Autopilot used to be a feature you switched on.
This week both platforms made it the standard trim. And it’s not necessarily great for marketers.
Microsoft is dropping Max CPC. From October 1, new campaigns on Maximize Conversions, Conversion Value, Clicks, tCPA and tROAS can’t set one.
Existing campaigns keep theirs. Remove it after that date, though, and you can’t add it back. Just in time for Q4, eh? Make sure you run an optimization experiment before.
Google’s AI Max upgrade needs no signature, landing whether you read the email or not.
Every Search campaign still running campaign-level broad match or automatically created assets gets upgraded. Switching those features off is the only exit.
Gemini has moved into your reporting. AI Dashboards build charts from text prompts and attach a live summary of what changed in performance.
Fast, and worth checking against your own read of the numbers.
Shopping CTR looks great for an awkward reason. It’s up 17–20% year over year while clicks stayed flat and impressions dropped.
Google appears to be serving your ads on fewer, higher-intent queries. Judge Shopping on clicks and impression volume.
One control did arrive: Meridian GeoX, a free open-source geo-experiment library that measures incrementality on any platform and calibrates your MMM.
So as platforms take away controls, third parties try to bring them back.
Have we seen this movie before?
