Microsoft Advertising has started rolling out AI Max for Search campaigns globally, expanding availability after several months of testing.

The rollout follows Microsoft’s April 21 announcement of AI Max and an open pilot that began in May. The feature suite is now becoming generally available across Microsoft Advertising accounts.

Additionally, they’ve provided clearer guidance around how existing campaigns and Google Ads imports will be handled.

The broader rollout builds on the same three AI Max features Microsoft introduced earlier this spring.

AI Max Moves Beyond the Open Pilot

AI Max adds three automation features to existing Search campaigns:

• search term matching
• text customization
• final URL expansion

Search term matching can reach queries beyond an advertiser’s keyword list using signals from keywords, ads, landing pages, and user intent. Microsoft says this can help advertisers appear for more complex conversational searches, including those within Bing and Copilot.

Text customization uses existing assets and website content to generate additional ad messaging. Final URL expansion can select a different landing page when Microsoft determines it better matches the user’s intent.

Microsoft is encouraging advertisers to test the three features together, although each can be tested individually through optimization experiments.

One of the more noteworthy updates is that Microsoft is retaining ad group-level settings, giving advertisers more control over where AI Max features are applied.

Brand Controls and Reporting Available From Day One

Microsoft is emphasizing advertiser controls as AI Max moves beyond the pilot.

Brand inclusions and exclusions are available with the rollout, along with term exclusions for text asset generation. Advertisers can also use URL rules to limit where final URL expansion can send traffic.

Microsoft Ads Liaison Navah Hopkins said advertiser feedback played a role in making those controls available at launch:

We heard your feedback it’s a really critical tool to include.

Some advertisers may also notice AI Max settings already enabled in existing campaigns.

Microsoft is moving Predictive matching and autogenerated text assets under AI Max. Campaigns already using either feature will have the corresponding AI Max setting enabled automatically.

The remaining AI Max features will not be activated unless an advertiser opts into them.

What Happens With Google Ads Imports?

AI Max settings can also carry over when advertisers import campaigns from Google Ads.

If a Google Search campaign has supported AI Max features enabled, those settings will be enabled in the corresponding Microsoft Advertising campaign after import.

However, there is an exception for campaigns that originated as Dynamic Search Ads (DSA).

If an imported Google AI Max campaign was previously upgraded from DSA, Microsoft will convert it back into a DSA campaign while it continues building additional AI Max functionality.

The main reason behind this shift is that Microsoft has not announced an official sunset date for Dynamic Search Ads, where Google already has a firm date.

What Comes Next For AI Max

AI Max is moving into general availability at a time when both Microsoft and Google are asking advertisers to give Search campaigns more room to find queries beyond traditional keyword targeting.

Microsoft is starting its broader rollout with many of those controls already in place, rather than adding them later in response to advertiser concerns.

Now that AI Max is reaching accounts globally, the next test is whether advertisers see enough incremental value from that additional automation to keep it enabled.

https://www.searchenginejournal.com/microsoft-advertising-rolls-out-ai-max-globally/586459/

Microsoft Advertising introduced its first monthly product newsletter on LinkedIn this week. It brings together several features announced over the past few months while introducing new capabilities across AI reporting, Performance Max testing, and creative review.

Rather than focusing on entirely new products, the August update expands existing tools with additional reporting, experimentation, and workflow improvements.

Together, the updates provide a clearer picture of how Microsoft expects advertisers to measure AI visibility, evaluate Performance Max, and review creative before campaigns launch.

Read on to understand what this means for your Microsoft Ads campaigns.

Microsoft Clarity AI Visibility Now Includes Topic Insights

Microsoft is expanding its AI Visibility reporting in Clarity with Topic Insights.

The new reports group AI citations by subject, allowing advertisers to see which topics AI systems associate with their brand, how frequently those topics appear, and where they may have gaps in coverage.

The feature builds on the AI Visibility reporting Microsoft introduced earlier this year by adding another layer of analysis. Instead of reviewing individual citations, advertisers can identify the topics driving those citations and how AI systems understand their content.

The newsletter also defines several AI reporting metrics that advertisers will see inside the new reports, including:

• Grounding queries: The retrieval searches AI systems generate before producing an answer.
• Citation share: Measures how frequently a domain appears as a cited source.
• Share of authority: Shows how often one domain is cited compared with competing sources.

Microsoft also outlined how advertisers can apply those insights to paid search.

They recommend comparing grounding queries with existing search terms, identifying opportunities for new keywords and negative keywords, and adjusting landing pages or ad creative based on competitive AI citation data.

Those recommendations suggest Microsoft views AI visibility reporting as useful beyond organic search by encouraging advertisers to use those insights when optimizing paid campaigns.

While Topic Insights focuses on understanding AI visibility, Microsoft’s next set of updates centers on measuring the impact of AI-powered campaign automation.

Expanding Performance Max Experimentation

Performance Max has become one of Microsoft’s primary AI-powered campaign types, but measuring its incremental impact remains one of the biggest questions for advertisers.

The August newsletter highlights two recently released experiment types designed to help answer that question.

• Uplift experiments: Measure the impact of adding Performance Max alongside existing campaigns.
• Upgrade experiments: Compare existing Search or Shopping campaigns against Performance Max after migration.

Together, the two experiment types give advertisers a structured way to evaluate whether Performance Max improves results before making broader campaign changes. The approach also aligns with Microsoft’s recent emphasis on experimentation and measurement across its AI-powered products. Microsoft continues to cite an average 8% increase in incremental conversions from Performance Max campaigns.

Microsoft’s newsletter also included practical guidance for setting up those test. Their recommendation to advertisers:

• Have at least 30 conversions during the previous 30 days before running experiments.
• Keep bidding targets, product groups, and campaign settings consistent between test and control groups.
• Allow 4-12 weeks before evaluating results, depending on conversion volume and conversion lag times.

While these experiments focus on measuring campaign performance, Microsoft’s next update gives advertisers more visibility into how Performance Max creative will appear before launch.

