Three Takeaways From Meta and Google’s Earnings Calls
Meta and Alphabet (Google) disclosed massive AI‑infrastructure spending during their recent earnings calls, positioning AI as a core driver of future ad performance. Both firms reported mixed stock reactions—Alphabet surged 7% while Meta slipped 7%—reflecting investor split over short‑term cost pressures versus long‑term growth potential. The earnings highlighted a 9% month‑to‑month rise in ad spend despite geopolitical and commodity shocks. Analysts see AI as the catalyst that could lift campaign ROI and stabilize the ad market.
Google Ads Adds “Association” Metric to Brand Lift Studies
Google Ads has introduced an "Association" metric to its Brand Lift studies, allowing advertisers to gauge whether audiences link their brand to a specific concept, category or attribute. The metric uses survey‑style questions that ask respondents which brands they associate...
![ChatGPT Vs. Perplexity Vs. Gemini: Which LLMs Are Driving Real Conversions? [Expert Panel] via @Sejournal, @Hethr_campbell](/cdn-cgi/image/width=1200,quality=75,format=auto,fit=cover/https://cdn.searchenginejournal.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/post-featured-3-56.png)
ChatGPT Vs. Perplexity Vs. Gemini: Which LLMs Are Driving Real Conversions? [Expert Panel] via @Sejournal, @Hethr_campbell
Search Engine Journal hosted an on‑demand webinar where experts compared ChatGPT, Perplexity and Gemini on conversion performance. The panel presented data showing ChatGPT delivering the highest conversion rates in e‑commerce and finance, while Perplexity attracts high‑intent traffic but lags on...
Meta and Google Ad Revenues Soar Thanks to AI, but Big Picture Is Blurry
Google and Meta posted strong Q1 ad revenue, beating forecasts. Google’s ad revenue rose 15% to $77.25 billion, driven by 19% search growth and 11% YouTube growth. Meta’s ad revenue jumped 33% to $55 billion, sparking talk it could overtake Google. Both...
X Announces a Rebuilt Ad Platform Powered by AI
Elon Musk’s X has begun a phased rollout of a completely rebuilt advertising platform powered by artificial intelligence. The new stack introduces modern retrieval and ranking systems designed to give marketers tighter targeting and easier campaign creation. Industry forecasts from...
![How Brands Are Increasing AI Visibility By Up To 2,000% [Webinar] via @Sejournal, @Hethr_campbell](/cdn-cgi/image/width=1200,quality=75,format=auto,fit=cover/https://cdn.searchenginejournal.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/1-1-860.png)
How Brands Are Increasing AI Visibility By Up To 2,000% [Webinar] via @Sejournal, @Hethr_campbell
The Search Engine Journal webinar reveals that a focused Reddit strategy can lift AI‑driven brand visibility by as much as 2,000% within a 90‑day window. It showcases OGS Media’s 5‑stage framework that turned a single brand’s Reddit presence into massive...
X Revamps Its Ads Manager, Folding in New AI Performance Tools
X has overhauled its Ads Manager, embedding AI-driven contextual and semantic signals to improve ad targeting and delivery. The company touts the update as its most ambitious platform revamp in two decades. New tools automate campaign creation, audience segmentation, and...
AI Keyword Research: How It Works and 9 Prompts to Start
AI keyword research combines large language models with live search data to automate idea generation, clustering, and gap analysis. Ahrefs’ Agent A, powered by the Model Context Protocol, connects a general AI directly to Ahrefs’ keyword database, delivering real‑time volume, difficulty...
X Kicks Off Global Overhaul of Ad Platform
X, the rebranded Twitter platform, announced a worldwide redesign of its advertising infrastructure. The overhaul aims to simplify campaign creation, improve targeting accuracy, and restore trust after a year of strained relationships with major brands. X will roll out new...
How Nestlé Turns Creator Content Into Brand-Suitable Ads at Scale
Nestlé has launched an integration between CreatorIQ and CreativeX that uses AI to grade influencer content for paid‑media suitability. The system streams creator submissions from CreatorIQ to CreativeX, scores them against Nestlé’s branding, storytelling and effectiveness criteria, and feeds the...
GenAI Is Rebuilding Search, And Google Is Still Winning (Q1 2026 Search Revenue Up 19% YoY)
Alphabet’s Q1 2026 earnings show Google Search revenue climbing to $60.4 billion, a 19% year‑over‑year increase and contributing to a record $109.9 billion total for the quarter. While headlines predict AI will kill search and advertising, Google is embedding ads and shopping signals...
