Google Ads Release Notes

Call ads (call-only ads) are being deprecated

To continue generating valuable phone call leads, you must transition to using call assets within responsive search ads (RSAs).

Call ads are being replaced by responsive search ads with call assets. Responsive search ads (RSAs) use Google AI to ensure your ads match users' needs while also highlighting your brand's unique attributes. By providing multiple headlines and descriptions, RSAs automatically test various combinations to identify those most likely to perform for a given search query and user. This is true for many of your business goals, and calls are no different.

Key Dates

• February 2026: All options to create a new call-only ad will be removed.
• February 2027: All existing call-only ads will stop receiving impressions.

If you haven’t yet, we strongly recommend you proactively replace your call-only ads by responsive search ads with call assets now and continue receiving calls from ads.

Follow the step by step guide on how to transition from call-only ads to call assets within RSAs.

Posted by Sheetal Jain, Product Manager, Google Ads

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How We're Making Web and App Advertising Easier

Web to App Connect for YouTube Ads

Web to App Connect is expanding! You can now drive clicks directly to your app from YouTube Ads, Hotel Ads, and Demand Gen campaigns in addition to Performance Max, Search, and Shopping campaigns. This feature offers a seamless deep linking experience for customers on both iOS and Android devices. On average, advertisers can see a 2x increase in overall conversion rates when implementing Web to App Connect for YouTube1, demonstrating its potential to improve your app engagement and profitability.

Unified Workflows and Reporting in Google Ads

To simplify campaign management, we've integrated web and app insights directly into the Google Ads workflow. This includes:

• In-product nudges: Get helpful, data-driven suggestions when building new campaigns or setting up new conversions to ensure they are being optimized towards in-app events.
• Unified conversions: The new conversion setup page now automatically bundles app events with corresponding web events, giving you a complete view of your conversions.
• Combined overview card: See a side-by-side comparison of your web and app performance all in one place on the Google Ads homepage.

Measure App Installs from Web Campaigns

The new Web to App Acquisition measurement feature helps you understand exactly how your web campaigns, such as Search and Shopping, are driving new app installs and first in-app conversions. For the first time, you can now attribute these insights to your web campaigns, giving a more accurate view of your campaign performance.

What This Means for You:

• By unifying your web and app marketing, you can:
  • Attract your best customers: Guide users to your app, where they are often more engaged and ready to convert.
  • Streamline your campaigns: Efficiently target users across both web and app touchpoints for optimal performance.
  • Get a complete view: See which web campaigns are driving app installs and in-app conversions, giving you a more accurate view of your performance.

Ready to Get Started?
To learn more about these new features and how to set them up, visit the Web to App Connect Help Center page.

Posted by Steven Li, Global Product Lead, Web and App

• Source: Google Internal Data, April 2025

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Reach your audience with new controls

This year we’ve launched a variety of features aimed at giving you more visibility and control in your Performance Max campaigns, including the launch of the highly anticipated channel performance report beta at Google Marketing Live. Your feedback has helped us make these improvements and we’re continuing to build on this momentum today with new launches:

• Reach your audience with new controls.
  • Campaign-level negative keyword lists
  • Increased search theme limits
  • More demographic targeting
• Drive new customer growth with enhanced reporting and diagnostics.
  • Improved new customer acquisition performance and reporting
  • Diagnostics for goal-related issues
• Take action on new creative reporting and insights.
  • Final URL expansion assets reporting
  • New creative recommendations for channel performance

Reach your audience with new controls
First, we're enhancing your ability to define who sees your ads and where they appear. Performance Max is designed to find performing Search traffic for your brand, so negative keywords aren’t always needed. But they can still be an important tool for ensuring your ads are brand suitable. Earlier in the year, we launched campaign-level negative keywords to all Performance Max campaigns, which apply to Search and Shopping inventory. To make this feature even more efficient, we’re adding the ability to apply campaign-level negative keyword lists to your Performance Max campaigns. This makes managing your exclusions across multiple campaigns much easier. For instance, a retailer selling luxury goods can use a single list to exclude terms like “cheap” or “bargain” and apply it to multiple campaigns at once. This ensures brand suitability without having to manually update negative keywords in each campaign. And of course, you can still add unique, campaign-specific negative keywords to individual campaigns.

Use campaign-level negative keyword lists to easily apply negative keywords across multiple Performance Max campaigns

On the other hand, if you want to expand your search results and meet your audience where they’re searching for you, we’ve increased the limit of how many search themes you can add from 25 search themes to 50 per asset group. This lets you grow your reach even more and unlock new, relevant traffic based on the information you provide about your business. And to see how your search terms are performing, you can now access search terms reporting for all Performance Max campaigns and through the API.