Ad Preview Hub Adds Performance Max Support

Ad Preview Hub previously allowed advertisers to preview Audience ads before launch. The August update extends that functionality to Performance Max while adding Bing Search results page previews.

The expansion could simplify campaign approvals for agencies and in-house teams that rely on creative, legal, or brand reviews before launch.

Teams can generate shareable preview links showing how ads may appear before campaigns go live rather than relying on screenshots captured after ads begin serving. The addition of Bing SERP previews also gives reviewers visibility into Search placements alongside Audience inventory.

Because Performance Max automatically assembles and serves ads across multiple placements, previewing creative before launch can help advertisers identify formatting issues, messaging inconsistencies, or stakeholder concerns before campaigns begin serving.

Taken together with Topic Insights and the new Performance Max experiments, the Ad Preview Hub update reinforces Microsoft’s recent focus on expanding the tools that support AI-powered campaigns, not just the campaign types themselves.

What These Updates Suggest About Microsoft’s Priorities

Looking at these updates together, they point to a consistent pattern across Microsoft’s recent product releases. Rather than introducing entirely new campaign types, Microsoft continues adding reporting, experimentation, and review capabilities around products advertisers are already using.

Across the August updates, Microsoft focuses on helping advertisers answer three necessary questions:

• How visible is my content in AI experiences?
• Is Performance Max generating incremental business results?
• What will my ads look like before they go live?

Each update pairs AI-powered automation with additional reporting, testing, or review capabilities. That gives advertisers more information before making campaign changes instead of relying solely on automated recommendations. During Microsoft Advertising Activate earlier this year, Ads Liaison Navah Hopkins described the company’s approach as “building with you, not just for you.”

Assuming that direction continues, future Microsoft Advertising releases may focus less on introducing entirely new AI products and more on expanding the measurement, experimentation, and workflow tools surrounding them. Those supporting capabilities may have as much day-to-day impact as brand new product releases.

https://www.searchenginejournal.com/microsoft-advertising-adds-ai-visibility-insights-pmax-testing-and-creative-preview-updates/584760/

Lead-gen and ecommerce managers: two Google Ads bidding changes landed this summer. Here’s what shifts, what doesn’t, and which campaigns to audit first.

The post Google Ads Bidding Strategies: Where To Spend Your Time In 2026 appeared first on Search Engine Journal.

https://www.searchenginejournal.com/google-ads-bidding-strategies-where-to-spend-your-time-in-2026/581479/

If you run ecommerce campaigns on target CPA or target ROAS and any of them sit at “Limited by budget,” Google’s August 17 bidding change is going to move your numbers, and we’re likely not talking about the direction you want. Starting August 17, campaigns that are limited by budget and use a target-based bid strategy will deliver more consistently toward the target you set instead of overshooting it. For the many accounts that have quietly been beating their targets, that means a higher cost per conversion or a lower ROAS unless you act first.

This one is not opt-in; Google is applying it automatically to eligible campaigns, and it has said it will not adjust your targets or budgets for you. The runway is getting shorter by the day. The Bid Target Adjustment Tool went live on July 6, and account notifications are landing now, with the change itself starting to roll out on August 17. That leaves a few weeks to decide, campaign by campaign, whether your over-delivery was a deliberate strategy or just a target you never updated.

What The Target-Based Bidding Update Changes

Today, a campaign that is limited by budget and running target CPA or target ROAS often beats its target, and it can swing around when you change the budget. After August 17, Google optimizes so that actual performance tracks closer to the target you set, including when you adjust budgets, which it frames as more predictable performance as you scale. Take a campaign with a $100 target CPA that has been delivering conversions at $50. After the change, it will move toward $100. The update applies to target-based campaigns across Search, Shopping, Performance Max, Demand Gen, Travel, and Display, while App, Video reach, and Video view campaigns are excluded. For multi-channel campaigns like Performance Max and Demand Gen, Google has also said you may see traffic shift between channels as the system rebalances toward the target.

Why Budget-Limited Campaigns Overdeliver

A campaign that is limited by budget beating its target was usually not a bidding miracle. The budget cap was the real constraint, so the algorithm never spent all the way up to the target. It bought the cheapest conversions it could inside the cap and left the rest of the target headroom untouched. That gap between your $50 actual and your $100 ceiling was efficiency you were getting for free, because budget, not the target, was doing the limiting.

After August 17, the system treats that headroom as room to work with. It will pursue additional conversions that cost more, which pulls your average up toward the target you set. In plain terms, your target stops being a ceiling you rarely touched and becomes a destination the algorithm actively aims for. This doesn’t mean that Google will actively raise your budget; it means the system pulls your actual performance up toward the stated target you already entered.

Google’s Ads Liaison Ginny Marvin has been clarifying the framing publicly, and two points are worth carrying into your own read. Bidding targets are meant to be your lever for efficiency and spend control, while Maximize Conversions and Maximize Conversion Value are the strategies built for a fixed budget with no target. She has also pushed back on the idea that this change is Google telling you to spend more, so treat August 17 as a reason to make your stated target honest rather than a nudge to loosen it.

The Real Risk Is A Bid Target You Never Tuned

Plenty of accounts carry a target CPA or target ROAS that someone set once as a rough ceiling and never revisited, because the campaign beat it every month anyway. Those targets are about to go live. If your $100 CPA was aspirational rather than a real break-even number, or your 400% ROAS target was a placeholder while the campaign quietly ran at 600%, August 17 exposes the gap. Miss it, and it surfaces in next month’s reporting as a cost increase you have to explain after the fact, which is a worse conversation than the one you could be having now.

The Decision For Each Budget Limited Campaign

For each campaign that is limited by budget and sitting comfortably inside its target, you have three honest options.

Reset the target to your actual performance. If a campaign has been running at a $50 CPA or a 600% ROAS and that is the efficiency you want to keep, update the target to match before August 17. The Bid Target Adjustment Tool lets you apply your recent performance as the new target in a couple of clicks, which holds your current numbers in place.

