paid-ads

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 illustration of an AI brain wired to Facebook and Instagram phones beside a rising bar chart with no baseline under a magnifying glass, for Meta GEM ads model

Meta Says Its GEM Model Lifted Conversions 18.9%. Compared to What?

Meta says its Generative Ads Model (GEM) has delivered an 18.9% conversion improvement and a 12% click-through rate improvement across its ad surfaces, according to an engineering post published October 13, 2026. The post gives no baseline, test period, or methodology, so the figure is a model benchmark, not

Pop art illustration of a velvet rope and bouncer blocking shoppers, with a 730-day calendar, depicting Meta automatic customer exclusions

Meta Now Auto-Excludes 2 Years of Buyers From New Customer Ad Sets

Meta now automatically excludes anyone who fired a purchase event in your ad account when an ad set uses the "Acquire new customers" option in Customer Lifecycle Strategy. The default lookback is 730 days, and you cannot switch the exclusion off. So that ad set now skips two

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 iPhone with a red padlock over the Safari icon while a velvet rope blocks ad tech data servers, illustrating Apple iOS 27 blocking programmatic data vendors

Apple Has a Private Blocklist for Ad Tech (and Your Data Vendors Are Next)

Apple is preparing to block hundreds of programmatic data companies, including CDPs, DMPs, data sellers and ID graph operators, from Safari and other browsers on iOS 27, AdExchanger reported on October 2, 2026. LiveRamp, ID5, UID2, Permutive and Audigent are already blocked. Because the list updates remotely, without an iOS

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 padlocked Safari compass and an iPhone with an empty ad slot, showing iOS 27 blocking The Trade Desk ads

Apple's iOS 27 Quietly Cut The Trade Desk Off Safari (and Buyers Weren't Told)

Apple's iOS 27, released September 14, 2026, added adsrvr.org to WebKit's tracking blocklist, and according to AdExchanger that domain is The Trade Desk's core ad request and delivery endpoint, not an identity service. The result: TTD campaigns have been unable to serve ads