Beyond Search, if you want the ability to reach your audience more precisely, device and age targeting controls are now fully available in Performance Max campaigns. Device targeting gives you greater control over which device types their ads reach; for instance, a gaming company can target only compatible devices. And age-based demographic controls let you target the age range most relevant to your products, goals, and regulatory requirements. Finally, we’re launching a new beta for gender-based demographic controls.

Find new customers and bid more effectively with enhanced reporting and diagnostics
We’re making new customer acquisition reporting clearer in Performance Max, Search, and Shopping campaigns. Previously, when segmenting your lifecycle goals reporting by new vs. returning customers, you may have seen conversions labeled as “Unknown”. Now, you won’t see these “Unknown” conversions in reporting because we’ve improved our ability to estimate whether an “Unknown” customer is a new or existing customer. Not only are you getting a clearer understanding of who your new customers are, but this will also help you bid more effectively for them. We’re continuing to improve accuracy, and for more precise results, you can update your conversion tracking tag to include the new customer acquisition parameter.

To help you identify goal-related issues in your Performance Max campaign, we’ve added new diagnostics and recommendations based on the status of your campaign’s goal and conversion setup. These tools will guide you through resolving any identified issues, such as missing or broken tags, goals, and conversion actions that could be impacting the performance of your campaign.

Take action on new creative reporting and insights

We’ve been continuously improving Performance Max’s creative reporting capabilities throughout the year. We previously introduced more creative reporting, including full asset stats which are now available in all Performance Max campaigns. This lets you see conversions, cost, clicks, and more.

You’ve also asked for more control over assets served with final URL expansion, so we’re now adding reporting capabilities that make these assets viewable. This means you can now see all assets created with text customization and final URL expansion and you can also remove them if you no longer want them to run.

Use updated reporting to view assets that were served thanks to final URL expansion. You can also remove these assets as needed.*

Finally, you’ll start seeing recommendations that give you actionable insights to improve your image quality and drive better performance. You’ll get suggestions on the types of images to add and how to edit your existing ones, to perform better on different channels. These recommendations will link you directly to the AI-powered image editor in Google Ads so you can make these changes instantly.

New creative recommendations give you suggestions on how to improve your image quality and creative performance across different channels

From more precise audience reach and clearer new customer acquisition reporting to enhanced creative visibility and AI-powered recommendations, we're committed to helping drive stronger results. Dive in and explore how these updates can help you achieve your goals! And as always, thanks so much for your feedback and please keep it coming! We can’t wait to see how you’re using these tools and we look forward to hearing your feedback so we can continue to improve Performance Max.

Posted by Natalie Wertz, Group Product Manager, Google Ads

*The URLs, headlines, and descriptions in this UI mock are for illustrative purposes and are not meant to represent any existing business.

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YouTube follow-on views optimization in Demand Gen campaigns

Looking to grow the reach of your YouTube channel? With Demand Gen today, you can drive new subscriptions by selecting the YouTube engagements campaign goal. Now, we're introducing a strategy to optimize for follow-on views as part of engagement campaigns. Follow-on views are when people watch more videos from your YouTube channel after seeing your ad. This optimization will seek to connect with viewers most likely to organically continue watching your YouTube channel’s videos.

You can now optimize for YouTube follow-on views within Demand Gen campaigns, offering a simple way to grow engagement with your YouTube channel. To enable optimization for follow-on views, which seeks users who are more likely to watch more of your videos from your channel after an ad, you can visit your Conversions Summary, find Engagements, Edit goal, and find YouTube follow-on views. From there, you can edit the settings to be “Primary action”. If you leave it as “Secondary action”, the campaign will only report the follow-on views without actively optimizing for them. With this update, you can drive deeper engagement with your channel by driving more views from users most likely to interact with your channel. Get started today by first linking your YouTube channel to your Google Ads Account.

Learn more about YouTube follow-on views in Google Ads to boost engagement for your channel.

Posted by Celia Salsi, Director of Product, YouTube Ads Marketing

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The Power Pack

Introducing our next generation of AI-powered campaign solutions, built for this new era of Search and multi-modal experiences. Power Pack is the engine that will drive next-level performance across Search and YouTube, using Performance Max, AI Max for Search campaigns, and Demand Gen. Read on for the latest updates including changes to give you more choice, control, and transparency.

