In this week’s digital news, Google Ads is preparing to automatically find promotions on advertisers’ websites and add them to eligible Search and Performance Max campaigns, reducing the need to manually create promotion assets. Google Gemini added UTM parameters to links, giving SEOs better numbers for measuring AI traffic and deciding where resources should go.
Meta now lets brands amplify a creator’s live Instagram broadcast as a paid advertisement, extending a feature that already exists on Facebook to Instagram and turning real-time creator content into targetable ad inventory for the first time. Q2 data shows Google desktop CTR down and mobile up at top positions, in a comparison spanning the end of a Search Console logging error.
Google is automatically pulling promotions from advertisers’ websites and converting them into promotion assets for eligible Search and Performance Max campaigns, rolling out from 12 October. The feature targets campaigns with linked location assets that don’t already have promotion assets attached, with a focus on driving both online and in-store results. Advertisers are opted in by default, so those who’d rather manage promotions manually should disable Automated Promotions in their account-level automated asset settings before the rollout. Once live, automatically created assets can be reviewed and managed from the Assets section of Google Ads.
Google has introduced automatic UTM parameters to outgoing links from Gemini, solving a major tracking hurdle for digital marketers. Previously, visits originating from generative assistants frequently ended up in analytics packages under the “direct/other” bucket because referrers were often stripped, particularly across mobile views and Android assistant invocations. Google’s John Mueller acknowledged the update, sparking industry discussion regarding how server logs and analytics platforms capture this incoming traffic.
This update removes significant tracking ambiguity around search visibility and data analysis. SEO and analytics teams can now precisely segment Gemini-referred users and evaluate their performance against traditional organic search. This accurate attribution will allow digital strategists to justify AI optimisation investments with concrete traffic data rather than relying on guesswork.
Meta has launched Instagram Live Video Ads, allowing brands to put paid spend behind a creator’s active live stream rather than relying on organic reach. The format, already available on Facebook, extends Partnership Ads to real-time content for the first time. Alongside this, Meta’s Creator Marketing Hub is now live globally, consolidating Creator Marketplace and Partnership Ads Hub into a single destination with discovery filters, content permissions, one-click ad creation, ad-readiness editing tools and integrated creator messaging. Facebook creators are also joining the Creator Marketplace API, and Partnership Ads are coming to the Meta Ads MCP connector, enabling management through AI agents. Creator Economy ad spend has reached $37 billion, growing four times faster than broader media spend.
Advanced Web Ranking’s (AWR) Q2 2026 report reveals a distinct divergence in user engagement, with desktop click-through rates (CTR) at top search positions declining while mobile rates increased. Across standard queries, combined desktop CTR in the top two positions dropped by 5.27 percentage points, whereas mobile positions grew by 6.59 points. The data also highlights that the CTR gap widened significantly on pages featuring AI Overviews, where U.S. desktop position-one rates dropped sharply compared to non-AIO results, bridging the period following Google’s resolution of its long-standing Search Console impression logging error.
The visibility implications for SEO strategy point to divergent device behaviours under generative search pressure. Digital teams can no longer rely on generalised cross-device assumptions; instead, performance dashboards may have to be segmented by device type to accurately account for how users interact with evolving search layouts.
AI shopping could reduce ecommerce returns by helping shoppers resolve uncertainty before they buy. Adobe found that 69% of consumers who used AI for shopping said they were less likely to return an AI-assisted purchase, while AI-referred traffic converted 60% higher than non-AI-referred traffic. Merchants can improve these results by giving AI assistants detailed product information such as specifications, dimensions, compatibility, variants, delivery estimates, reviews, and FAQs. Better product data can help AI recommend products that fit shoppers’ needs more accurately, potentially producing both more sales and fewer returns.
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Human and physical signals are becoming a way to show that content wasn’t machine-made. J.Crew’s Barn Jacket campaign featured 160 real, recognisable people across five cities, giving it cultural context that AI can imitate visually but can’t manufacture. Other brands are commissioning artists, showing the messy process before a launch, and moving into print and physical retail. The more content AI can produce, the more value shifts to proving what a human did that AI didn’t.
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