Google Ads Release Notes

Scenario Planner

Nearly 40% of marketers surveyed say their organizations struggle to connect Marketing Mix Model (MMM) outputs to real-world business decisions, according to a recent Harvard Business Review Analytic Services report. Since introducing Meridian, our open-source MMM, we’ve been focused on addressing this long-standing challenge by making its insights accessible.

Today we're introducing Scenario Planner to help decision makers and data scientists alike bridge the gap between analytics and planning.

Scenario Planner is a user-friendly interface that allows marketers to experiment with different budget scenarios and see real-time ROI estimates — no coding required. It transforms the conversation from a look back at what happened to a collaborative plan for what’s next, regardless of technical expertise.

By connecting marketing teams with the Scenario Planner, we’re making it easier than ever to use measurement insights to inform business decisions. Meridian has always been transparent; now, it’s truly accessible.

Demand Gen improvements

• Demand Gen powers Shoppable CTV, enabling viewers to seamlessly browse and purchase products while watching YouTube ads on the big screen. Demand Gen campaigns that include TV screens drive an average of 7% additional conversions at the same ROI.
• Attributed Branded Searches is now available for Demand Gen, showing the volume of your campaign’s branded searches on Google/YouTube, to help quantify your impact. Reach out to your Google representative to activate.
• You can now turn browsing into booking faster with Travel Feeds in Demand Gen. Simply connect your Hotel Center feed to build dynamic video ads featuring hotel pricing, ratings and availability.

Demand Gen has been integral in helping advertisers like LG Electronics drive performance, achieving a 24% higher conversion rate than its paid social campaigns while reaching high-valued customers at a 91% lower CPA.

To learn more about Demand Gen improvements, visit Accelerate with Google.

Campaign total budgets

Campaign total budgets are now available in Search, Performance Max and Shopping campaigns.

Managing budgets for specific campaign flights — like product launches, sales events or promotional bursts — shouldn't require constant manual adjustments. Campaign total budgets are now available in open beta for Search, Performance Max and Shopping campaigns, allowing you to set the budget you want over a specific period of time from a few days to a few weeks.

Instead of making daily manual tweaks to keep pace, campaign total budgets optimize your spend and aim to fully and effectively utilize your budget by your end date. Whether you’re running a 72-hour test or a month-long activation, you can launch with confidence knowing you won’t overspend or miss out on opportunities. Your campaign will stay on track for your budget goals without the need for daily maintenance.

Case study: Escentual.com

Escentual.com, a UK-based online beauty retailer, noticed their ads weren’t serving as much as they wanted to during promotions and underutilizing their budget. “Our goal was to increase traffic to our website during a promotion. The campaign total budget feature helped us to achieve a 16% increase in traffic without exceeding our budget or underperforming our target ROAS,” said Tom Jenkins, an Insights Manager at Escentual.com.

We’re excited to see this help you hit your goals while giving you time back to focus on strategy.

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.