Google Ads Release Notes

December AI updates roundup

Here’s a recap of our biggest AI updates from December, including the launch of Gemini 3 Flash, the release of new AI verification tools in the Gemini app and the arrival of Gemini’s powerful translation capabilities in Google Translate.

For more than 20 years, we’ve invested in machine learning and AI research, tools and infrastructure to build products that make everyday life better for more people. Teams across Google are working on ways to unlock AI’s benefits in fields as wide-ranging as healthcare, crisis response and education. To keep you posted on our progress, we're doing a regular roundup of Google's most recent AI news.

Here’s a look back at some of our AI announcements from December.

December is usually a time for reflection, and looking ahead. That’s why this month we’ve been focused on taking frontier intelligence out of the lab and putting it into your hands in ways that actually matter for your day-to-day. Whether it’s the lightning speed of Gemini 3 Flash helping you tackle tasks in seconds, the new video verification tools in the Gemini app or the simple relief of having GenTabs tame your open tabs, these updates share a single goal: making technology adapt to you, not the other way around. And as we push these boundaries, we’re staying grounded in responsibility — launching new tools to help you verify AI content so you can explore this new frontier with confidence.

We released Gemini 3 Flash, featuring frontier intelligence built for speed. Gemini 3 Flash brings frontier intelligence to virtually every corner of the Google ecosystem, combining the speed of our most advanced models with improved reasoning capabilities to help with everyday tasks, all while keeping costs significantly lower. It's rolling out as the default model in the Gemini app and AI Mode in Search so people everywhere can now experience the incredible reasoning of our frontier model, right in our consumer products. And we’ve scaled this rollout to a global community, including developers building in the API, Antigravity, our new agentic development platform, and enterprise customers on Vertex AI.

We added new AI verification tools for videos in the Gemini app. We’re bringing video verification capabilities directly to the Gemini app. People can now upload videos — up to 100 MB or 90 seconds — and simply ask if the content was generated or edited using Google AI. Gemini uses imperceptible SynthID watermarks to analyze both audio and visual tracks, pinpointing exactly which segments contain AI-generated elements.

We announced a new experiment to improve browsing and manage complex online tasks. We’ve all felt the friction of juggling dozens of tabs to research a topic or plan a trip. Enter Disco, a new browsing experience from Google Labs designed to tame that complexity. Disco features GenTabs, an experiment that proactively synthesizes your open tabs and chat history to build custom, interactive web applications — transforming a scattered browser session into a streamlined tool for getting things done.

We upgraded Gemini audio models for powerful voice interactions. The updated Gemini 2.5 Flash Native Audio is built to handle complex workflows and natural dialogue — meaning smoother conversations, higher accuracy and better responsiveness to instructions. It’s available now in AI Studio, Vertex AI, Gemini Live and, for the first time, Search Live. Plus, a new live speech translation beta in the Google Translate app brings live translation in 70+ languages directly to your headphones, preserving original intonation and pacing to unlock truly global communication.

We released a new Gemini Deep Research agent. We brought a more powerful Gemini Deep Research to developers through the Interactions API. Developers can now embed advanced research capabilities — like navigating complex topics and synthesizing findings — directly into their own applications using a Gemini API key from Google AI Studio. We’ve also open-sourced our new DeepSearchQA benchmark, offering a transparent way to test just how comprehensive and effective research agents can be on web tasks. Plus, we shared how developers are already building mobile-first solutions to address real-world problems, from AI assistants for the visually impaired to tools fostering autonomy for people with cognitive disabilities.

We released a new way for shoppers in the U.S. to use our virtual try-on tool. U.S. shoppers now have a more personalized way to find their next favorite outfit with our updated virtual try-on tool. Instead of needing a full-body photo, you can now upload a simple selfie and Nano Banana will generate a realistic, full-body digital version of you. Once you’ve selected your preferred studio-like image and clothing size, you can instantly see how you’d look in billions of products from our Shopping Graph.