Locality Adds Sales Leaders to Scale National Access to Local TV Advertising Through Collective Ahead of Upfronts
Locality announced the hiring of Steve Fish and Adam Quinn as vice presidents of sales to accelerate adoption of its Collective platform, a data‑driven solution that lets national advertisers plan and activate local TV inventory at scale. The appointments come...
From Paid Clicks to Answer Equity: Your New 2026 Search Strategy
The article warns that AI‑driven search results are eroding paid‑click value, with click‑through rates falling 58‑68% when AI Overviews appear. It introduces the concept of "answer equity"—owning the factual content that AI cites rather than renting impressions through PPC. To...
Commerce Data, Explained: What It Is, Why It Matters, and What Makes It Useful
Criteo explains that true commerce data goes beyond simple transaction logs to include upstream shopper signals such as searches, product views, comparisons, and cart activity. By linking these signals to specific SKUs and normalizing product attributes, Criteo turns raw data...
POSSIBLE 2026: Can AI Help Agencies Finally Break Down Those Silos?
At POSSIBLE 2026, Horizon Media’s chief product and data officer Domenic Venuto explained how the agency is using artificial intelligence to fuse audience planning, targeting, measurement and strategy into a single platform. The AI‑driven hub eliminates the lag between client questions and...
POSSIBLE 2026: Can AI Help Agencies Finally Break Down Those Silos?
At POSSIBLE 2026, Horizon Media’s chief product and data officer Domenic Venuto explained how the agency is using artificial intelligence to centralize media‑buying functions—from audience planning to measurement—so teams can collaborate on a single platform. By eliminating the lag between...
7 Best PPC Agencies for 2026: My Top Picks
The article lists seven top PPC agencies for 2026, each matched to specific business needs such as full‑service management, multi‑channel integration, data‑driven revenue tracking, conversion optimization, creative‑focused accounts, white‑label fulfillment, and HubSpot‑aligned inbound strategies. It draws on G2’s Winter Grid®...
X Upgrades Its Ad Platform in Long Overdue Overhaul
X announced the largest overhaul of its advertising tools, positioning the upgrade as AI‑powered and rolling it out globally. The revamp introduces contextual and semantic ad delivery, with full deployment expected later in 2026. X claims its top 100 advertisers...
What Winning Brands Do Differently on Social in 2026
Social ad spend is set to reach $277 billion in 2025 and $280 billion in 2026, while video dominates every major platform and audiences fragment across channels. At the same time, programmatic ad waste has surged 34%, exposing brands to higher risk....
Zefr Builds A New Front Door For YouTube Buys
Zefr introduced Zain, an AI‑driven hub that lets advertisers launch YouTube campaigns using plain‑language commands. The platform leverages the Model Context Protocol (MCP) and an Advertising Context Protocol (AdCP) to translate natural‑language requests into API calls, pulling in first‑party, Zefr...
Zefr Builds A New Front Door For YouTube Buys
Zefr introduced Zain, an AI‑driven hub that lets advertisers create YouTube campaigns using plain English. The platform leverages the Model Context Protocol (MCP) and Advertising Context Protocol (AdCP) to translate natural‑language requests into the API calls needed for campaign activation....
How AI Models ‘Understand’ Your Brand
The article argues that AI does not truly "understand" a brand; it merely matches patterns derived from its training data and real‑time retrieval. Visibility now hinges on how a brand is encoded, retrieved, and generated by large language models, shifting...
Google Rolls Out New Tools to Automate Even More of the Marketing Process
Google announced a suite of new AI Max capabilities ahead of its Marketing Live event, including AI Brief, a natural‑language tool that lets advertisers set creative and targeting guardrails, and AI Max for Shopping, which automates ad copy, URL expansion...
AI Max Turns 1 with New Ways to Steer Performance and Expansion to More Advertisers
Google celebrates the one‑year anniversary of AI Max by extending the platform to Shopping and travel ad formats and adding new control tools. The AI Brief feature lets advertisers input brand‑specific messaging, audience, and matching guidelines to steer the Gemini‑powered engine. Final...
Meet Travelers in the Moments that Matter with Search Campaigns for Travel.
Google announced Search Campaigns for Travel, merging travel feeds and formats into its standard Search campaign interface. The update gives advertisers a single buying door, AI Max automation, real‑time feed‑driven text ads, and unified reporting across all travel ad types. By...
