This season, Google Search and Shopping Ads are expected to surge past $70 billion in holiday spending. But there’s a hidden flaw in the auction system — one most advertisers don’t realize is costing them money even when competitors aren’t in the game. BrandPilot calls this the Uncontested Google Ads Problem, and it’s becoming one […]
If it looks like an AI hallucination problem, and sounds like an AI hallucination problem, it’s probably a data hygiene problem. I’ve sat through dozens of demos this year where marketing leaders show me their shiny new AI agent, ask it a basic question, and watch it confidently spit out information that’s either outdated, conflicting, […]
WooCommerce announced that it will roll out integration with Stripe’s Agentic Commerce Suite, which will enable AI shopping assistants to conduct transactions. Agentic AI Shopping Agentic AI seems a long way off but OpenAI currently supports end-to-end shopping from the discovery and comparison stages to completing purchases. With the rollout in WooCommerce the infrastructure will […]
On episode 334 of PPC Live The Podcast, I speak to Sophie Fell Head of Paid Media at Liberty Marketing Group about a real PPC mistake involving location targeting. The conversation focuses on how small oversights can have big consequences—and how to recover from them professionally. The PPC F-Up: worldwide location targeting Sophie accidentally launched […]
Google has updated Search Live with Gemini 2.5 Flash Native Audio, upgrading how voice functions inside Search while also extending the model’s use across translation and live voice agents. The update introduces more natural spoken responses in Search Live and reflects Google’s effort to improve natural voice queries, treating voice as a core interface as […]
UK doctor and YouTuber Dr. Ed Hope said Google’s AI falsely claimed he was suspended by the General Medical Council earlier this year for selling sick notes. Hope called the allegation completely made up and warned that it could seriously damage his career. Google’s AI generated a detailed narrative accusing Hope of professional misconduct, despite […]
Google is rolling out a new Performance Max beta that lets advertisers pull video assets directly from Merchant Center — a small tweak with big implications for retail and e-commerce. How it works. Google Ads will now: Auto-surface product-associated videos from Merchant Center during PMax setup Shorten creative workflows for retailers and e-commerce teams Improve […]
When a TV commercial makes people feel something, it doesn’t just win in the moment – it sparks curiosity, drives searches, and fuels conversions. That’s why the “Breaking TV Ads Report,” jointly launched by Kinetiq and DAIVID, deserves a spot on every search marketer’s radar. The monthly report ranks the top-performing new TV ads in […]
Every Black Friday reveals how consumers search, compare, and decide. This year added something new: a real-world test of how AI models interpret commerce under true demand. So we ran a structured test across major LLMs and analyzed 10,000 responses. The goal was simple: to see how these systems form their internal view of the […]
How people use Microsoft Copilot depends on whether they’re at a desk or on their phone. That is the core theme in the company’s analysis of 37.5 million Copilot conversations sampled between January and September. The research examines consumer Copilot usage patterns across device types and time of day. The authors say they used machine-based […]