Google Ads

Pop art illustration of a salt shaker pouring over a shopping cart full of price tags, next to a red bidding paddle and a falling red arrow for Google Ads Black Friday ROAS

Black Friday Seasonality Adjustments Now Cost More Than They Return

Optmyzr compared 5,886 Google Ads accounts over Black Friday-Cyber Monday 2024. Advertisers who used seasonality adjustments saw CPCs rise 34% and ROAS fall 15.7%. Accounts that left Smart Bidding alone saw CPCs rise 17% and ROAS rise 5.7%. The adjusters got only about 6 extra points of

Pop art illustration of a padlocked blue box holding Google owned channels, two budget sliders, one at zero, and a faucet dripping into a small cup for Google Ads budget caps

Google Ads Lets You Cap Search Partners at 0%, But Not YouTube

Google Ads announced channel prioritization and budget allocation on October 14, 2026, rolling out to Search, Shopping, Performance Max and Demand Gen over the coming months. Every channel defaults to High priority, and Low priority channels can be capped at a percentage of daily budget, down to 0%. In Performance

Pop art pie chart with a small blue Search slice and large orange slices beside a magnifying glass, a price tag and one gold coin next to a pile of cheap coins

Search Now Gets 41% of Google Ads Clicks (and Still Eats 71% of the Budget)

Search campaigns fell from 62% to 41% of Google Ads clicks between January 2024 and August 2026 across 31 Brainlabs-managed accounts, while still taking 71% of spend. That gap means a Search click now costs roughly 3.5 times a click from Performance Max or Demand Gen. Blended CPC is

Pop art illustration of a large Get Phone Number button covering a contractor phone number on a Google Local Services ad, beside a ringing phone and stopwatch

Google LSAs Now Hide the Phone Number (Right as Missed Calls Got Billable)

Google Local Services Ads started hiding the advertiser's phone number behind a "Get phone number" button on desktop, Search Engine Roundtable reported on October 2, 2026. The change lands one day after LSA began charging for missed calls that last longer than 20 seconds. That means

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