Google Ads

Pop-art illustration of a crocodile jaw formed by two diverging chart lines: Shopping ad impressions falling while click-through rate rises under AI Overviews

Google Shopping CTR Rose to 1.55% Because AI Overviews Ate the Bad Queries

Smarter Ecommerce analyzed 175 billion Google Shopping ad impressions from mid-2025 to mid-2026 and found median impressions fell from about 1.85 million to 1.4 million while median click-through rate rose from 1.20% to roughly 1.55%. The CTR gain is mostly a shrinking-denominator effect: Google appears to

Pop art storefront window covered in faded 20% OFF and BOGO sale posters, a magnifying glass scanning them, and a Google search ad card above copying the discount text

Google Ads Will Now Scrape Discounts Off Your Landing Page and Run Them as Ads

Google Ads added a new account-level automated asset called Automated promotions, reported by Search Engine Roundtable on September 7, 2026. Google now extracts offer copy such as "20% off" directly from your landing pages and serves it in Search and Performance Max ads on any campaign with location

Pop art illustration of a Google Ads bidding dial being cranked from 5 dollars to 10 dollars beside an August 17 calendar page and rising cost arrows.

Google Will Stop Beating Your CPA Targets on August 17 (On Purpose)

Starting August 17, 2026, Google Ads will stop letting budget-limited campaigns beat their Target CPA and Target ROAS goals. Google's own example: a campaign with a $10 tCPA that has been delivering conversions at $5 will move back toward an actual $10 CPA. Search, Shopping, Performance Max, and

Pop art illustration of a Google Ads bidding dial turned up from a 5 dollar CPA price tag toward 10 dollars, next to an August 17 calendar page

Your Target CPA Is About to Become Your Actual CPA

Starting August 17, 2026, Google Ads will make budget-limited campaigns on Target CPA or Target ROAS deliver at their stated targets instead of beating them. A campaign set to a $10 CPA that has been converting at $5 will drift toward the full $10. The Bid Target Adjustment Tool, live

Pop art toggle switch on a control panel with three tangled cables merging into one and a calendar marked June 15, for Google Ads enhanced conversions.

Google Folded Enhanced Conversions Into One Toggle (Watch the June 15 Cutoff)

Google Ads is collapsing enhanced conversions into a single on/off toggle in June 2026, removing the old choice between the Google tag, Google Tag Manager, and the Ads API. The catch sits underneath the simplification: starting June 15, 2026, the legacy Google Ads API stops accepting offline conversion imports

Pop-art illustration of a locked vault door stamped June 15 with a developer token key dangling beside it and a torn calendar strip reading Dec 2025 to May 2026.

Google's Conversion API Cutoff Reads Six Months of Your Token Logs

Google's Ads Developer Blog confirmed on May 15 that the Google Ads API will block new offline conversion imports starting June 15, 2026. The cutoff applies to any developer token that did not call ConversionUploadService.UploadClickConversions between December 2025 and May 2026. Tokens outside that six-month usage window

Pop-art comic illustration of a magnifying glass over a Google Ads search terms dashboard with partially blurred queries and AI rewrite tags, primary red yellow and blue palette.

Google Conceded the Search Query Report Is Now Just an Approximation

On May 13, 2026, Google updated a Google Ads help page to say Search Query Reports may show the “closest approximation” of user queries, not the literal searches. The change, spotted by AdSquire founder Anthony Higman and surfaced by Search Engine Land, retroactively turns years of negative-keyword and match-type audits