We expanded Gemini 3 Pro and Nano Banana Pro in Search. We brought our most intelligent model, Gemini 3, to AI Mode in Google Search in nearly 120 countries and territories in English. Google AI Pro and Ultra subscribers can visualize complex topics with Gemini 3 Pro by tapping “Thinking with 3 Pro” in the model drop-down in AI Mode. We also brought our generative imagery model, Nano Banana Pro, to AI Mode in more countries in English, starting with Google AI Pro and Ultra subscribers. For those in the U.S., we also expanded access to these Pro models (no subscription required), with higher usage limits for Google AI Pro and Ultra subscribers.

We released the top YouTube trends of 2025 and first-ever personal Recap. YouTube celebrated its 20th birthday by looking back at 2025. MrBeast was the top creator for the sixth year running, while Rosé and Bruno Mars’ track "APT." became the fastest KPop video to hit one billion views. To mark the occasion, YouTube is launching its first-ever Recap so you can see a personalized summary of your year.

We added new ways for you to personalize, create and share your Google Photos Recap. Google Photos Recap has returned to help you celebrate your favorite moments from 2025, now with more features to make the experience truly yours. We’ve added new controls that let you hide specific people or photos, ensuring your trip down memory lane is exactly how you want it. Plus, you can now get creative with exclusive templates in CapCut and easily share your finished masterpiece directly to WhatsApp or your favorite social feeds.

We released Year in Search 2025. 2025 delivered history-making headlines — from the first American Pope to the global obsession with "KPop Demon Hunters" — but the quietest revolution happened right at our fingertips. Thanks to AI, this was the year we saw a massive shift toward natural, conversational questions with a surge in queries like “How do I…” and “What’s the deal with…” as AI helped technology finally catch up to the way we think.

Demand Gen enhancements for 2026 campaigns

Demand Gen can help you reach new audiences while they're streaming, scrolling or shopping. On average, 68% of Demand Gen conversions came from users who did not see the brand's ads on Google Search in the 30 days prior to converting.

We’ve made enhancements to Demand Gen this year, and today we’re sharing the top takeaways for your 2026 campaigns:

• Make the most of AI-powered ads personalization by using optimized targeting or new customer acquisition goals to engage new or high valued customers.
• Maximize campaign reach and effectiveness across Demand Gen inventory by using a variety of creative assets, including auto-generated videos.
• Drive sales across your business w/ tools like local offers for store sales, checkout links for web sales, and Web to App connect for in-app purchases.
• Choose where your ads appear with channel controls to tailor your campaigns across YouTube, the Google Display Network, Discover and Gmail.
• Measure for growth using the platform comparable conversion columns, empowering you to make better cross-platform comparisons.

To learn about Demand Gen updates, visit Accelerate with Google.

YouTube Shorts can help you get more from your short-form video strategy this holiday season. According to Kantar, on average, YouTube Creator Ads on Shorts increase purchase intent by 8.8%, driving 2.9x more consumer intent to spend versus competition.

Shorts advertising enhancements

We’ve continued to improve and expand the advertising experience on YouTube Shorts to provide authentic, engaging ways to reach new customers, including:

• Introducing comments on eligible Shorts ads to give your brand more ways to interact with audiences and match the experience of organic Shorts.
• Enabling Shorts Creators to link to your brand’s website for branded content, encouraging their viewers to explore further.
• Launching Shorts ads for mobile web to extend our support for short-form video ads as consumers watch and engage across more devices and surfaces — TV, web, desktop and mobile app.

Get started with Shorts today and explore our creative tips to elevate your end-of-year campaigns.

Data Manager API

Marketers who have deeply integrated AI tools report 60% greater revenue growth than their peers. To make it simpler for marketers to connect first-party data with Google’s advertising tools, we’re introducing the Data Manager API. The new tool helps developers, agencies and advertisers build even more custom and automated connections with Google Ads.

Instead of managing multiple APIs across Google platforms, the Data Manager API creates one centralized, secure connection so advertisers can easily get the most out of Google AI for their campaigns. Marketers can upload new audience lists and send offline conversion events to improve measurement and bidding performance. This new tool builds on our codeless Data Manager solution, which has already helped tens of thousands of advertisers connect and use their first-party data.

To help more marketers connect with the Data Manager API, we have partnered with AdSwerve, Customerlabs, Data Hash, Fifty Five, Hightouch, Jellyfish, Lytics, Tealium, Treasure Data, Zapier and more. The Data Manager API is available today for Google Ads, Google Analytics and Display & Video 360, with more integrations coming soon.

