One company can post 24% growth and swallow a billion-dollar fine in the same breath. You know who.
The money’s still moving: Alphabet posted a big Q2, with growth across its core ad surfaces:
- Alphabet revenue: up 24% YoY
- Search ads: up 17%
- YouTube Ads: up 13%, with 1.7B unique viewers on World Cup content
- AI Mode: past 1 billion monthly users
And Google swears the AI surfaces are adding queries instead of eating them.
There are also new rooms to advertise in: AI Max left beta, unlocking “billions” of once-unmonetized searches for ads.
Over 500,000 advertisers are already in, chasing a claimed 15% conversion lift. Just don’t expect much clarity on how you got matched.
The control freaks get a treat, too: Those same AI tools were spotted inside Standard Shopping campaigns.
That means Performance Max smarts without surrendering your manual levers. It’s still unconfirmed, so treat it as an early look.
And the bill arrives: The EU fined Google roughly $1 billion under the DMA over self-preferencing in Search.
Google must now give third-party shopping, hotel, and travel results fairer prominence. European marketers could finally see SERP real estate shift their way.
Tale as old as time for Google. It builds the ad machine, the EU adjusts the settings.
