Smart Bidding’s Learning status gets a 7-day cap as Google adds more ways to check its work

Bill Murray spent Groundhog Day stuck in a loop.

So did Smart Bidding, Google’s automated bidding. One big budget change, and back to “Learning” it went.

Now Google broke the loop: The “Learning” label, which appears while a bid strategy recalibrates, now lasts 7 days at most.

Budget, bid target, creative and targeting changes no longer trigger it. Your BFCM budget bump won’t set it off, but performance can still wobble.

Receipts, please: A new Invalid Traffic Overview card estimates what Google saved you by filtering out bots and accidental clicks before billing.

It also shows credits for invalid traffic Google caught after billing, plus daily and campaign breakdowns. It’s rolling out globally this week.

Those credits won’t change Cost or CPA in your Campaigns table. The “Invalid Activity Credit: Search & PMax” report in Report editor shows adjusted numbers.

AI Max comes pre-installed: The setting that lets Google show ads on searches beyond your keywords is on by default for new Search campaigns in Google Ads Editor 2.14.

Automated ad text and landing page picks are on, too. Check your settings before you publish.

At least you can track it: A new ValueTrack parameter, a URL tag Google fills in on each click, marks AI Max expansion clicks with an “a”.

Add {search_term_matchtype} to your tracking template to compare those clicks with keyword traffic.

Your tracking gets a report card: Google just documented Data Strength Uplift, a metric estimating how much first-party data tools like enhanced conversions add to your reported conversions.

• Where: Goals > Conversions > Summary
• Minimum: 100 website or 20 offline conversions in 14 days
• Catch: it shows better tracking, not more sales

No more waking up in “Learning” after budget changes, so set your own alarm.

TikTok Shop pitches its customers a membership, as LinkedIn takes B2B targeting to British TVs

Get in, loser, we’re going shopping.

TikTok Shop just priced the ride.

Prime has a cheaper cousin: TikTok Shop is piloting TikTok Shop Plus, a paid membership, with over 1 million top US shoppers.

After a 30-day free trial, it’s $9.99 a month, $5 less than Prime. Members get:

• Free shipping on “Plus”-badged items
• An extra 10% off select products
• Three monthly coupons, up to $30 off
• Extra Black Friday deals

Sell there? Check which listings carry the badge.

Reddit is shrinking and growing at once. Similarweb estimates Reddit’s global visits fell 13% year over year in October.

Reddit counts weekly users up 16%, a Q3 average of people, not visits.

Reddit partly blames Google’s AI Overviews and AI Mode for over 1 million fewer search referrals a week.

…and your next lead is on the couch: LinkedIn’s CTV Ads, which put your video ads on streaming TV, just launched in the UK.

You can target viewers by job role, industry and seniority across LG, Paramount+, Titan OS and more. It looks like business people do rest in front of the TV. Just like normal people.

LinkedIn will also label lurkers. It’s testing a “Frequent Viewer” label that flags repeat visitors to your profile.

Only some users see it. It’s a warm-lead signal, until your name shows up on a prospect’s list.

Comparison shopping moves into the chat: Pinterest’s AI assistant now has a Compare tool that lines up similar products by price, availability and reviews.

CEO Bill Ready said about 80% of assistant searches are commercial, so shoppers will compare your products right there.

Convenient timing with Black Friday around the corner.

Where ChatGPT gets its facts, and how your brand gets in?

ChatGPT is that friend who’s never met you but has heard a lot about you.

Ahrefs tracked where the hearsay comes from and besides yourself—meaning stuff you feed it with like files, questions, and data—there are three more that can put you at the top.

So let’s go one-by-one.

1) Training data: Unless you block GPTBot, OpenAI’s training crawler, your public pages likely feed future models.

Today’s models know nothing after spring 2026, so anything you launched since needs a search.

The Crew’s take: On October 31, AI search tracker Goodie saw the share of ChatGPT answers with no sources jump from 1.5% to 12.2%.

Its best guess: ChatGPT now searches less. Those answers come straight from training, so think twice before blocking GPTBot.

2) Web search: Of the searches it runs, 6.8% use site: to search one website, and three in four of those hit brand sites.

For brand questions, 83% of answers cited the brand’s own site, 70% first.

So spell out your prices, specs, policies and support answers in plain text. And let in OAI-SearchBot, OpenAI’s search crawler, or ChatGPT can’t cite you.

Bonus take: OpenAI now offers a peek. Its Business Hub lets you claim your business, update details and product feeds, and see your ChatGPT mentions, clicks and the themes of chats citing your site.

OpenAI says claiming shouldn’t change how often you appear, but it keeps your facts current.

3) Publishers: Those with OpenAI content deals earned 12.5% of citations among ChatGPT’s 200 most-cited domains in late September, up from 7.5% in March.

And when Ahrefs tested self-promotion, 94% of its new mentions came from answers citing someone else’s page.

Find the reviews, “best X” lists, forums and publications ChatGPT cites for your category, then aim for more than a passing mention.

ChatGPT will keep hearing about you secondhand. Make sure every version checks out.

Listeners remember audio ads at the start and middle

In audio, timing is everything.

Comscore asked people who stream audio which ads they remember hearing in the past month, and the ads at the end left the weakest impression.

Ads before the content starts lead at 49%, with mid-content ads right behind at 47%.

Ads at the end fall to 27%, roughly half the recall of the other two spots. A quarter of listeners don’t remember hearing any audio ads at all.

Recall depends partly on how often each slot runs, too. Publishers sell fewer end-of-content ads, so lower recall doesn’t mean those ads are useless. But listeners still remember them far less.

Our take: Listeners are paying attention when the show starts and while it plays. Once it ends, many skip ahead, close the app or move on to the next thing before the ad finishes.

Put your budget into pre-roll and mid-roll slots, and save end-of-content ads for cheap reminders. Mention your brand name in the first few seconds, so listeners who skip still hear it.