2026-09-25 Daily Brief

Google Ads has released Demand Gen updates to help you engage and convert audiences on YouTube and Google's visual channels. YouTube video ads with product feeds include Business Agent, a conversational AI, while YouTube Shorts and Gmail image ads provide one-click landing pages. Promoted pins in Google Maps also support Affiliate Location Extensions. According to Google Ads, advertisers who added Gmail to their Demand Gen campaigns saw an average 40% increase in image creative conversions at the same ROI.

Seer Interactive compared the search behavior of ChatGPT-5.6 Luna and GPT-5.5 with the same 346 prompts. ChatGPT-5.6 Luna had a higher usage frequency of web searches, but executed fewer queries. The change in the number of fanout queries compared to GPT-5.5 was not significant.

Google is testing AI Overviews' positioning in hotel search results. In the observed screen, AI Overviews were displayed at the bottom of the hotel knowledge panel rather than at the top of the page. However, as this was based on limited screen observation, the scope of application and whether it will continue has not been confirmed.

As Google Search Advocate John Mueller explains, Search Console treats the entire AI-generated overview as a single block. Because of this, it is difficult to usefully implement AI features that track rankings like traditional search results. Average position may appear different from actual exposure because it combines differences in search location, device, and displayed result type into a single number, and this limitation is further increased in AI Overview.

Google Ads API version 25.2 has been released. This minor release includes competitive benchmark percentile metrics. There are also updates to the ability to create Performance Max drafts in Smart campaigns, asset group URL options, and Search bid adjustments.

Google is introducing an early experimental feature on the Pixel 11 that lets Gemini call local businesses on your behalf. Users can rely on Gemini to make reservations, check product availability, and reschedule reservations. According to Google, users don't even need to initiate the call themselves.

The Gemini 3.8 Live update allows users to view animated AI personas and interact with models. Live Avatar matches mouth movements and shows various facial expressions during conversation. This feature is currently available on Gemini Ent… It is only available in .

Google has updated its video structured data documentation. Support for creator and author attributes in VideoObject structured data has been added to the document. Support for interactionStatistic has also been provided more clearly.

Google Ads has updated the Recommended Investment Strategy tab on the Recommendations page. The new feature is a way to strategically allocate your budget using Holistic and Growth modes. Holistic mode reallocates spend from low-performing campaigns to top-performing campaigns to increase efficiency. Details of Growth mode are only partially included in the original summary provided.

Google Ads is showing recommendations linked to predictions on some advertisers' screens. These recommendations come with changes you can make right on your screen. The screen will indicate that your campaign is being limited by your budget, along with an estimated weekly conversion value.

Google has released its Retrieve-for-Train-Diffusion, or R4T-Diffusion, query fanout framework. This technique distills the high-quality output behavior of a large model into smaller models to generate subqueries that take relevance, variety, and sorting into account. Google suggests a speedup of 12 to 20 times compared to autoregressive methods.

Scope3 changed its name to Apostra. The company transitioned from a carbon footprint calculator for advertisers to an infrastructure layer that supports the buying and selling of ads between agents. Brian O’Kelley reacted to possible criticism of this change in a conversation with ADWEEK.

LLM and its answer engine can reduce the time it takes to research and search to seconds. On the other hand, the explanation is that path metadata such as the amount of evidence obtained in the process of reaching the answer, inconsistencies between sources, and whether the topic is unexplored may also disappear. In this case, the user may reach a conclusion without any means of assessing the level of evidence behind the answer. Wharton's Shiri Melumad and Jin Ho Yun published the results of seven experiments involving 10,462 participants in PNAS Nexus in October 2025.

Web multimodal search reporting is being added to the search results and generative AI feature performance reports in Google Search Console. Search data from Lens, Circle to Search on Android, Google Search Image Upload, and ‘Search this image’ on Chrome can be viewed and exported in the new multimodal search type filter. This feature will be rolled out globally starting today, and you will see metrics in your performance reports for sites that receive traffic from relevant queries.

To celebrate the Chuseok holiday, Naver provides holiday lifestyle information and travel, content, and payment benefits in its major services. Search and Place provide information on airport waiting times, hospitals and pharmacies operating during holidays, and free openings of over 9,000 public parking lots. Klip, Chijijik, and Naver Webtoon also operate holiday content and events.