Performance Max

Last year, we launched more than 90 quality improvements in Performance Max campaigns that increased conversions and conversion value by more than 10% for advertisers1. And now, Performance Max offers even more visibility and control.

• Discover channel-level performance

Channel performance reporting helps you understand how your Performance Max campaign is delivering results across Google’s full range of channels and inventory. Better understand how your Performance Max ads serve across channels and key formats to optimize your campaigns. Now available in beta globally.

• See Search Terms in Performance Max

Get the same level of Search reporting granularity in Performance Max campaigns that you get on Search and Shopping campaigns. Coming soon globally.

• Reach new potential customers

Acquire new customers with new campaign controls to exclude users who have recently searched for or interacted with your brand. With one click, easily exclude people who are searching for your brand(s), have clicked on your YouTube content, visited your website, or used your app. Beta is coming later this year.

AI Max for Search campaigns

In one click, Google AI supercharges your ads performance with a suite of targeting and creative enhancements. AI Max for Search campaigns expands your keywords to find untapped, performant queries with broad match and keywordless technology—all with the controls and transparency you need. Continue to steer campaigns with controls that give you the precision you previously used keywords for. And get new actionable insights to help optimize your campaigns. Coming soon globally in beta.

• Unlock conversions from diverse queries with Smart Bidding Exploration

Capture additional valuable conversions within your existing reach with Smart Bidding Exploration. Flexible ROAS targets fuel an advanced algorithm that captures new searches and secures additional conversions for you. Now available globally in beta.

Demand Gen

Demand Gen campaigns create and capture demand across Google’s most visual surfaces, including YouTube, Shorts, Discover, Gmail, and Google Display Network—ideal for social advertisers who want performance from visually-appealing, multi-format ads on Google’s most impactful surfaces. And new improvements are making Demand Gen campaigns even more powerful. From 60+ launches to Demand Gen last year, including many AI-powered improvements, advertisers on average are seeing a 26% year-over-year increase in conversions per dollar spent for goals like purchases and leads2.

• Demand Gen Maps inventory

Reach customers on Maps. Demand Gen advertisers will soon be able to reach users browsing different businesses and locations via Promoted Pins to drive foot traffic to Stores and in store sales.

Future of Search Ads

The new era of Google Search means more opportunities for your business. We’re expanding Ads in AI Overviews, and testing Ads in AI Mode, so your ads can show as the natural next action as users search anything, effortlessly.

• Your Ads in AI Overview

We're expanding Ads in AI Overviews, to continue showing your ads directly in AI-powered responses. With Ads in AI Overviews, you can accelerate the path from discovery to decision, by placing your ads directly in responses that are driving higher user engagement and satisfaction. Soon available in English in select countries, on desktop and mobile.

• Your Ads in AI Mode

We're testing new ads formats integrated and below AI Mode responses. No matter how complex, you can present your ad as a logical and natural next action to consumers exploring any topic. Available in English in the US.

• Three things to do for AI search experiences

In the era of AI, our core SEO guidance still rings true. To succeed with AI-powered experiences, consider doubling down on some of the directions outlined below, ensuring your content, your website, and your structure remain high-quality, accessible and compliant.

Future of Video & Apps

Get your brand in front of your next best customer. Not just the folks who already know and love you, but the ones out there ready to discover you. Check out the new formats, campaigns, and measurement solutions—specifically designed for prospecting.

• Unlock the power of YouTube creators with the creator partnerships hub

Manage your partnerships with YouTube creators directly from creator partnerships, our new central hub for working with creators in Google Ads. Deepen existing connections, find new ones, and integrate authentic creator content into your ad strategies via partnership ads. Available now in over 20 markets.

• Gather intent-based audience insights

Explore your audience’s interests, uncover search trends, and unlock new ways to reach them with Insights Finder. Discover the top and trending creators for your specific topic, category, or audience accompanied by a full slate of engagement metrics and content deep dives to help you activate more effectively with YouTube’s Creator community. Decode what's popular on YouTube and what resonates most with your specific target audiences. Gain critical insights into viewing behavior by device inclusive of CTV. Available now in over 20 markets.

• YouTube’s Masthead is now shoppable

Feature products within YouTube's premium Masthead placement on mobile to drive discovery, website traffic, and conversions. Announce or promote new products and highlight tentpole moments on the most prominent placement on YouTube. This feature is now available globally for mobile.

• Interactive shopping experience on CTV

Shoppable CTV enables viewers to discover and engage with products directly from the big screen, available across Demand Gen and Performance Max campaigns on CTV. Capture viewers' attention and motivate them to take action via QR codes. These experiences will be available globally and are rolling out in a few months.