Raise the budget and scale at the stated target. If the overdelivery was really a sign the campaign could spend more, lift the budget so it is no longer limited by budget, and let it capture more volume at your true target. This is the growth path, and it only makes sense when the stated target reflects real profitability.

Let it drift toward the target on purpose. If your stated target was always your genuine break-even and you have been happy to take cheaper conversions while the budget cap allowed, you can accept the drift toward target and the added volume that comes with it. The point is to choose it, not to inherit it because you forgot to look.

How To Audit Your Bid Targets Before August 17

Pull every campaign flagged “Limited by budget” that uses Target CPA or Target ROAS. Compare actual CPA or ROAS to the stated target over the last 90 days, and flag any campaign where actual sits well inside target, because those are the ones that will move. Then apply the decision above to each.

The Bid Target Adjustment Tool, live in accounts since July 6, surfaces this historical performance and lets you apply updated targets directly, and the notifications Google is now sending point at where it thinks you are exposed, so treat them as a prompt to act rather than a recommendation to dismiss. One more step that has nothing to do with the platform: brief clients or your leadership before August 17, not after. A short proactive note about a possible cost shift beats explaining a surprise in next month’s report.

What The Update Means For Ecommerce PPC

Most accounts that regularly run “Limited by budget” are small and midsize stores, which is a large slice of ecommerce. On the Shopping and Performance Max side, two things are worth watching.

First, if you run Target ROAS on a budget-capped Shopping or Performance Max campaign that has been beating its target, the drift toward target shows up as a lower ROAS and more spend on the marginal conversion. For a thin margin catalog, that can quietly erase the profit you thought the campaign was printing. Reset the target to your real ROAS floor, ideally one built from contribution margin rather than a round number, before the change makes the call for you.

Second, because Performance Max spreads across Search, Shopping, YouTube, and more, Google has said you may also see traffic shift between channels as the system rebalances. Watch your channel-level reports in the weeks after August 17 so a move toward cheaper, lower-intent inventory does not slip past you.

Where Smart Bidding Exploration Fits

If your honest reaction is that you would take more volume, there is now a deliberate lever for that, instead of letting the August 17 drift spend your headroom at random. Smart Bidding Exploration, which Google expanded on June 15, lets you set a ROAS tolerance so the algorithm can bid on converting queries it would normally skip, widening reach beyond your current query coverage while staying inside a boundary you define. It is globally available for Performance Max campaigns without product feeds, and in beta for Shopping and Performance Max with feeds through your Google account team. Google reports that its own testing showed an 18% lift in unique converting query categories and a 19% lift in conversions, which are Google’s figures rather than independent ones, so treat them as directional.

The point for ecommerce is control. The August 17 change will use your headroom whether you want it to or not. Smart Bidding Exploration lets you decide how much of that headroom goes toward exploration and at what efficiency, which is a cleaner way to buy incremental volume than finding it in a report after the fact. Google also launched Promotion Mode in beta for Search and Performance Max, which schedules a temporary budget and ROAS tolerance boost for a defined peak window and then closes itself, so it is worth a look for flash sales and launches heading into Q4.

What To Do Before August 17

The August 17 bidding change rewards one discipline, which is running targets that reflect real business math instead of placeholders. Audit every campaign that is limited by budget and running Target CPA or Target ROAS, decide per campaign whether to reset the target, raise the budget, or accept the drift, and use the Bid Target Adjustment Tool, which is live now, to lock in the efficiency you want before the system settles it for you. If you would rather buy incremental volume on purpose than inherit it, Smart Bidding Exploration is the lever to reach for. The accounts that get caught out will be the ones that treated bid targets as set-and-forget ceilings, and this change turns every one of those ceilings into a live target.

More Resources:

Featured Image: tete_escape/Shutterstock

https://www.searchenginejournal.com/google-ads-target-based-bidding-update-for-ecommerce/581801/

Google AI Mode returned a text ad on 29% of the commercial keywords in a new SE Ranking analysis, and for most of those keywords the advertiser’s domain was not among the sources the answer cited.

SE Ranking checked if the pages or domains of each keyword that produced a text ad also appeared in the sources listed by AI Mode for the same query. The domain was present 11% of the time, while the exact URL appeared 1.95% of the time. For the remaining cases, the paid ad’s advertiser was not among AI Mode’s referenced sources.

Ad Frequency Rose With CPC

Ad frequency more closely correlated with cost per click than any other factor SE Ranking examined. The CPC rate increased across three bands: 24% below $2, 32.45% from $2 to $10, and 53.56% at $10 and above. Search volume and keyword difficulty didn’t show similar patterns. Since the report doesn’t provide a model or sample sizes for each band, this indicates a correlation in the data, not a proven predictor.

Ad Presence Swung Hard By Niche

Ad presence varied by niche, dropping from 72% of Pets keywords to 2% in Healthcare. SE Ranking interprets the categories with higher ad presence as primarily for lead-generation and those with lower presence as more informational or YMYL-oriented. So, the advertising potential for an account depends on its category before considering any specific keywords.

Most Advertisers Didn’t Rank Organically Either

Advertisers rarely appeared in the organic search results for the keywords they paid for. Only 2% of paid URLs also ranked organically for the same keyword, and 15.35% at the domain level.

Part of the URL gap results from campaign landing pages that are not intended to rank, but the domain-level gap persists across the top 10, 20, and 100 rankings. SE Ranking also compared advertising and non-advertising domains matched on authority and organic presence, finding no increased citations for advertisers, although the details provided are limited for verification.

The Ad Layer Google Has Been Building

Google has gradually added ads to AI Mode. During Google Marketing Live, the company introduced two new AI mode ad formats: Conversational Discovery ads and Highlighted Answers, both embedded within AI responses. These are still in testing and not widely available yet.

This follows an annual letter from Vidhya Srinivasan, hinting at expanding AI Mode ads in 2026. Google also said AI Overview ads earn revenue similar to traditional search ads.