Google Unveils Brand 'Brief' Feature In AI Max
Google unveiled a suite of AI Max tools, highlighted by the new “AI Brief” feature powered by Gemini. AI Brief lets advertisers embed brand‑specific messaging guardrails, banned phrases, and tone guidelines directly into search, shopping and travel campaigns. Additional capabilities...
Google AI Max Gets New Controls, Shopping Rollout and Travel Consolidation
Google is extending its AI Max automation suite beyond Search to include Shopping campaigns and a unified Travel format. The rollout adds AI Brief, a Gemini‑powered natural‑language interface, plus text disclaimer and URL‑expansion tools for compliance. These updates let advertisers...
Adapt Your Shopping Campaigns to Modern Search with AI Max.
Google unveiled AI Max for Shopping, an AI‑driven upgrade to existing Shopping campaigns that adds conversational ad copy, Final URL Expansion, and automatic format selection. The new tools pull data from Merchant Center feeds—such as fabric softness and fit—to match...
Microsoft Says Bing Reached 1B Monthly Active Users via @Sejournal, @MattGSouthern
Microsoft announced that Bing reached one billion monthly active users, a first for the search engine, during its Q3 FY2026 earnings call. The milestone follows the 2023 AI‑powered Copilot rollout that boosted daily users from 100 million to a broader monthly...
Can AI Mode Ads Actually Drive Conversions, Or Is It Just Awareness? – Ask A PPC via @Sejournal, @Brookeosmundson
AI Mode ads, Google’s AI‑driven placement layer, can generate real conversions but at higher cost per action than mature keyword campaigns. Early data shows a 7‑13% lift in conversion volume, yet CPA and ROAS are less predictable. The format captures...
McDonald’s UK Swaps Dexter Fletcher Voiceover for Stephen Graham
McDonald’s UK has replaced Dexter Fletcher’s voiceover with actor Stephen Graham for its national advertising campaign. The change is part of a strategic push to resonate more strongly with younger consumers, particularly Gen Z and early‑millennial audiences. Graham’s distinctive, gritty...
Beyond the Prompt: Why the “Sidecar” Is the Secret to Real-Time Agentic Advertising
The IAB Tech Lab’s Agentic Real‑Time Framework (ARTF) introduces an “Agentic Sidecar” architecture that embeds AI agents directly inside DSP or SSP environments. By containerizing agents and using gRPC with Protobuf, the sidecar cuts bid‑request latency up to 80 % and...
Digital Ads Hit $294 Billion While Everyone Pretends This Is Normal
U.S. internet advertising revenue surged 13.9% in 2025, reaching a record $294.6 billion, according to the IAB/PwC report. The growth underscores digital’s dominance despite industry chatter that ad budgets remain under pressure. Mobile video and programmatic buying were the primary engines...
Pixalate’s Q1 2026 Connected TV (CTV) Device Market Share Report
Pixalate’s Q1 2026 Connected TV device market share report, based on analysis of more than 18 billion open programmatic ad transactions, shows Roku leading the Western Hemisphere with 36% share of voice (SOV) in North America and 42% in LATAM, while Samsung...
Magellan AI and iHeart Expand to Broadcast Radio Attribution
Magellan AI has upgraded its standalone Broadcast Radio Attribution product by integrating iHeartMedia’s simulcast data. The new capability maps radio listeners to measurable outcomes such as web visits, form fills, leads, and purchases, allowing advertisers to assess performance across audio...
Google Ads PMax Tests Select Partners To Run Ads With
Google Ads Performance Max (PMax) is piloting a new "Partners in Alfa" setting that lets advertisers decide whether their ads appear on the Search partner network, the Google Display Network, or both. The option surfaced on LinkedIn, where Adriaan Dekker...
ROI Research and Partnerships Feature at Tuning In North 2026
Radiocentre’s Tuning In North event in Manchester highlighted audio’s expanding role for advertisers, with the North West seeing a 24% audience rise to 4.7 million weekly listeners. Partnerships such as B&M, Cash for Kids and Bauer have raised roughly $127 million for...
Posterscope India and iProspect India Roll Out OOH Campaign for The Mummy
Warner Bros. Discovery enlisted Posterscope India and iProspect India to launch an OOH campaign for the horror film *The Mummy* across Mumbai and Chennai. The activation ran from April 10 to 17, 2026, featuring a roaming mummy figure and themed billboards...