"The Data Manager API has been a game-changer for us. The single integration has drastically simplified our architecture and slashed our engineering overhead. More importantly, it allows us to connect customer data to Google Ads in near real-time, empowering our clients to be more agile and effective in their marketing efforts. This is a true force multiplier for our platform."

"80% reduction in engineering effort"

Envisioning how an outfit will look on you while shopping online can be tough, especially during the busy festive season. Now shoppers in the UK and India can virtually try billions of apparel listings on themselves, just by uploading a photo.

The feature makes online shopping more personal by letting you try on tops, bottoms, dresses, jackets and even shoes virtually all by uploading a photo of yourself. The feature is powered by our custom AI model for fashion, which understands both the human body and nuances of clothing, like how different materials fold, stretch and drape on different body shapes. So you can see how a piece of clothing would actually look on you from a single photo of yourself.

To get started, just look for the try it on icon on apparel product listings across Google. You can experiment with new styles, share them with friends, bringing the fitting room experience right to your screen.

Agentic calling feature (U.S.)

We recently released a new agentic calling feature in the U.S. where you can ask Google to call local businesses for you to gather information about what’s available near you, if there are any discounts and more. Here’s how to use it:

• On Google Search, search for items like toys, health and beauty products or electronics and add “near me” or “nearby” to your search. This will indicate you want to know about buying something at a local retailer.
• When you scroll down, you’ll see an option to “Let Google call.” Select the “Get started” button.
• You’ll see a short list of questions tailored to the product that will help Google understand what you’re looking for.
• Indicate whether you want to get a summary via text, email or both. Once you do, Google will call relevant businesses for you.
• Once the calls are complete, you’ll receive your summary.

Demand Gen updates

Demand Gen continues to drive measurable business impact for brands across YouTube and Google’s most visual surfaces, and it’s getting better all the time. Across more than a hundred launches in the first half of 2025, Demand Gen advertisers saw on average over 20% increase in conversions or conversion value.

More Demand Gen features are launching just in time for the holidays:

• AI Image and Video Enhancements automatically create and optimize additional versions of your ads to help your campaigns scale effectively.
• The availability of Pathmatics-provided images and videos in Google Ads will soon enable advertisers to easily lift and shift top-performing creative assets from other platforms into Demand Gen.
• Asset Uplift A/B Experiments make it easier to run creative tests so you can leverage the best performing assets.
• New suitability controls and excluded content themes are now available for the Discover feed, offering you more brand controls for Demand Gen campaigns.

To learn about other recent product enhancements, visit Accelerate with Google.

Advertiser account suspensions improvements

We’ve significantly improved the accuracy of advertiser account suspensions.

Every day, Google Ads harnesses the power of Gemini to block bad actors and protect people online. But sometimes, legitimate advertisers also get suspended, either because we didn’t get it right or because they unintentionally violated a policy. That can disrupt an advertiser’s business and leave them feeling frustrated.

Over the past several months, we made improvements in this area based on customer feedback. We made our policies clearer, deployed AI in new ways to enhance the precision of our detection systems, and rolled out more effective review and appeal processes. These upgrades have already yielded results:

• We’ve reduced incorrect account suspensions by over 80%.
• Advertiser suspension appeals are now addressed 70% faster.
• 99% of advertiser appeals are resolved within 24 hours.

For more on these improvements, check out this video from our Ads Liaison, Ginny Marvin:

Ads Advisor and Analytics Advisor are coming to English-language accounts this December.

The digital ad world is more complex than ever, and the pressure to deliver results is immense. We’re announcing two agents using the latest Gemini models — Ads Advisor and Analytics Advisor — to help advertisers unlock key insights and drive improved campaign performance. These tools are rolling out to all English-language accounts across Google Ads and Google Analytics, and will be available globally in early December.