Why This Matters

AI Mode ads are independent, with data showing that ad placement, citations, and organic rankings often don’t align for the same keyword. Buying a slot doesn’t guarantee citations or rankings, so treat this as a separate paid channel, especially for high-CPC keywords.

The overlap between ads and citations is useful for visibility, not direct purchase. Remember, a competitor appearing in AI Mode isn’t necessarily cited as a source, as these usually don’t occur simultaneously. Monitor paid and citation presence separately.

Looking Ahead

Right now, paid ads and cited information are quite different, so you can track them separately. Google is trying out new formats like Conversational Discovery ads and Highlighted Answers, where the ad is part of the response itself, instead of being shown next to it. If these new formats become more common, the line between buying a spot and appearing in the response may start to blur.

SE Ranking sells AI Mode and competitor ad tracking. The keywords were preselected to trigger text ads and sampled about evenly across niches, so 29% reflects this test set on one date, not ad prevalence across commercial searches.

Featured Image: dintadonna/Shutterstock

https://www.searchenginejournal.com/google-ai-mode-shows-ads-on-1-in-3-commercial-keywords/582976/

You’re finalizing a monthly PPC report, excited to show improvements you’ve seen in the account. You highlight an A/B test that yielded an improvement in CPA, along with a new Meta campaign that is driving marketing qualified leads.

Yet when you present the report to leadership, you still get questions like, “How are these actions helping us grow revenue?”

Knowing your audience is a fundamental principle of marketing, and it applies equally so when creating marketing reports. A report geared to a marketing director who is more in the weeds of individual campaigns will look different from a report geared to a C-level executive.

When creating a report that will be viewed by senior leadership, consider what they are held accountable for. A CFO may answer to shareholders or VC firms, but ultimately, their main concern is increasing revenue. If a report doesn’t clearly answer the question of profitability from an investment in PPC, you’re setting yourself up for failure.

In this article, we’ll consider the metrics your CFO actually cares about when reviewing reporting on paid media campaigns.

A Note On Tracking

Before kicking off any ad campaigns or reporting, make sure that you’ve set up proper conversion tracking on your website to measure key actions in ad and analytics platforms. If you’re not confident in your data measurement approach, you can’t trust the numbers you put in your reports.

Agree On Shared Goals

Before building your first report, you should talk to key stakeholders about what internal revenue goals are and where PPC fits as part of those. For instance, a business may have set an annual goal to grow revenue by 10% or to increase the customer base by 20%.

When considering the metrics you include and how you talk about them, think about how measurement relates to the shared business goals. For instance, you may be able to show not only that Meta had a 10% increase in conversions but that it was the largest contributing channel to the previous month’s growth goal.

It may also be helpful to include a section in your reporting where you highlight overall goals, such as a graph showing total new accounts or revenue vs. planned.

CPA, But Consider The Conversion

Cost Per Acquisition (CPA) is a foundational metric for PPC campaigns. However, one common question faced when presenting performance and including this measure is: “What is a conversion?”

Microconversions, such as form fills and asset downloads, can be helpful for optimization in the right instances, but particularly for higher-level executives, you need to be very clear about what you’re reporting on when sharing a cost tied to a conversion action.

Ideally, CPA in this case should be tied as closely as possible to a customer. While, particularly for long lifecycle businesses, it may not be viable to report on actual customers signed in a monthly PPC report, you may be able to report on sales qualified leads.

In turn, if you have proper CRM tracking to monitor leads through the lifecycle of initial contact to customer, you can include CPAs for customer acquisition over a longer period. For instance, if your average time to final sale is 90 days, show a view of the past 90 days, including total cost and CPAs broken down by marketing qualified leads, sales qualified leads, and final sales.

Further reading: Why Do Budgets Overspend Even With A Target ROAS or CPA? – Ask A PPC

Customer Acquisition Cost

This leads to a more comprehensive metric: Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC), which represents total sales/marketing expenses divided by the number of customers obtained in the same period.

CAC can be shown as an overall metric, as well as attributed at the channel level if your CRM has the ability to measure customers by the source they came from. You should report on trends over time, which will show both how particular mixes of campaigns and channels are performing, as well as pointing to seasonal trends.

Return On Ad Spend

ROAS may be easier to attribute in some types of accounts than others (for instance, ecommerce vs. B2B products with long sales cycles), but can help point to return on investment from PPC campaigns. If revenue values are being properly measured, ROAS can help to answer the question, “How much did we make from this campaign?”

Of course, be ready to provide context and answer questions about how ROAS is being calculated for your brand. For instance, ad platform numbers may or may not include added costs such as shipping and taxes.

As with CPA and CAC, you should report on ROAS at a blended (cross-account and cross-campaign) level, as well as more granularly, where it makes sense to call out specific efforts.

Lifetime Value

Gaining new customers is great, but what if a customer buys one cheap product and never purchases from your brand again? Or if they pay for a one-month subscription but then cancel?

Incorporating LTV into reporting allows you to see not only which channels and campaigns are driving the most customers but which are contributing to the most valuable ones.

For an ecommerce business, you may look at data for how much revenue is generated from items any one person has purchased over time. For a SaaS business, you may look at the total subscription cost over time. For an industrial equipment supplier, you may look at both how much revenue has come from product purchases and if a customer uses your business for ongoing servicing.

Incremental Growth

When testing a new channel, campaign type, or offer, a key justification for funding is proof that it can drive new revenue that would not otherwise have come from existing efforts. Showing new customer counts and revenue amounts that are incremental to your testing efforts will help in maintaining funding for the future.

Relying solely on in-platform tracking can be tricky here, as a new Google campaign may readily take credit for conversions that are also being tracked in and influenced by Meta. While ad platforms are adding their own methodologies for tracking incremental attribution, these are ultimately still siloed at the platform level.

Using a Media Mix Modeling (MMM) tool here can provide a broader view of how adding to or subtracting from your paid media portfolio is impacting revenue. You can also run incrementality tests either by isolating campaigns to specific geographies and comparing against similar regions, or by comparing two periods of time. Looking at the results at the end of the test can show if a new initiative helped to lift customer and revenue growth.