• Create more meaningful audience connections with Peak Points

Powered by Gemini, this new ad format allows you to seamlessly integrate your ads across YouTube's vast video library with precisely timed ad placements. This format is now available in English in the US, UK, Canada, and Australia.

• New accelerated checkout for Demand Gen

Shorten the path from discovery to decision. Redirect YouTube shoppers directly to your checkout or cart from your ad, making their shopping experience quick and easy. This feature is now available in the US in English.

• New video ads across Google surfaces

Drive discovery with new video ads on surfaces like Search, Image Search, and Google Shopping by adding high-quality video assets to your Performance Max campaigns. These new video ads will be rolling out soon in the US and Canada.

• Effortlessly reformat and extend your videos

Drive performance by generatively extending videos into all aspect ratios. Generative AI extends videos based on the existing scene, automatically resizing the video into any other missing aspect ratio. Available globally.

• Measure app installs and conversions

Report, measure, and attribute app installs and conversions from your web campaigns to get a clear view of how your web campaigns are performing for app user acquisitions. This will soon be available to marketers.

• Web and App integrations in Google Ads

Leverage the power of your app to boost your web campaigns through unified web and app conversion tracking and bidding journeys across key Google Ads workflows, making it even easier to create seamless web and app customer journeys. Now available.

• tROAS bidding for iOS App campaigns

Fueled by the latest improvements to our AI-powered campaign models, tROAS bidding is now available globally on iOS to help you more profitably acquire users who are likely to complete a selected in-app action and achieve a target return on ad spend.

• On-device conversion measurement using event data

We’re expanding this solution to now use app event data to improve iOS App campaign optimization and reporting. It works without any user-identifying information ever leaving a user’s device or being disclosed to external parties, including Google. This will be rolling out in beta in the coming weeks.

Future of Creative

AI is already supercharging nearly every part of the creative process and we’ve built new tools to put this power in your hands.

• All your creative tools in one destination

Create high-quality assets & variations with Google AI in one Google Ads destination with Asset Studio. Craft, Generate, Import, and Preview assets to streamline your entire creative journey. You’ll also be able to generate images featuring your products, allowing you to show them in action and create rich, lifestyle imagery. This new product-centric image generation capability is already rolling out in Ads and Merchant Center, and will also be available in Asset Studio when it launches. Asset Studio will soon be available globally.

• Find exactly what you’re looking for by shopping in AI Mode

Our new AI Mode shopping experience brings together Gemini capabilities with our Shopping Graph to help you browse for inspiration, think through considerations and narrow down products. Coming soon to AI Mode in the U.S.

• Try clothes on yourself virtually

Now you can virtually try billions of apparel listings on yourself, just by uploading a photo. Rolling out in Search Labs in the U.S.

• Shape your brand on Google Search

Your brand profile on Google Search can now also be managed via Merchant Center. Highlight your unique story, visuals & offerings to connect with shoppers. Coming soon globally.

• Video intelligence, all in one place

Our new content hub in Merchant Center synthesizes video from your site and social channels, delivering AI-powered video recommendations to build your product and brand campaigns. This will soon be available in the US, Canada, Australia, and the UK.

• Predictive actionable insights

Merchant Center identifies growth opportunities and generates content for you. Review content suggestions, discount recommendations, A/B test, and let AI do the work. This will soon be available in the US.

• New AI tools in Product Studio

Generated for you finds content opportunities, creates brand images and videos, and lets you save or publish assets across Google in one click. Available now for eligible merchants in the US, UK, Canada, India, and Japan.

Future of Measurement & Data

We have built Modern Measurement solutions that’ll help you maximize every dollar you’re spending on marketing.

• New customer acquisition goal

Optimize your campaigns to acquire new customers while continuing to reach and engage your existing customer base, within Demand Gen campaigns. Coming soon globally.

• Easier, faster incrementality testing

Measure the total incremental impact of Google media across all campaigns, now with reduced spend thresholds, better customization options, and results available straight in the Google Ads UI, coming soon globally.

• Understand how your ads drive brand interest and consideration

Attributed branded searches quantify how many users search for your brand after seeing your video ads, measuring the impact of your advertising on organic Search and YouTube activity. This feature will shortly be available globally.

• Maximize sales with Commerce Media suite

Drive incremental sales and reach new customers with Google’s Commerce Media solutions. Powered by retailer’s first-party data and Google AI these solutions help you convert commercial intent to action, at any point in the customer journey. They are available across Google Ads, Display & Video 360, and Search Ads 360 in limited beta.

