For years, PPC advertisers have considered Performance Max (and Smart Shopping before it) to be a black box, even a black hole. While its powerful automation drives convincing results, the lack of transparency into channel performance has been a persistent frustration.  Now, Google is beginning to provide some answers.  The rollout of the new Channel […]

Microsoft Copilot is transforming search advertising by turning everyday conversations into intent-rich signals advertisers can act on.  ROAS increases 13-fold when users engage with Copilot before performing a search, according to Microsoft. Drawing from billions of first-party audience insights across Microsoft’s consumer ecosystem – including Bing, Edge, Xbox, LinkedIn, and Activision – Copilot identifies high-value […]

Why this matters now Marketing budgets in 2025 have stayed the same, yet expectations keep rising. CMOs report budgets stuck at roughly 7.7% of company revenue, which means teams are expected to do more with the same dollars. In that context, the most practical use of AI is not a moonshot, but a set of […]

Ginny Marvin, Google’s Ads Liaison, is clarifying how keyword match types interact with AI Overviews (AIO) and AI Mode ad placements — addressing ongoing confusion among advertisers testing AI Max and mixed match-type setups. Why we care. As ads expand into AI-powered placements, advertisers need to understand which keywords are eligible to serve — and […]

Google rapidly expanded AI Overviews in search during 2025, then pulled back as they moved into commercial and navigational queries. These findings are based on a new Semrush analysis of more than 10 million keywords from January to November. AI Overviews surged, then retreated. Google didn’t roll out AI Overviews in a straight line in […]

We are navigating the “search everywhere” revolution – a disruptive shift driven by generative AI and large language models (LLMs) that is reshaping the relationship between brands, consumers, and search engines. For the last two decades, the digital economy ran on a simple exchange: content for clicks.  With the rise of zero-click experiences, AI Overviews, […]

Google’s pitch for AI-powered bidding is seductive. Feed the algorithm your conversion data, set a target, and let it optimize your campaigns while you focus on strategy.  Machine learning will handle the rest. What Google doesn’t emphasize is that its algorithms optimize for Google’s goals, not necessarily yours.  In 2026, as Smart Bidding becomes more […]

Shopify powers more than 6 million live ecommerce websites, supported by a robust app ecosystem that can extend nearly every part of the customer journey.  Anyone can develop an app to perform virtually any function.  But with so many integrations to choose from, ecommerce teams often waste time testing add-ons that promise revenue gains but […]

Preferred Sources in Top Stories has expanded globally: it’s now available for English-language users worldwide, and we’ll roll it out to all supported languages early n…

Google’s Nick Fox, the SVP of Knowledge and Information at Google, said in a recent podcast that doing optimization for AI search is “the same” as doing optimization and SEO for traditional search. He added, you want to build great sites, with great content, for your users. More details. This came up in the AI […]