 2026.Source: Search Engine Roundtable →
Our take: Placement control inside Performance Max has been the standing complaint on both platforms, so the reflex will be to switch Audience Ads off and call it a cleanup. That reflex assumes you already know what those placements were contributing, and a blended Performance Max report is the one place that will not tell you. Inventory is easy to turn off and hard to read afterwards, because the comparison you want is against a version of the campaign you just stopped running.
Deep dives, explainers, and the questions clients ask most.
New · June 2026
Google Ads 2026 Changes
Demand Gen replaces standalone Display, Performance Max gets asset experiments and a power score, and offline conversion imports move APIs. The deadlines and what to adjust.
The 5 flows every BC store needs live in the first 30 days, how to wire Klaviyo to BC product events, and when B2B email flows need a different architecture than DTC.
BC product feed optimization for Google Shopping, Performance Max budget allocation, and the feed quality checks that determine whether your Shopping campaigns work or waste money.
How to add product video to BigCommerce PDPs without tanking Lighthouse scores — lazy loading, VideoObject schema, and the formats that actually drive conversion vs. play rates.
Finding your highest-revenue product and category pages, optimizing title and meta templates at scale, and building an internal link structure that strengthens them over time.