• Better optimize spend across channels with Meridian Scenario Planner

Better optimize spend across channels with Meridian Scenario Planner. Meridian, our next-gen MMM, is open-source and built for your modern consumer journey. Meridian delivers clearer performance insights across online, offline, TV—so you can optimize your marketing spend. Turn Meridian insights into action by using the new interactive Meridian scenario planner to model future investments and better allocate spend.

• Access granular Google MMM data faster

Soon, the new MMM Data Platform API will deliver granular Google data, faster. You will be able to get Google data more frequently and simply, at the speed and cadence you need.

• Enhanced multi-touch attribution in Google Analytics

With enhanced multi-touch attribution, inclusive of impressions, you'll be able to see the full picture of your marketing impact across Google and other platforms, enabling new metrics like View-Through Conversions (VTCs). Coming soon globally.

• Manage cross-channel campaign budgets in Google Analytics

Easily plan and optimize cross-channel campaign budgets directly in Google Analytics. Analyze performance, adjust spend, and invest incremental media dollars to answer questions such as “am I on track to drive my target revenue?” right where you measure. This will soon be available, globally.

• Boost your ROI with Data Manager

Data Manager can help you improve your campaign performance, using insights from your connected first-party data sources such as your site, apps, physical stores, and CRMs. You can understand your data strength and learn how to improve it. Data sources now include: BigQuery, HubSpot, Oracle, Salesforce, Shopify, Google Sheets, Zoho, and more. Now available globally in Google Ads, and coming to Search Ads 360 soon and Campaign Manager 360 this year. Additionally, the Data Manager API for data partners, agencies and advertisers now allows you to connect first-party data across Google advertising products. This API will soon be available globally.

• Enhance conversion measurement and ad performance

Drive stronger performance and improve the resilience of your measurement signals with the new Google tag gateway for advertisers. By serving your tags through your own domain, you can get more accurate measurement and deeper customer insights, leading to better ROI. Advertisers who configured Google tag gateway for advertisers, saw 11% more signals, with privacy by default using confidential computing technology by default3. This feature is now globally available.

• Agentic capabilities

Agentic solutions coming to our platforms, providing helpful assistance to businesses everywhere4.

• Your Google Ads expert

Manage and optimize campaigns confidently with expert guidance. Your Google Ads expert accelerates campaign creation and expedites performance improvements, applying tailored optimization recommendations informed by your unique campaign & business data. It also generates comprehensive performance reports, draws unique performance insights, and proactively identifies and fixes problems before they impact your ads. Available in beta.

• Your Google Analytics expert

Unlock expert analysis and strategic recommendations for your most complex questions, delivered with precise data and clear visualizations to make decisions with confidence. Available in limited beta.

• Your cross-website marketing advisor

Get instant business advice and task completion, wherever you are online with Marketing Advisor. This agent built in Chrome understands your browser context and guides you step-by-step to solve problems and achieve business goals across websites—all with seamless voice interaction. Coming soon.

• Meet the Google Ads AI Essentials 2.0

Be ready for tomorrow, today with the AI Essentials 2.0. This valuable assessment helps you prioritize how to best use Google AI in your advertising. We've organized it into four key categories: AI Data Strength, AI Content Strength, AI Performance Strength, and Agentic capabilities. Within each, you'll find everything you need to maximize your growth with Google AI. Plus, the AI Essentials are recommended right inside Google Ads, ready for you in just a few clicks.

Posted by The Google Marketing Live Team

1. Source: Google Internal Data, 2024.
2. Source: Google Internal Data, Global, Q4 2023 vs. Q4 2024.
3. Source: Google Data, Global, Performance, Apr 09, 2025 - Apr 16, 2025 7d trailing median [Uplift is based on Google tag script loads comparing tags not operating Google tag gateway versus tags operating in Google tag gateway].
4. These products use AI and may display inaccurate info. Your chat activity may be used to improve the product and your use is subject to Google’s Terms, AI Use Policy, and Privacy Policy. Learn more.

