In this week’s digital news, Advertisers are getting more data and control across competitive benchmarking, PMax, Search bidding and creator insights. Google roll out new AI Max features that provide advertisers with greater control and new reporting to understand performance.
Google has started rolling out its September 2026 spam update worldwide in all languages. The company says the rollout may take up to two weeks to finish. Search Console is rolling out a multimodal filter for searches that use an image, including Lens and Circle to Search. Query data isn’t available for it.
Google Ads API v25.2 adds competitive benchmarking percentile data, letting developers pull where an advertiser sits relative to the broader market by category. For Performance Max, a new method can auto-generate a PMax draft from an existing Smart campaign, and asset-group-level URL controls are now available. Creator discovery is simplified with YouTube handle-based searches replacing channel ID requirements. Travel advertisers gain more granular reporting across booking windows, stay length and pricing. Search campaigns get new recommendations flagging when Target CPA or ROAS targets may be too restrictive. No breaking changes; v26 is due in October.
Google is expanding AI Max with two updates. AI Brief, which lets advertisers guide AI Max using plain-language descriptions of their business, audience and messaging, is extending its closed beta to seven additional languages including French, German, Spanish and Japanese. Google is also introducing a new unified reporting view showing the full Search ads journey in one place, covering search terms that triggered ads, the creative assets served and the landing page destination. The reporting update is aimed at giving advertisers clearer visibility into how AI Max is performing across each step of the user journey.
Google has officially commenced the rollout of its September 2026 spam update worldwide across all languages. Unlike previous iterations earlier in the year, such as the March, June, and August updates, which completed in under three days, Google confirmed that this deployment is intentionally paced and may take up to two weeks to fully finish. While Google has not introduced a brand-new spam policy category for this release, the extended timeline signals a methodical, system-wide re-evaluation of sites against existing quality guidelines, including scaled content abuse and automated manipulation tactics.
Because pre-rollout volatility can easily be misattributed to the update, SEO professionals are advised to avoid reactionary changes or blanket technical modifications while the algorithm is actively re-indexing. Digital teams must establish clean pre-update baselines, audit publishing systems rather than single pages, and ensure that content relies on genuine human expertise to withstand rigorous algorithmic scrutiny.
Google has updated Search Console by adding a dedicated “multimodal” filter within the Web search performance report. Announced by product leads Harsh Kharbanda and Moshe Samet, the feature isolates traffic originating from image-based search journeys, including Google Lens, Android’s Circle to Search, direct image uploads, and Chrome’s “Search this image” function. However, these searches are initiated via visual assets rather than text strings. Google confirmed that specific query data is unavailable, leaving site owners to evaluate performance purely through page-level metrics and exportable data.
The visibility implications of this update are especially significant for e-commerce brands, publishers, and media sites heavily reliant on visual discovery. By separating visual search traffic from traditional keyword-based queries. SEO teams can now precisely measure how effectively their product photography and imagery attract users from smartphone camera searches and visual tools. This transparency allows digital marketers to better quantify the ROI of image optimisation. Shifting visual asset management from a secondary aesthetic concern to a measurable channel for audience acquisition.
SaaStr’s inbound AI agent held 17,000 conversations with prospects and booked about 600 meetings in a year. Together with a newer self-serve agent, it drove a 60% jump in new business, and three people created the whole setup. The on-site agent sits on the sponsor page, qualifies visitors on budget and goals, then books the meeting itself. For buyers who skip the chat, a second agent swaps the PDF prospectus for a page unique to each company. It checks first-party signals, then drafts a pitch that a human approves and that updates the same link in place.
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McDonald’s is piloting a media network across 450 US company-owned restaurants, selling ad space on its app, kiosks, and menu boards, with the goal of building a billion-dollar business. Its marketing is shifting to fewer, bigger global campaigns built on its own IP. It is roughly doubling spending on long-running programs about its brand and food quality while cutting short-term promotions.
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