In this week’s digital news, Meta’s ad revenue is growing twice as fast as Google Search. ChatGPT and Claude are pulling people away from traditional search. The US midterms set a new record for political ad spend, and connected TV took most of the growth. Google still handles about five times more searches than ChatGPT. But ChatGPT sends almost no traffic back to websites. The Meta Pixel starts counting conversions on customers’ devices from 12 November, so check your settings before Black Friday. Google Ads has removed language targeting from Search campaigns. And Google has confirmed that only permanent redirects (301 and 308) pass ranking signals.
Meta’s ad business is now growing twice as fast as Google Search
Meta and Google Search made almost the same amount from ads last quarter. But they’re heading in very different directions. Meta’s ad revenue grew 26% to $63.1bn in Q3. Google Search grew 12% to $63.4bn. Google’s problem is chatbots. ChatGPT and Claude are pulling people away from traditional search, and there are fears Google’s own AI is eating into its search income too. We covered that last week here. Meta says its AI ad tools are getting advertisers better results. Almost 10 million advertisers now use at least one of them. Both companies are spending so much on AI infrastructure that they’re running negative free cash flow. Google is further along in earning money outside of ads, though.
US midterms set a new record for political ad spend
The 2026 US midterms were the most expensive election cycle ever for advertising. AdImpact puts the total at $11.87 billion. That beats the previous record of $11.2 billion, set in 2024. For media planners, the interesting part is where the money went. By 2 November, spend was up $2.5 billion on the 2022 midterms. More than half of that increase went to connected TV. Four years ago, cable outspent CTV by about 1.6 to 1. This time, CTV spend was nearly double cable. Live sport played a big part too. 71% of traditional TV political spend ran during sports events, up from 56% in 2024. Campaigns with huge budgets and tight deadlines are choosing where to spend. More and more, they’re choosing streaming.
Google still handles five times more searches than ChatGPT
OpenAI has put a number on how ChatGPT compares with Google for search. According to OpenAI’s Adam Fry, ChatGPT’s search volume is about 20% of Google’s. So Google still handles roughly five times as many. OpenAI counts a “search” as any prompt where ChatGPT pulls live information from the web. It’s growing fast. Weekly users are up 20% in two months, from 1 billion to 1.2 billion. But the traffic tells a different story. Ahrefs data for October shows Google accounted for 24.74% of tracked traffic to the websites it monitors. ChatGPT accounted for just 0.36%. People are asking ChatGPT plenty of questions. They’re just getting their answers in the chat and not clicking through. If you report on AI search, keep visibility and traffic as separate measures. One doesn’t lead to the other the way it does with Google.
Meta’s Pixel will start counting more conversions from 12 November
If you use the Meta Pixel, your reported conversions could look different from Thursday. A new setting in Events Manager is called “Measure conversions on customer devices”. And it starts measuring on 12 November. It’s reportedly switched on by default for any dataset already sending events. You can opt out, but you have to do it in each dataset’s settings. So decide pixel by pixel, rather than letting it happen by default. The timing is the tricky part. It lands about two weeks before Black Friday on 27 November. If your Meta numbers jump during peak, some of that could be the new measurement, not better performance. Mark 12 November in your dashboards and reports. Then compare what Meta says against the actual orders in your store. That way you’re judging Black Friday on real sales.
Google Ads drops language targeting from Search campaigns
If you run Search campaigns, you may have noticed the language setting has gone. Google Ads has removed campaign-level language targeting from Search. Advertisers started reporting it missing from live accounts from 3 November. Performance Max is slightly different. There, the setting no longer controls ads on the Google Search Network. But it still applies to YouTube, Display, Discover and Gmail. This has been a long time coming. Google first said it would remove the setting by the end of 2025. It missed that, then pushed the start back to September 2026. Even now it hasn’t reached everyone. At least one advertiser says their accounts haven’t changed yet. Check yours, especially if you advertise in more than one language.
Google explains how redirects affect rankings
Does it matter which redirect you use? Google has given a pretty clear answer. Gary Illyes and Cherry Prommawin from Google explained how it works. Googlebot will index pages behind both permanent and temporary redirects. But only permanent ones (301 and 308) pass ranking signals and make the new URL the canonical version. Temporary redirects (302 and 307) keep the original URL in search results. The page you’re redirecting to is basically ignored. Google also suggested the newer 307 and 308 redirects if you need to keep form data intact, for example during a server failover. And it advised against JavaScript or meta-refresh redirects, which are slower. So if a page has moved for good, use a 301 or 308. Otherwise Google could split your authority across two URLs instead of one.
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