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Understanding the impact of your advertising relies on accurate measurement

But the evolving digital landscape makes it challenging to capture the insights you need to effectively measure conversions, optimize your campaign performance, and fuel AI to keep pace with changing consumer behavior. To steer AI to deliver the best performance, you need to build your data strength. This means getting a clear picture of customers as they move across all touchpoints—your website, your app, your physical store—and then seamlessly connecting this data to your ads platforms using Google Ads Data Manager to get more value from your first-party data. That’s why starting next week, we'll begin rolling out Google tag gateway for advertisers to help you navigate these changes and strengthen your first-party data strategy. This new feature enables you to run your Google tags, be it client-side or server-side through your own website infrastructure, such as a content delivery network (CDN), load balancer, or web server. Though website tags have been a staple for years, they remain fundamental building blocks for capturing the first-party data essential to fueling AI and accurate measurement. By serving tags from your own domain, you can significantly improve the accuracy and resilience of your measurement signals. This is a vital action every marketer should take to improve performance. Advertisers who configured Google tag gateway for advertisers saw an 11% uplift in signals.

Unlock stronger performance and privacy with more accurate measurement

Google tag gateway for advertisers is designed to help you improve the performance of your Google Ads campaigns and make the most of our latest AI-powered tools:

• Improve conversion measurement accuracy: Google tag gateway for advertisers enhances conversion data accuracy by routing it through your website’s own server, improving bidding, campaign optimization, and ROAS.
• Gain deeper campaign insights: With richer insights into campaign performance and attribution, you get a better understanding of your customer journey, and can identify which strategies drive the strongest ROI.
• Experience added privacy by default: Tags set up with Google tag gateway for advertisers will soon get confidential computing by default, giving customers added security and transparency on how data is collected and processed.

A walkthrough of the simplified set up of Google tag gateway for advertisers in Google Ads, by routing your measurement through your website's CDN

Upgrade your tag to get more control over your data—no re-tagging required

Your data is already protected by robust security measures, but we are always looking to incorporate the latest technological advancements as they come available. As mentioned above, Google tag gateway for advertisers offers additional protections and control over how your first-party data is collected and processed before it’s encrypted and sent to Google for measurement and analytics. In the coming months, this will include the added security and transparency guarantees of confidential computing, enhancing user privacy without any extra effort on your part. It's a privacy enhancing technology we announced last year which keeps your customer data with you—and only you.

Implementation is also simplified, as upgrading your tag requires no changes to the existing tag code on your pages. To make setup even easier, we've partnered with Cloudflare for a one-click integration, with additional CDN partners like Fastly, Google Cloud CDN, and more planned.

Learn more at Google Marketing Live

We’re excited to connect with you and showcase our latest innovations at Google Marketing Live. This year’s event will be broadcast live from Mountain View, California, on Wednesday, May 21 at 9 a.m. PT. Register now for the virtual livestream.

Posted by Kamal Janardhan, Senior Director, Product Management, Ads Measurement.

1. Google Data, Global, Performance, Apr 09, 2025 - Apr 16, 2025 7d trailing median [Uplift is based on Google tag script loads comparing tags not operating Google tag gateway for advertisers versus tags operating in Google tag gateway for advertisers].

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Feature overview

This feature provides a seamless checkout experience that meets your customers where they are. Users can easily transition from finding a product they like to adding the product to their cart or checkout on the merchant website. This streamlined purchase process is now available on Demand Gen campaigns that serve on YouTube In-stream inventory, in addition to Performance Max campaigns and organic shopping results.

How to participate

Participation is easy. Merchants can enable this experience by providing a URL template of the checkout or cart page at the account level in Google Merchant Center. Another option is to enable checkout at the individual product level by providing the checkout link template attribute in your product feed in Google Merchant Center. This new feature is available to all users who serve ads with product feeds in the United States.

Visuals

Mobile phone showing the experience of clicking on a product and making the purchase on the merchant’s website.

Benefits

On average, advertisers who provide checkout URLs achieve an 11% increase in conversion value at similar CPA in their Demand Gen campaigns.

1

Call to action

Upload checkout links today and shorten the path to purchase. For more information, please check out our implementation guide or the implementation guide for Shopify customers.

Posted by Prithvi Prabhakar, Product Manager, YouTube Shopping Ads and Prithi Pichai, Product Manager, Shopping

1. Google internal data, US, February 2025, Conversion value defined as a minimum of $250 or advertiser chosen value.

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Update to bottom Search ads

Today, we’re sharing more about a recent change we made to deliver more relevant Search ads at the bottom of the search results page. When someone searches on Google, we run different auctions for each ad location where we show Search ads—for example top ads are selected by a different Search ad auction from ads that show in other ad locations. Until now, Search ads from a given advertiser were generally restricted to a single ad location on a given page.

Recently, we started looking deeply at the user experience with ads lower down the page and observed something interesting. Often, users would scroll past the top results to review content lower down the page, but then scroll back up if they found top results more relevant relative to content further below.