When presenting on incremental performance, be transparent about the testing methodology, but explain concepts in a way that keeps in mind your leadership team’s level of technical knowledge. Lead with results, and include more technical documentation in an appendix.

Anticipate The Why

When including the above measures that are relevant to your client or stakeholder, think proactively about what questions will come from the data. If conversions are down, you’ll likely be asked why that is the case.

You’ll build rapport with executives reviewing the report if you can be transparent about negative performance, but also be able to provide a reasonable explanation why that is the case. For instance, you might compare seasonal performance to last year at the same time and note that business generally dips. Or a technical issue with a form on the website may have interfered with the ability of prospects to contact you.

Ideally, include brief bullet points in the report addressing these potential concerns up front, and be prepared to talk through deeper explanations if asked.

Start Building Better Reports

Think through the metrics surfaced in this article, along with tactics for presenting them to your CFO and other executives. Now think through how you’ve previously been reporting and any pain points you might have had in reaching shared understanding of performance.

Build on a foundation of solid tracking to highlight the numbers that will resonate the most with the individuals accountable for the purse strings. Be open to hearing out questions you’re asked and additional data that stakeholders might request, and continue to tweak your reports to meet your stakeholders where they are.

More Resources:

Featured Image: Natalya Kosarevich/Shutterstock

https://www.searchenginejournal.com/the-ppc-metrics-your-cfo-actually-cares-about-and-how-to-report-them/578813/

This month’s Ask A PPC tackles a very real concern: Search term visibility keeps shrinking on some platforms while other platforms continue to maintain more transparency. Advertisers still need to understand, diagnose, and optimize campaigns even when they do not have full search term signals.

“With search terms increasingly unavailable, what technical signals should advertisers prioritize to diagnose smart bidding?”

We’ll walk through three techniques advertisers can use on any platform, then unpack how Microsoft Advertising’s search term visibility can strengthen optimization across other channels.

Quick disclosure: I work for Microsoft, and I’ve written this as objectively and platform-agnostically as possible.

Technique 1: Use Behavioral Analytics To Understand User Quality

Losing access to individual search terms does not mean you lose access to meaningful insight. You can check traffic segments to see if they deliver value:

• Times: Certain times will be more prone to impulse purchases vs considered investments. If your product/service sees a large amount of non-converting activity during a time that doesn’t align with the conventional customer journey, you can make educated guesses about removing those times.
• Audiences: By including observation audiences, you can get a sense of how much traffic fits into desired demographics. These insights can be used to understand the intent behind the traffic.
• Devices: If you know you do better with phone calls and the lion-share of your traffic is desktop, there may be a need to apply device-specific rules to direct traffic in a more profitable way.
• Locations: Identifying locations with higher CPCs and lower conversion rates is the easiest way to ensure budget is scaling in the right way.

Then, you can start to understand whether those sources deserve more investment.

For example, if you see a high uptick in conversions at 7 a.m. on mobile devices, but they tend to be lower value than the conversions that happen at 4 p.m. on desktop, you might make some educated guesses that the former group were impulse shopping, while the latter have put more thought into engaging with you. The high-volume conversion group might also be on their way to work and not processing as clearly which brand they gave their information to.

That said, avoid snap decisions. Some interactions help start the conversion journey even if they do not complete the conversion action until later. This is why signals from offline conversions and view-through conversions matter so much.

Both Behavioral Analytics And CRM/Shop Data Can Help Fill In Gaps When Search Terms Are Missing

Behavioral analytics tools, including Microsoft Clarity, can help you understand how different humans and AI systems engage based on the times, platforms, and audience cohorts they come from. These insights can show whether your landing page gets in the way.

For example, if you see a high uptick of traffic coming to your site with no conversions, check to see if they’re trying to convert and can’t. Behavioral analytics tools can show you “rage clicks” as well as whether people are confused by page content.

They also can highlight potential CRM integration issues. If you are watching users complete conversion actions multiple times, but not seeing their info in your CRM, you are inviting false positives in the conversion tracking.

Technique 2: Open Yourself Up To Zero-Click Value Actions

The AI era is changing how people discover, evaluate, and act. People may complete valuable actions without clicking to a website. Search term visibility may shrink because of privacy mechanics, but limited visibility into the full query or conversation does not mean no value occurred.

Grounding queries and citation counts can begin to provide useful information. For example, if AI visibility reports show a lot of grounding queries, review whether those queries are contextually relevant to your brand.

For example, if you see that a grounding query is pulling you into financial advice topics and you’re a general business consultant, you may want to adapt your landing pages, search themes, and keywords to focus on “consultant.” While “advisor” is a close variant of “consultant,” financial topics tend to have higher CPCs and won’t be relevant to general business consulting. This is also where term exclusions and message constraints can be helpful, so AI tooling can provide a clearer picture into what product/service you offer.

You may also decide to remove unnecessary JavaScript from pages you want AI systems to engage with to reduce any potential blocks stopping crawlers from accessing the page.

If AI systems cannot engage with a page, we remove ourselves from opportunities to connect with customers before those customers even look for us. AI can only put forward what it can understand, take in, and parse as useful.

Technique 3: Use Offline Conversions And Human Data To Validate Platform Claims

This technique takes more work, but it gives you useful insight into campaign performance, or where AI-powered bidding, struggles when it does not receive clean data. Give bidding systems data that is as accurate and useful as possible while also using directionally correct conversion values when campaigns need to hit certain thresholds.

Conversion values and conversion value rules usually communicate value more effectively than bid adjustments. That matters because when we try to mitigate waste, we should use the technology that aligns with how platforms work rather than forcing newer models to operate through legacy controls.

Bid adjustments and bid caps can force auctions in ways that reflect older campaign management logic. Conversion values and conversion value rules offer a stronger path forward for mitigating waste in modern automated systems.