Ads Advisor: your partner for AI optimization and action

Ads Advisor is your AI partner that helps you proactively manage campaigns directly within Google Ads. It helps you understand your business context and make your job easier by learning directly from your interactions to drive campaign results. Here’s how:

• (1) Maximize performance with minimal effort

  When running a Performance Max campaign, Ads Advisor can offer personalized recommendations to meet your goals. Simply ask a question like, "How can I optimize my campaign for an upcoming seasonal event?", and it will suggest relevant actions such as adding sitelink extensions. With your review and approval, it can then apply these changes directly to your account, turning suggestions into applied improvements in just minutes.

  Ads Advisor serves as our primary guide, offering specific insights and acting as a trusted consultant. It helps us identify and address large-scale issues effectively.

  D2C Growth Lead at Tulua Foods

• (2) Create new campaigns, assets and keywords

  Ads Advisor helps you meet the demand for fresh, high-performing creative by acting as a powerful brainstorming and generation tool. You can ask it to do things like:

  • Generate new relevant keywords and assets for your Search and Performance Max campaigns based on your website context, current keywords and existing assets.
  • Brainstorm campaign ideas or suggest headlines and descriptions for your seasonal or “always on” promotions, helping you create higher-value creative assets.

  Whatever advice was given to me, it wouldn’t lead me astray, when I ask for headline suggestions for a sale, [Ads Advisor] breaks it down for me with specific reasons why they're suggesting headlines because it has enough experience to guide me properly. My decisions are based on trust.

  COO of Raeven Market

• (3) Take advantage of personalized performance analysis

  One of the best parts about Ads Advisor is that it lives right in your Google Ads account, so it learns from your past interactions and actions to become more tailored to you over time. It supercharges your marketing by offering real-time, personalized analysis and reporting capabilities, grounded in your data and your business goals. You can ask for summaries like “How is my campaign doing?” or diagnose performance with questions like, “My main holiday campaign just dropped. Can Ads Advisor tell me why?” It will diagnose the change by identifying possible issues and suggesting next steps to fix them.

• (4) Fix policy issues and troubleshoot disapprovals

  An ad disapproval can stop a campaign in its tracks. To help, Ads Advisor acts as your Policy and Performance Diagnostics expert. You can ask direct questions like, "Why are my ads disapproved?" The tool can help you identify the root cause, recommend a potential fix, and in some cases, even take action to fix policy issues — such as editing an ad URL — for you to approve.

Analytics Advisor: your partner to unlock insights and answers

Analytics Advisor helps offer critical insights, guiding you to better measurement and media performance. The in-product conversational AI experience in Google Analytics (GA) is designed to help you make better, faster decisions by acting as your data-driven personal analyst. In December, it will be available for both GA Standard and Google Analytics 360 properties, in all English language accounts.

Here’s what you can expect:

• (1) Uncover performance insights and get fast answers

  Analytics Advisor solves the challenge of getting a holistic view of your data by providing immediate, easy-to-understand performance insights and visualizations that accelerate analysis. You can ask a broad question, like "How is my site doing?", and it infers relevant reports to give you a tailored, comprehensive pulse check on your business health. You can also make a specific query, like "What have my active users been doing over the last 30 days?", to instantly generate insights on key metrics and events. It even retrieves specific details, such as your Measurement ID.

  The main advantage of Analytics Advisor is the speed with which it allows reviewing data and confirming known observations. The tool clearly shows which segments and metrics have been checked, making it easy to quickly identify where traffic or conversions have dropped… This is a huge time saver in routine GA4 work and would otherwise take many hours manually.”

  Senior SEM Expert, DevaGroup

• (2) Investigate performance changes with "Why" questions

  Analytics Advisor’s conversational experience allows you to investigate performance without manually sifting through reports. When you ask a direct question like: “Why did my active users spike on September 25th?”, Analytics Advisor performs a key driver analysis, identifying and attributing the reasons for spikes or drops to pinpoint the root cause. Crucially, it prioritizes drivers that are most relevant to achieving your business outcomes. Its conversational flow and follow-up questions guide you deeper into your data, accelerating your path from analysis to action.

• (3) Move from insight to action

  Analytics Advisor doesn't stop at insights: it guides you toward an optimized approach by delivering growth recommendations with specific, step-by-step instructions. You can follow your key driver analysis with an ask for tangible recommendations on your strategy, like this: “Based on that spike, what is the best opportunity to convert or re-engage the most valuable users from that September 25th traffic?” It then suggests growth opportunities by prioritizing the highest-value actions that align with your business goals.