To help reduce this friction and improve ad relevance lower down the page, we will now allow relevant Search ads from advertisers who showed amongst top ads to also participate in the bottom ads auction. This means a user scrolling lower down the page might see a highly relevant ad from the same advertiser, but not necessarily the exact same content they saw earlier.

We tested this for several months and found that allowing advertisers who showed amongst top ads to also compete in the bottom auction increased rates of highly relevant ads by about 10%1 and increased bottom ad conversions by about 14%2, improving both the user experience and advertiser value lower down the page.

We know you may have questions about this update and what it means for your campaigns. Here are some top questions we’ve heard from advertisers:

• 1. Is Google Ads changing its policy around double serving for Search Ads?
     No. The unfair advantage policy for Search ads applies to ads that compete with each other to show in a single ad location and we recently updated our language to make this clearer. With this change, we are allowing advertisers who show up in the top ad location to also be eligible for ad locations further down the page. However, within a single ad location (either top or bottom), we will continue to apply and enforce the existing policy.
• 1. How will this change affect the Search ads auction?
     With this change, we will now allow relevant Search ads from advertisers who showed amongst top ads to also participate in the bottom ads auction. There are no changes to the auction that we run for top ads. Advertisers will continue to never bid against themselves with this change either in the top or bottom auction.
• 1. Will the same ad always appear at both the top and bottom of the search results?
     No. We show the most relevant Search ad for each specific placement on the Search results page, whether it's at the top or the bottom. The specific ad content shown to the user may be similar or different from the top to best suit the context of the bottom placement.
• 1. Does this change loosen query matching or ad load constraints?
     No, our query matching systems and controls remain the same, as do our guidelines around the number of top ads we show on the page. This change is solely focused on the bottom of the page.
• 1. How can I understand the impact of this change?
     This change, which will provide more opportunities for relevant Search ads at the bottom of the page, may impact your overall metrics. To understand the impact on your campaigns, we recommend that you segment your metrics by “Top vs. other” if you’re interested in understanding performance for different ad locations. The search terms report will continue to show query-level clicks, whether your ads are clicked on in top or bottom locations.
• 1. How do I best prepare for this change?
     Since this update provides more opportunities for relevant Search ads to be seen, ensure your keywords, ad copy, and landing pages are well-themed with what users are searching for. As more opportunities become available at the bottom of the page, you will likely see higher conversion volume at your current targets. We recommend using bid simulator tools to explore potential performance changes and adjust your bids or targets strategically.

We believe this update will lead to a better experience for both users and advertisers by connecting people with more relevant information, regardless of where they are looking on the Search results page. As always, we will continue to monitor performance and gather feedback.

Posted by Ashwin Mysore, Group Product Manager, Search and Shopping Ad auctions

1. Google internal data, Jan-Mar 2025
2. Google internal data, Jan-Mar 2025

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New customer lifecycle goals and reporting

• Retention goals are now fully available to help you bid more for lapsed customers.

• Customer acquisition cost reporting can be found in a new column in campaign reporting.

• Image controls

  • Landing page images let you automatically source images from your landing pages to improve the variety of images you can use in your ads.
  • Image enhancements help create additional versions of your images.

• Improved Search controls to steer AI

  • We’ve increased the limit on campaign-level negative keywords from 100 to 10,000.

Reengage lapsed customers and analyze the cost of acquiring new ones

We’ve continued to build on our improvements to customer lifecycle goals to help you use Performance Max to maximize customer lifetime value–from acquiring your highest-value new customers to retaining and increasing value from your existing customers. Last year, we introduced a beta for retention goals, and we’re now launching this goal type to all advertisers. Retention goals let you bid more for lapsed customers. You’ll also be able to specify which customers have higher lifetime value, so Performance Max can prioritize bidding on your most valuable lapsed customers.

We’re committed to continually improving new customer acquisition goals as well. In campaign reporting, you can now add a column that lets you see your new customer acquisition cost when using the new customer acquisition goal for both new customer only mode and new customer value mode.

Get more control over your image assets

Asset variety is key to meeting the needs of different advertising inventory and formats, not to mention meeting the diverse needs of your potential customers and what will matter to them.

To help you maximize your asset variety, we’re adding a control for landing page images. When you opt into landing page images, Performance Max will automatically source images from your landing pages when we find opportunities to increase ad performance. You’ll have visibility into these assets and be able to remove them, or opt out of the feature entirely.