A Note On Search Term Visibility

This month’s question assumes a Google-first world. Microsoft Advertising takes a different approach: Advertisers can see search terms for traffic that resulted in a click. That transparency matters because advertisers should be able to understand how their budgets get spent.

With transparency comes search terms that invite scrutiny. Some may become useful negatives, while others may challenge biases in how you think about search behavior and how some queries drive valuable performance you may not have expected. People’s search habits change, and in a world where AI plays a larger role, bot-type queries will not always equal waste. Sometimes they represent genuine, useful queries.

One helpful way to explore this is to review the AI crawler bot report in Microsoft Clarity and look at the ratio of AI crawler bots. That context can help you understand whether AI engagement connects to meaningful behavior.

3 Ways To Use Microsoft Search Term Visibility Across Other Channels

1. Identify Winners

Because Microsoft Advertising shows search terms that result in clicks, you gain more transparency into what deserves focus. That insight can inform better search themes for Performance Max campaigns, stronger keyword targets for traditional search campaigns, and content ideas worth building around.

Do note that match types behave the same between Microsoft and Google.

2. Find Potential Negatives

If a query idea clearly does not make sense on Microsoft Advertising, there is a good chance it also does not make sense on Google or other keyword-targeted platforms. Microsoft requires negative keywords to use phrase or exact match, but you can still identify root words and apply them as negatives in the match types available on other platforms.

This added confidence can make Microsoft Advertising useful as a source of search terms that inform broader account hygiene.

3. Pair Behavioral Analytics With Conversion Tracking

Search term visibility helps you identify winners and losers, but the real insight and optimization happens when you understand what users do after they complete those searches. If a query brings people to your site but conversions do not register, you may have a conversion tracking issue rather than a query quality issue.

The reverse can also happen, if conversions increase but the queries tied to those conversions do not look quite right. Data exclusions can help in both Google and Microsoft when you need to account for tracking or data quality issues.

Behavioral analytics paired with search term visibility gives you one of the strongest ways to understand why people search the way they search and what influences them after they land on your website

Final Takeaway

Search term visibility may be shrinking on some channels, but it still exists on others. Rather than assuming visibility has disappeared entirely, advertisers can adapt their perspective and use multiple channels to capture different forms of insight.

Google and Microsoft do reach unique users, so the data will not map perfectly one-to-one. Still, if a search does not make sense for your brand and you can see it on one network even when you cannot see it on another, you gain value by identifying that idea once instead of paying for it repeatedly.

More Resources:

Featured Image: Paulo Bobita/Search Engine Journal

https://www.searchenginejournal.com/ask-a-ppc-how-to-optimize-ppc-accounts-with-less-search-term-visibility/581131/

Google Ads is expanding its Search campaigns for Travel beta to two additional verticals: Things to Do and Events.

Google announced the update in a post on X and LinkedIn on July 8, 2026. Advertisers selling attractions, tours, and event tickets can now access the campaign type through an open beta, although availability remains limited.

The expansion gives eligible advertisers another campaign option to test alongside existing Search ands Performance Max campaigns.

What’s Changing With Search Campaigns For Travel

Search campaigns for Travel is a Google Ads campaign type designed for travel-related advertisers. It first appeared as Google expanded AI-powered campaign types across Travel and Shopping earlier this year.

With this update, the beta now extends beyond traditional travel categories to include Things to Do and Events. That means advertisers promoting attractions, guided tours, and event tickets may now be eligible to use the campaign type.

The announcement came as part of a five-post thread. At the time of writing, Google has not shared complete details around eligibility, supported features, or geographic availability.

Why This Matters

Attractions, tours, and event tickets share many of the same characteristics as hotel or airline bookings. Availability changes frequently, pricing can fluctuate, and purchase decisions are often tied to specific dates or locations. Those are all areas where Google’s newer campaign types have increasingly relied on automation to determine which searches are most likely to convert.

Until now, advertisers in these verticals have generally relied on standard Search campaigns or Performance Max. Expanding the Travel campaign type suggests Google sees these businesses as a natural fit for a more specialized campaign format.

The update also aligns with Google’s broader push toward AI-driven campaign management. Over the past year, the company has introduced AI Max across additional campaign types while continuing to consolidate older campaign formats.

While Google hasn’t explained why it selected these verticals, they fit naturally alongside other travel-related advertisers already using the campaign type.

What Advertisers Should Do

If you’re eligible for the beta, treat it as a controlled test rather than a replacement for your existing campaigns.

Review your current Search and Performance Max performance, set aside a limited testing budget, and compare booking or ticket sales against your existing campaign mix. Since Google has not released complete feature details, it’s also worth setting expectations internally that functionality may continue to evolve throughout the beta.

What’s Still Unknown

Google has not yet confirmed which bidding strategies, assets, reporting capabilities, or feed requirements will be available for the Things to Do and Events verticals. It also remains unclear how these campaigns will interact with existing AI Max for Travel functionality.

We’ll update this article as Google shares additional details about eligibility, features, and availability.

Featured image: Master1305 / Shutterstock

https://www.searchenginejournal.com/google-search-campaigns-travel-things-to-do-events-beta/581816/

Google is clarifying its Smart Bidding update after advertisers questioned how budget-limited campaigns will behave beginning August 17.

The original announcement around Smart Bidding changes was June 22. The update essentially changes how Target CPA and Target ROAS campaigns behave when they’re limited by budget.

Today, many budget-limited campaigns outperform their bidding targets. Smart Bidding often enters only the auctions most likely to convert efficiently, producing stronger-than-expected CPA or ROAS.

Google says that wasn’t the intended behavior.

Instead, Smart Bidding will optimize more closely toward the Target CPA or Target ROAS advertisers actually set. Campaigns that currently outperform those targets may move closer to them after the update.

The announcement immediately raised questions across the PPC industry. Advertisers wanted to know why Google would reduce efficiency in campaigns that were already exceeding expectations.

Google’s follow-up comments answer many of those questions. They also explain why the company believes the change will make campaign scaling more predictable.

What’s Changing On August 17?

The update affects campaigns using Target CPA or Target ROAS that are limited by budget.

