Daily Marketing News, October 20, 2026: ads in Google's AI search now take your email into account

ChatGPT Ads is OpenAI's ad system that shows ads right inside ChatGPT. On October 5, OpenAI introduced a visual format next to image generation, and now regular ads are getting bigger too: on desktop, wide cards and large images are being tested, on phones images run the full width of the screen, and a multi image format is coming soon. The test runs on campaigns that are already live, so nothing needs to be rebuilt. The conversions page shows how many events came in and how they're changing, what share of active campaigns optimize for conversions, and warnings link to the Diagnostics tab. Once a week, a summary email arrives with a comparison to the previous week. New measurement partners: Northbeam, DV Rockerbox, INCRMNTAL, and for apps Kochava, Tenjin and Airbridge. Check how your images look across the full width of a phone.

Demand Gen is a Google Ads campaign type that serves on YouTube, Discover and Gmail. The beta feature works like this: if fewer conversions came in than the system predicted, Google lowers the cost retroactively to bring the result closer to the target. 60 days versus the previous 21 is almost 3 times longer. It only works with target CPA and target ROAS bidding, automatically and not everywhere: you can't request an adjustment, and there's no guarantee you'll hit the target. There's also no separate refund line, credit or notification; the adjustment is already baked into total spend. On October 20, ContentGrip covered the change in detail. For anyone testing Demand Gen, this is insurance for the whole learning period, but the only way to know whether it kicked in is your own records: write down the forecast and the actual cost per conversion.

Local Services Ads are Google's ads for local services: tradespeople, clinics, lawyers and similar professionals pay for leads there, not for clicks. Previously, a business could feature specific employees with photos in its ad. Google Ads told advertisers that these cards will no longer be shown, and staff photos will become optional and stop affecting visibility. Now visibility depends on the business profile and its reviews. For a small business where the tradesperson is the brand, this is a loss: the face disappears from the ad, and only the name and rating remain. Time that went into photographing staff for the sake of visibility is better spent collecting reviews and answering leads faster.

Merchant Center is the Google dashboard where stores upload a product feed for Shopping ads and free product listings. Previously, a warranty could only be shown on Google in car ads in Japan; now it appears in Shopping ads and free listings for any product. The attribute is usually optional, but it may become required where local law demands such disclosures: Google gives Quebec's Bill 29 as an example. There are 2 fields, the length and the unit: a 3 year warranty is passed as 3:year. Search Engine Land broke the news, and on October 19 Search Engine Roundtable included it in its roundup. If you offer a warranty, add the attribute now: in Google's AI search, product data remains almost the only lever an advertiser has.

AI Mode is the search mode where an AI model answers. "Preferred sources" is a feature where people mark the sites and publications they want to see more often in answers. Previously, this list was set up separately, far from the answer itself. Now the side panel with links to sites from the answer has a Source preferences button: it opens the list, where sites can be added and removed. On October 6, Google began emailing site owners about how many people chose their site as a preferred source. With the new button, people can do this at the very moment they're reading your content in an AI answer. Publishers and bloggers should remind readers that they can mark them in Google and show where the button is now.

As of October 19, the latest entry on the Google Search Status Dashboard, the official Search status page, is the September spam update, which Google finished rolling out on October 8. Site owners on forums report a sharp drop in traffic from Discover, Google's recommendation feed in the mobile app and the Chrome browser, and for many media outlets their main traffic source. They also complain that Google News shows old stories and that data in Search Console, Google's dashboard for site owners, lags by several days. Because of this lag, part of the "drop" may simply be incomplete data for the last few days. Compare the dates of the decline with the dates Search Console has already updated, and don't rebuild your site until Google confirms an update.

Pew is an American research center; the survey was conducted in August. Among people under 30, 39% regularly get news on TikTok, compared with 9% in 2020, meaning the share grew more than 4 times. In reach, TikTok trails YouTube, used by 84% of American adults, Facebook at 70% and Instagram at 51%, but more people use it than WhatsApp (33%), LinkedIn (31%), Reddit (25%) and X (18%). Black and Hispanic adults get news on TikTok more often than White and Asian adults. For brands and media with a young US audience, this is an argument for making news and expert videos in short form, not just entertainment.