  Analytics Advisor has made Google Analytics even more actionable. By combining our data with AI-generated insights, we can link directly to our advertising and content strategies. Within minutes, we’ve optimized ad targeting in Google Ads and prioritized new landing pages. It’s fast, intuitive, and turns complex analytics into clear actions.

  Founder, Loves Data

Ads Advisor and Analytics Advisor: your always-on advantage

During the holiday season and beyond, speed and precision are key for campaign success. Ads Advisor and Analytics Advisor can help get you there.

These tools will be available for you to try in early December: log into your Google Ads and Google Analytics accounts to explore one or either of these experiences yourself. And stay tuned, we’ll be continuously launching new features into 2026 to drive better performance and efficiency towards your business outcomes. For more information, check out the Help Center, here and here.

In the dynamic world of marketing, knowing the incremental impact of your efforts is essential. While many metrics give you a glimpse into your impact, the real power lies in understanding incrementality—knowing exactly what happens because of your marketing, and what would not have happened otherwise. This year we have rolled out major updates to our incrementality experiments to make it easier for all advertisers to measure the true, causal impact of your ads.

You’ve told us that proving the real-world value of your marketing is your top priority. 80% of US senior marketing analytics professionals reported that implementing insights from incremental experiments have a high impact on revenue growth.1 That is why we have made significant updates to make these experiments more accessible, helping you transform your budgets with ROI clarity into a precise engine for growth.

Making incrementality accessible and impactful

We're committed to making incrementality easier to implement, more robust, and deeply integrated into your overall measurement strategy. This year we rolled out a few major advancements to the scale, accuracy, and actionability of advertisers run incrementality experiments. We're improving the access for advanced incrementality testing, ensuring that marketers of all sizes can confidently measure their impact:

• Breaking down barriers with lower spend thresholds: Historically, incrementality experiments could be a significant investment. We’re changing that by lowering the minimum spend required to run these powerful tests. What once might have cost upwards of $100,000 for a single experiment can now be done for $5,000. This opens the door for many more businesses to embrace incrementality testing, proving the value of every marketing dollar. Furthermore, we have launched updates to your study setting around feasibility and conversion actions that gives you granular control over what you measure.

• More conclusive results with improved methodology: We’re constantly refining the science behind our incrementality experiments. Through advancements in methodology, including sophisticated statistical models, we’re providing more transparent and conclusive results more often—in fact, up to 50% more frequently! This means you’ll get clearer, more reliable insights into your campaigns’ true impact, helping you make decisions with greater certainty.

• Empowering action with speedier reporting: Beyond just delivering powerful results, we’re making those insights more actionable. We’re improving reporting speed and data offerings, allowing for deeper dives and more nuanced analysis. For example, we will be enabling you to choose your custom test size and see your results, externally available in the UI, at your preferred level of statistical confidence. This enables quicker identification of what's working, helping you optimize campaigns and foster data-driven conversations, even when the initial lift might appear subtle. It’s about giving you the insights you need, faster, to continually refine your strategies.

The full picture: Incrementality, MMMs, and Attribution together

Incrementality is a powerful component of a comprehensive measurement toolkit. By thoughtfully combining incrementality experiments, Marketing Mix Models (MMMs), and Attribution, you can achieve a holistic, agile, and durable view of your marketing performance:

• MMMs provide a holistic overview of all media channels, sales, and external factors that impact sales (e.g. seasonality, pricing, economy).

• Incrementality offers the precise, causal data for specific campaigns and channels.

• Attribution maps the customer journey, identifying key touchpoints and assigning credit

This integrated approach allows you to calibrate and refine your MMMs with real-world experimental data, enhancing their accuracy. These new, more accessible incrementality studies can help you calibrate your other models and help you get a more confident view of what's truly driving your campaign results and business growth.

Posted by John Chen, Senior Director, Product Management, Ads Measurement

• 1. Google/BCG, Global Measurement Survey, US, n=567 senior marketing analytics professionals with an annual ad spend of >$500k. Fielded Jan 27-Feb 15, 2025