Historically, those campaigns often outperformed their bidding targets. A campaign with a $50 Target CPA, for example, might consistently generate conversions at $35.

Beginning August 17, Google will optimize those campaigns more closely toward the Target CPA or Target ROAS advertisers set. The company says this should create more predictable performance when advertisers adjust campaign budgets.

Google also clarified several points after announcing the update:

• Budgets will not automatically increase
• Google won’t automatically change Target CPA or Target ROAS settings
• Advertisers who want to maintain current performance may need to lower their bidding targets before the rollout
• Google is rolling out account notifications and a Bid Target Adjustment Tool to identify affected campaigns

Those clarifications addressed some of the initial confusion. They also sparked a broader discussion about how the update could affect campaign performance in practice.

The Biggest Concern: Is Google Becoming Less Efficient?

One question surfaced repeatedly as advertisers discussed the update: Is Google making Smart Bidding less efficient?

Kirk Williams summed up that concern in a LinkedIn post.

He wrote:

…How and why will the system stop trying to be as efficient as possible… Does that mean smart bidding when limited by budget will no longer be trying to find better auctions?… So does that mean they’re building the system to literally choose to be dumber when limited by budget?

Williams questioned why Google would move campaigns closer to their stated targets if Smart Bidding could already deliver stronger performance.

Mike Ryan offered one of the most detailed explanations in the comments.

Ryan argued that Google isn’t making Smart Bidding less intelligent. Instead, he believes the system has become too conservative in budget-limited campaigns.

According to Ryan, Smart Bidding has favored exploitation over exploration. Rather than entering more auctions that still satisfy an advertiser’s target, the system has focused on the safest opportunities. That produced stronger-than-expected efficiency. It also meant campaigns didn’t consistently optimize toward the Target CPA or Target ROAS advertisers actually set.

Ryan believes the updated system will follow those bidding targets more closely. That may reduce the overperformance many advertisers have seen in budget-limited campaigns, but it also aligns with Google’s stated goal of making bidding targets behave more predictably.

Predictable Scaling vs. Peak Efficiency

Aaron Levy focused on a different part of the update: campaign scaling.

He described a campaign with an $8 CPA and a $12 Target CPA. If an advertiser doubled the budget today, the CPA might unexpectedly climb to $16 instead of remaining near the target.

Levy believes the update should make that behavior more predictable. Rather than introducing large swings in efficiency, Smart Bidding should continue optimizing toward the advertiser’s Target CPA as budgets change.

Kirk Williams questioned whether that tradeoff benefits advertisers. If Smart Bidding can already outperform a target, he argued, some advertisers may prefer that extra efficiency over more predictable budget increases.

Google has consistently framed the update around predictability. They say campaigns should optimize toward the targets advertisers actually set, making budget changes easier to manage and forecast.

Whether advertisers agree with that tradeoff will likely depend on how their campaigns perform after the rollout.

Google Clarifies Several Misconceptions

Google Ads Liaison Ginny Marvin responded directly to several concerns advertisers raised after the announcement.

One of the biggest misconceptions was that Google was encouraging advertisers to simply spend more money.

Responding to Barry Schwartz, Marvin wrote:

To be clear, this won’t result in campaign spend changes… Our guidance for those with budget-constrained campaigns currently over-performing on their target is to ensure the targets are in line with your goals.

She also emphasized that advertisers will only spend more if they choose to raise their campaign budgets. The update itself does not change campaign budgets or automatically adjust bidding targets.

Jack Carr raised a similar concern, arguing that budget constraints have historically acted as an efficiency lever and that Google’s recommendation effectively removes that advantage.

Marvin responded with a longer explanation:

Our advice is not to ‘let the system spend more money’… this change won’t result in spend changes on a campaign already budget constrained.

She also explained why Google is making the change.

Performance has often fluctuated unexpectedly… especially with budget changes. That’s not been a great experience for advertisers & made it challenging to scale campaigns with confidence.

According to Google, the backend update will make Smart Bidding optimize more consistently toward the Target CPA or Target ROAS advertisers actually set, even when campaigns are limited by budget.

Kristen Kelleher questioned whether the change would simply push campaigns into lower-quality traffic.

Marvin pushed back on that assumption as well.

The system sets bids to find as many conversions as possible at the ROAS/CPA target you set… With this update, advertisers can also expect this same behavior in budget-constrained campaigns with targets.

She added that advertisers who want to maintain today’s stronger-than-target performance should consider updating their Target CPA or Target ROAS before the rollout.

Google’s position has remained consistent throughout the discussion. The company says the update changes how closely Smart Bidding follows bidding targets. It doesn’t change campaign budgets or automatically modify campaign settings.

What This Means For Advertisers

Not every advertiser will need to make changes before August 17.

Campaigns already hitting their intended Target CPA or Target ROAS may continue operating much as they do today. The biggest impact will likely fall on budget-limited campaigns that have consistently outperformed their bidding targets.

For example, if a campaign has averaged a $20 CPA against a $35 Target CPA, Google says advertisers should consider whether $20 is now the more appropriate target. Leaving the original target unchanged could allow performance to move closer to $35 after the update.

Before the rollout, review any budget-limited campaigns that consistently outperform their Target CPA or Target ROAS. Compare current performance against your configured targets and decide whether those targets still reflect your business goals.

The update also changes how advertisers should think about bidding controls. Many advertisers have treated limited budgets as an efficiency lever because campaigns often outperformed their targets. Google has made it clear that budgets and bidding targets serve different purposes. Budgets control spend. Target CPA and Target ROAS control efficiency.

If Google’s explanation plays out as expected, advertisers who keep bidding targets aligned with actual performance should see fewer surprises when adjusting campaign budgets after August 17.

What Happens Next

Google has explained how Smart Bidding should behave after August 17. The remaining question is how closely those expectations match real-world campaign performance.

Advertisers with budget-limited Target CPA or Target ROAS campaigns will likely be watching those accounts closely after the rollout. Campaigns that have consistently outperformed their bidding targets may provide the clearest indication of how much the update changes day-to-day performance.

