Paid Ads

Google Ads, Meta, TikTok and programmatic breakdowns for practitioners. What is breaking, what is working, what CMOs are spending on now.

Isometric flat illustration of ChatGPT ad rollout across Canada, Australia, and New Zealand with price tags showing a $200K agency floor dropping to $50K self-serve.

OpenAI Added 3 ChatGPT Ad Markets Because Self-Serve Is the Real Launch

OpenAI began rolling out ChatGPT ads to Canada, Australia, and New Zealand in the weeks following a March 26 announcement, expanding beyond the US pilot that launched February 9. Ads appear only on Free and Go tiers for logged-in users over 18. Self-serve advertising tools launch in April 2026, dropping

Pop art illustration of YouTube play button surrounded by erupting chat bubbles with ad pause icons on a connected TV screen

YouTube Will Skip Ads When Livestream Chat Gets Loud Enough

YouTube announced today that its system will automatically hold back ads during livestreams when chat engagement hits a peak. The official framing: protect "that collective vibe." The practical translation for anyone buying YouTube inventory is simpler. The platform just decided some of its own ad slots are not

Pop-art illustration of a cracked padlock on a Google Ads dashboard with shadowy hands reaching through the screen

Agencies Lost Millions to Google Ads MCC Hijacks That Google Never Detected

Every agency using Google Ads has had the same thought at some point: if someone hijacked our MCC tomorrow, would we even know before the damage was done? The honest answer, based on the last 18 months of reported incidents, is probably not. And Google wouldn’t catch it for

Pop art illustration of cracked smartphone screen with rewards app icon being removed from Apple App Store, data streams flowing out

Apple Pulled the No. 2 US App and Proved Rewarded UA Has a Trust Problem

On Monday, Apple removed Freecash from the App Store. The app had 60 million registered users, a 4.7-star rating from over 150,000 reviews, and hit No. 2 in the US App Store in February. It was also, according to TechCrunch and security researchers at Malwarebytes, collecting users'

Pop art illustration of budget arrows splitting between a search ads funnel and awareness megaphone in contrasting red and blue

Cutting Search to Fund Demand Gen Fails for the Same Reason Every Time

A thread on r/PPC this week drew 61 comments in under 24 hours. The post: "We pivoted our entire Q1 budget away from search to demand gen and the performance team is screaming." The comments are a mix of "what did you expect" and increasingly

Pop art illustration of Google Ads dashboard with red disapproval warnings beside a browser showing a working website

Google Disapproved 1,500 Ads Over Server Errors Nobody Can Find

Multiple Google Ads accounts woke up to disapproved campaigns this week. The reason cited: "destination not working." The landing pages, in every reported case, loaded fine. No downtime, no DNS outages, nothing broken on the advertiser's end. Google's automated crawlers flagged phantom errors, and

Pop art gavel crashing through a Google Ads auction interface with bid numbers flying outward and arbitration documents stacked behind scales of justice

Google's Own Arbitration Clause Gave Advertisers a $218 Billion Weapon

Google spent years putting mandatory arbitration clauses in its advertiser contracts. The thinking was defensive: keep disputes out of court, prevent class actions, limit exposure. That strategy worked exactly as intended until this week, when Chicago attorney Ashley Keller began filing mass arbitration claims on behalf of a "significant