We’re also introducing an option to add image enhancements to your campaign. With this, you can choose whether to let Performance Max automatically create additional versions of your existing images with cropping to unlock additional inventory and performance opportunities. We’ll also be adding more image enhancements in the future, such as uncropping or animating your images, so you’ll have even more ways to grow your asset variety.

Image enhancements will automatically crop your images for you, letting you unlock additional inventory and performance opportunities.

Add more campaign-level negative keywords

In January, we announced campaign-level negative keywords with an initial limit of 100 negative keywords per Performance Max campaign. And, we heard your feedback loud and clear that while negative keywords are helpful, the cap of 100 felt too restrictive. That’s why a few weeks ago, we started to roll out an update where we’ve raised the limit to 10,000 negative keywords per campaign and this is now available in all Performance Max campaigns. Keep in mind that you should monitor how negative keywords impact your reach and performance to make sure you’re not missing out on valuable conversion opportunities.

We can’t wait for you to try out these new features and improvements. Keep the feedback coming!

Posted by Tal Akabas, Director of Product Management and Pallavi Naresh, Group Product Manager, Google Ads

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More flexibility with responsive search ads

AI is transforming Google Search, making it more intuitive and responsive to user needs. Evolving search behaviors also require new ways to succeed with Search advertising. Asset flexibility is key in order to build effective and relevant ads that deliver a great user experience.

We're constantly looking for new ways to optimize your ads and drive better performance with the assets you've invested time in creating. That’s why we're exploring new AI-powered changes to Search campaigns and creatives, designed to increase asset flexibility and improve your results by finding the best combination of assets.

Responsive search ads (RSAs) allow you to use the power of Google AI to find the best combination of headlines, descriptions, and other assets to deliver the most relevant ads to your customers while meeting your performance goals.

Last year, we updated responsive search ads by allowing them to show one headline when it’s predicted to improve your performance. As part of this change, an RSA headline became eligible to show at the beginning of your description lines.

We've learned that different combinations of content and messaging resonate differently with various users and queries. To realize our vision of delivering the right message to the right user in the right format, we’re exploring giving our AI systems greater flexibility to optimize the overall combination of headlines, descriptions, and other assets.

Our vision is that your headlines, descriptions, and other creative elements can be intelligently assembled and served in a variety of formats. In some cases, our systems may even consider not showing certain pieces of content—such as description lines—when it leads to better performance, allowing for a truly adaptable and optimized ad experience tailored to each individual search.

Beyond the headline: new ways to use your existing assets

In this example, the additional headlines that didn’t serve as part of the responsive search ad combination—“Free Shipping on Laptops” and “Unbeatable Prices & Family Savings!”—showed in the site link format because they were predicted to improve performance.

Here’s an example of how we’re introducing greater asset flexibility to your Search ads, while maximizing relevance. Starting today, up to two RSA headlines can serve in the space that previously only sitelinks were eligible for when they’re predicted to improve performance. When this occurs, the two links built from your headlines will point to your ad's final URL. We understand that additional links in your ads are important because they can drive traffic to different pages on your site, which is why we’re only allowing a maximum of two headlines to serve as secondary links.

We’ve heard from advertisers that you invest significant time and resources crafting compelling headlines—up to 15 variations, despite our current formats only allowing 3 headlines to be displayed in a single ad. This update aims to maximize the impact of your headlines by giving more of your unused assets the opportunity to connect with potential customers and deliver high-quality messaging that enhances their search experience.

In our testing, we've found that introducing enhanced asset flexibility, like enabling additional headlines to serve in different parts of the ad, drives increased user engagement with text ads on Google.com.1

It’s important to note that we will continue to maintain high relevance of your assets to the keywords in your campaign and ad groups. We will also continue to respect the parts of your ad copy that you want to control by adhering to your pinned assets. If you have assets that are pinned to headline position 1, headline position 2, or description position 1, they'll continue to show in those designated positions when your ads serve. We will optimize the placement of all other assets while ensuring they remain relevant to the user's search query. And you’ll be able to see how your assets are coming together using the combinations report. Use this to check the most common headline, description and asset combinations shown—including if a headline is serving frequently in the sitelink format, for example.

Rolling out globally in all languages

This update is a continuation of our work to make the most of all your assets while delivering the most relevant and meaningful experience possible to users. To optimize your ads and messaging on Google Search, continue to follow our guidance on RSA best practices, as these will remain the same. We’re committed to helping you achieve the best results and are excited to see how these updates help you connect with more customers and achieve your marketing goals.

Posted by Rushil Grover, Group Product Manager, Google Search Ads

1. Google Internal Data January 2025

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