Google has also encouraged advertisers to review bidding targets before the rollout if current performance already aligns with their business goals. As more accounts transition to the updated bidding behavior, advertisers should have a better understanding of how the change affects campaign efficiency and budget management in practice.

Featured image: Roman Samborskyi / Shutterstock

https://www.searchenginejournal.com/google-clarifies-smart-bidding-update-after-advertiser-concerns/581804/

Google is testing a new Search ads label that could give certain advertisers a visible endorsement directly within search results.

In a LinkedIn post, Google Ads Liaison Ginny Marvin announced a limited U.S. experiment that adds a “Strongest match” or “Strong match” label to select Search ads.

According to Marvin, the labels are intended to help users quickly identify the most relevant information for their query while helping advertisers connect with high-intent audiences.

The experiment is currently rolling out to a small percentage of users in the United States.

Marvin said the designation relies on existing ad quality and relevance signals that Google already uses to evaluate Search ads.

While the announcement itself was relatively brief, it immediately sparked questions from advertisers about how the label is determined, whether it could influence click behavior, and what it might signal about the future direction of Search.

Google Hasn’t Explained What Qualifies As A “Strongest Match”

Google’s announcement answered what the label is intended to do, but not how advertisers qualify for it.

According to Marvin, the designation is based on existing quality and relevance signals. Beyond that, Google has not shared any details about how the label is determined.

As a result, advertisers still don’t know:

• Which signals are used to determine the label
• How those signals are weighted
• Whether the designation is based on the query, keyword, ad, landing page, or a combination of factors
• Whether multiple advertisers can receive the label in the same auction
• Whether the label is tied to ad position

The lack of detail quickly became one of the main discussion points following the announcement.

Several advertisers questioned whether the designation reflects the same systems Google already uses to evaluate ad relevance or whether the experiment introduces an additional layer of evaluation.

Others questioned whether bid strength plays any role.

Google’s description suggests the label is intended to reflect relevance rather than spend. However, the company has not explained how those determinations are made.

Until Google shares more information, advertisers are left with a label that appears meaningful but lacks a clear definition.

Advertisers Are Asking For More Transparency

Advertisers quickly focused on a different question: how Google determines which ads receive the label.

Several commenters asked whether “Strongest match” reflects the same relevance systems Google already uses or whether additional factors are involved.

Terry Hogan questioned whether the designation is truly based on relevance or whether bid strength contributes to the decision.

Kristen Kelleher asked a popular question, based on the amount of likes she got:

What components make up the scoring underneath the match label? Is this based on the keyword based quality score, ad relevance, landing page exp or is it only based on the ad itself?

So far, Google has not provided additional detail.

Other comments asked measurement questions around the label testing.

Craig Graham asked: “Are there plans for any kind of advertiser-side reporting for this if the experiment rolls out more broadly?”

That visibility could become important if the designation influences click behavior. Advertisers will likely want to know when their ads receive the label and whether it impacts performance.

Questions also accumulated in Marvin’s LinkedIn post about how the label will appear within search results.

Bernt Muurling asked whether the strongest match will always be the first result shown.

If the label only appears on the top-ranked ad, it reinforces Google’s existing ranking decisions. If it can appear elsewhere on the page, it introduces a new signal that users may evaluate alongside ad position.

Justin Windschitl pointed to what may be the biggest challenge for the experiment:

Interested what the criteria are for labeling “match types” and if there can be flaws with the labeling, hurting businesses. On the flip side, if it’s buttoned up, it could be very beneficial for filtering best matches and more effective ad spend!

If the designation is occasionally inaccurate, advertisers may question whether Google is effectively endorsing one business over another.

Could This Become A Public Relevance Signal?

The experiment stands out because it could make Google’s assessment of relevance visible to users.

Advertisers have always known that Google evaluates factors such as ad relevance, landing page experience, expected click-through rate, and other quality signals when determining which ads appear and where they rank. Those evaluations largely happen behind the scenes.

A “Strongest match” label would move part of Google’s relevance evaluation from Google Ads into the user experience itself.

That may seem like a small change, but it introduces a new dynamic into the search experience.

Users already see ad position. A visible label gives them another signal to evaluate.

That is one reason several advertisers immediately questioned how the designation is determined and whether it could influence click behavior.

It also raises questions about whether the label becomes a competitive advantage of its own.

If users begin viewing the designation as a recommendation from Google, advertisers who receive the label could benefit beyond the visibility that comes with ranking well in the auction.

Whether that happens will likely depend on how often the label appears and whether users respond to it.

For now, Google has positioned the experiment as a way to help users identify relevant information more quickly. The broader question is whether advertisers and users eventually view the designation as a relevance signal, a recommendation, or something in between.

Why Google May Be Testing This Now

While Google hasn’t shared the reasoning behind the experiment, the test arrives as Search continues to evolve beyond a traditional list of links.

Google already makes relevance decisions every time an auction takes place. The difference is that those decisions typically remain behind the scenes.

This experiment tests what happens when part of that evaluation becomes visible to users.

Google already makes relevance decisions every time an auction takes place. This experiment tests whether those assessments should be visible to users.

Like many Search tests, the feature may never move beyond experimentation. If it does, it could mark another step toward Google making more of its relevance decisions visible within the Search experience itself.

What This Means For Advertisers

At this point, advertisers should view the label as an experiment rather than a new optimization opportunity.

Google hasn’t introduced any controls, reporting, or guidance around how advertisers qualify for the designation.

For now, the announcement is getting a lot of attention because it introduces a new user-facing signal in Search ads. Whether that signal influences click behavior or campaign performance is unclear until Google provides more information.

We’ll continue watching the rollout and update this story if Google shares additional details about qualification criteria, reporting, or broader availability.

Featured image: Kues / Shutterstock, Phone image courtesy of Google 

https://www.searchenginejournal.com/google-strongest-match-search-ad-labels-test/580378/