PPC & Performance Max Articles

Google is testing a Gemini-powered Business Agent for Leads that answers product questions and qualifies prospects directly inside Search ads - before a visitor ever reaches your website. AI Mode queries are already three times longer than conventional searches. The buyer journey is moving inside the search result itself, and B2B marketers who are not structured for it will lose the conversation before it starts.

Google Ads and DV360 are rolling out changes in July 2026 that make brand-asset inheritance the default behaviour for Demand Gen and YouTube responsive ads. If your account settings are not explicitly configured, the platform will fill in your advertiser name and logo automatically. That is a governance problem, not a convenience feature.

Brand managers have always believed that brand management means business management. A scorecard organises the chaos into a focused dashboard. But here is the problem most brand leaders face: the scorecard gives you numbers. It does not give you the "so what". That is where AI marketing expertise, AI Answers visibility, and Performance Max precision separate the brands that grow from the brands that measure.

Meta reported $56.31 billion in Q1 2026 revenue, up 33% year over year, with ad impressions rising 19% and average price per ad up 12%. eMarketer now projects Meta will overtake Google in global ad revenue for the first time in 2026. Here is what every B2B marketing leader needs to extract from these numbers before setting Q3 budgets.

ChatGPT Ads launched in the UK in June 2026 with no minimum spend and self-serve access. For B2B marketers, the question is not whether to be excited but whether to test now, wait for missing features, or focus budget elsewhere. This framework covers what the platform can and cannot do today, which B2B scenarios make commercial sense, and how to allocate Q3 budget without abandoning proven channels.

OpenAI made its Cannes Lions debut in June 2026 and announced it is 'clearly in the advertising business.' With 900 million weekly active users and 20% of queries showing direct commercial intent, ChatGPT is no longer just a research tool. For B2B marketers, this is the most commercially significant channel development since LinkedIn introduced Matched Audiences in 2017. Here is what the data means and what to do about it.

Google has effectively retired Smart Campaigns in favour of Performance Max, but the real question for B2B marketers is not which campaign type Google prefers - it is which AI bidding architecture delivers qualified pipeline at a defensible cost. This guide cuts through the benchmarks, the control trade-offs, and the B2B-specific edge cases to give you a clear decision framework for 2026.

Within two weeks in June 2026, both OpenAI and Google moved ads inside the AI-generated answer. ChatGPT conversion-optimised campaigns launched June 5. Google AI Mode ads debuted at Google Marketing Live. The early-mover window is open - and most B2B advertisers are not set up to compete. Here is what you need to do before Q3.

ChatGPT is preparing to introduce advertising into its conversational interface. This represents a fundamental shift in how paid media works, from keyword-triggered ads to context-aware, conversational placements that appear within AI-generated answers.