Industry Shows Its Mettle as Adspend Hits the Top Corner
The UK advertising market grew 6.4% year‑on‑year in 2025, reaching £46.7 bn (about $59 bn). Media spend during the Q4 festive period alone hit £12.9 bn (≈$16 bn). Forecasts now project a 6.6% rise to £49.8 bn (≈$63 bn) in 2026, buoyed by the FIFA World...
Rao’s Enlists Goodby Silverstein & Partners to Make Its Brand Iconic
Rao’s Homemade has appointed Goodby Silverstein & Partners (GS&P) as its agency of record to craft a new, iconic brand identity. The agency will develop campaigns that highlight Rao’s Italian restaurant roots, premium ingredients, and timeless quality, with work slated to launch in...
Report: UK Ad Spend Records £46.7bn Media Investment in 2025
The Advertising Association and WARC report that UK advertising investment reached £46.7 billion (≈ $60 billion) in 2025, a 6.4% year‑on‑year rise. Media spend during the festive Q4 alone hit £12.9 billion (≈ $16.5 billion), driven by double‑digit growth in retail media, addressable TV and social...
WPP Revives Amazon India’s ‘Aur Dikhao’ Campaign
Amazon India has revived its ‘Aur Dikhao’ campaign in partnership with WPP to spotlight everyday shopping categories such as fashion, beauty, home and wireless accessories. The integrated effort runs in six regional languages and leverages IPL 2026 TV and connected‑TV slots,...
Digest: Omnicom Tests AI Agent Media Buying; Australia Forces Big Tech to Pay for News
Omnicom announced it is running live media purchases through autonomous AI agents, marking a shift toward fully programmatic ad buying. The agency posted Q1 2026 revenue of $6.2 bn, operating income of $646 m and a 14.8% margin. In Australia, draft legislation...
Google, Meta and Amazon Took Two Thirds of £46bn UK 2025 Adspend
UK advertising spend rose 6.4% in 2025 to a record £46.7bn (≈$59bn). A trio of US tech giants—Google, Meta and Amazon—captured roughly two‑thirds of that pie, accounting for about £31bn (≈$39bn). Google led with an estimated £21.5bn ($27bn) from search,...
INTERVIEW: Designing Retail Media for Scale and Relevance: Helene Trad on Kingfisher’s Approach
Helene Trad, head of retail media at Kingfisher, explained at Retail MediaX Europe how the group is building a modular, customer‑centric retail media platform that serves both trade‑focused Screwfix and inspiration‑driven B&Q. The strategy blends a unified measurement backbone with...
IAB Europe Opens CTV Measurement Framework for Public Comment
IAB Europe announced on 30 April 2026 that its Connected TV (CTV) Measurement Framework and Transparency Principles are now open for public comment. The framework, built with input from major players such as Amazon Ads, Google, Samsung Ads and YouTube, standardises metrics...
Media Briefing: Publishers Rewire Sales Teams for the Outcomes Era
Publishers are overhauling sales structures, shifting from pure sellers to outcome‑focused teams that blend client‑success, custom studios, and product marketing. At USA Today, only a third of staff are active sellers, while WSJ and Hearst allocate roughly 25‑30% to sales...
Uncertainty Is the Real Cost of the Middle East War for Advertisers
Advertising agencies are feeling the drag from the Middle East war as uncertainty stalls budgeting decisions. WPP’s Middle East revenue fell 12.6% YoY and Publicis’s MEA business dropped 5.1%, while Omnicom saw declines in the region. The IMF warns the...
Tech Giants Earned over $100b in Advertising Revenue in First Three Months of 2026
In the first quarter of 2026, Alphabet, Meta, Amazon, and Microsoft together generated more than $100 billion in advertising revenue. Alphabet led with $87.0 billion, driven by Google search ($77.3 b) and YouTube ($9.9 b), both posting double‑digit growth. Meta posted $55.0 billion, up 33%...
Bestads Best TV of the Week: Consejo Profesional De Agrimensores’ ‘Study Surveying’ via FROM
Bestadsontv.com, the global showcase arm of Campaign Brief, highlighted the Argentine ad “Study Surveying” by Consejo Profesional de Agrimensores, produced by agency FROM. The spot was selected by guest judge Lisa Fedyszyn, CCO of Special, New Zealand, for its witty take on...