Google Marketing Live 2026 (What you need to know)

Now Google Marketing Live has come and gone for another year, and I'm back here at Google Bayview to really give my updates and breakdown of all of the announcements that were made yesterday at Google Marketing Live 2026. Now, like every year, there was a whole stack of new features that were announced, which are coming to Google Ads over the next couple of months. Now, if you watch the keynote, you would know that there was a whole stack of updates, everything from Ads in AO mode through to the new AI Brief, Qualified Future Conversions. AI Max is now also coming to Google Shopping campaigns. Business Agents for Leads, which are in the pipeworks, Direct Offers, AI Attributes in your GMC, and also Journey Aware Bidding. Now that was obviously just to name a few because there is much, much more coming. Now, like every year, even though these announcements were made at Google Marketing Live, a lot of them are in beta or pre-beta and are not actually active inside of your account right now. But for me this year, Google Marketing Live really did take a different perspective. And the reason for that was, is it was the first year I was actually able to attend in person. Now, as we know, the actual keynote is a heavily, heavily scripted event, which essentially just details line by line the different announcements that are going to be made. But after the actual keynote presentation, the day took a very, very different turn for me because it was the first time I was able to interact with a lot of Google Ads professionals, business marketing leads, and also Google product leads. And what became very, very clear to me is that right now we are very much in a transition period. Now, this is something I've been saying for the last couple of months and years is that the whole reason that Google is fundamentally changing its feature suite and how it interacts with ads is not because they just want to go ahead and make these changes. It's coming from the driving change for how people are interacting with Google Search. And what that transition is, is that people are moving away from your normal 2, 3, 4, or even 5-word keyword searches and moving into a conversational-based search. And that's why all these changes are coming, because fundamentally the old way of, you know, exact match, phrase match, and even broad match keywords don't fit that new model. And this is going to be the tension that we're going to be living in for the next couple of years, because there are definitely, the way that I see it, two different speeds in the market. There are the users who, and there are still a lot of them right now in 2026, that do use Google Ads in the fundamental way. So they're still completing their keyword searches. They're looking for relevant ad copy. Which is then taking them through to the relevant landing page. But more and more increasingly over the last couple of months, people are getting used to this conversational-based searches, and that's where the disconnect is coming, and that's why all of these new features are needed. So what I want to make really, really clear right at the start of this video, that despite of all of the new feature announcements that Google has made, this is not the time to completely change everything inside of your Google Ads account. This will be a gradual change where you still need to very much use the same campaigns and the same campaign structures that are working for you right now. But as you start to notice some different changes or some different dropping metrics inside of your account, you will need to look to add in some of these new features. And it's for that reason that in this video, I'm not going to be breaking down all of the new features. And the reason is, is because as I mentioned earlier, is that most of them aren't even available to you and your account right now. But what I want to do in this video is I do want to break down the 3 important things that you really need to be focusing on right now inside of your Google Ads account so that you're not falling behind with the leads and the sales that your business needs right now in 2026. And the first thing you need to be really, really aware of is that ads in AI mode are coming and they are coming really, really fast. Many of you would've already noticed, and we've seen it across the board in our accounts, that there is a declining click-through ratio that is happening. And this is a direct result of people not needing to click on ads because they're getting the information that they need. Inside of AI Overviews. Now, there is some data out there that SEA Interactive released is that they've seen click-through ratios drop by as much as 68%. Now, another part of this is that we've seen in our own manual testing is that Google has not fully released all of the ad features inside of AI Mode and AI Overviews. But I do believe that's going to be changing really, really fast over the coming months, and we're going to see more and more ads appearing in real-life AI overviews. And it's before that reason that you need to make sure that right now that you have some capabilities inside of your account for your ads to appear in these AI overviews. And as we sit right now, there's 3 different ways that your ads can appear in AI overviews and also those AI mode ads. And that is either with broad match, either with Performance Max, or with AI Max. Now, I've made my position really, really clear that even now and even post Google Marketing Live, I'm still very much the best way of, the best way of safeguarding your business throughout this transition phase is to either be using broad match keywords or Performance Max. And the core reason for that is that even inside of broad match, you've still got the most control that you can use with your negative keywords and also your messaging inside of your ad copies. And then we know with Performance Max, as long as you've got enough conversion data in there, which we are looking at those baselines as somewhere between 30 to 50 conversions a month as a pure baseline before you switch to Performance Max, that is giving you enough guard URLs to be confident in your ad placements. And then as Google does start to transition more and more to these ads in an AI overview setting, you'll be safe in knowing that your ads will still appear and you won't be losing those valuable impressions for your business. But this does bring me to my second point. And the second point is that even though that is my current position where I'm still very much recommending the business go down the path of either Broad Match or Performance Max, AI Max is coming really, really fast. And so fast, in fact, that I believe that 2026 will be the year that a good majority of businesses will start to need moving over to AI Max. Now, as I'm saying, I want to be clear that that's not a change that you need to be making this week or this month, but it is also important to note that one of the biggest announcements that Google did make is that AI Max is also coming to Google Shopping. So it's becoming really, really clear that this is going to be a core foundation of the Google Ads platform over the coming months and years. So whether you like it or not, it is going to be something that we are going to have to start testing with and start rolling out into our accounts throughout 2026. But as I said, right now it's not something that I'd be recommending that you push go on. And, and like always, we are continuing our testing, and when we've got some more clearer frameworks, we'll be sure to share them with you so that you can start transitioning to this new phase of Google Ads. Now, if you are a regular watcher of my content, you'll know that last week I gave that analogy that I really see AI Max where Performance Max was in 2022, in that it was a functioning product that everyone could use, but some of those results were a little bit hit and miss, and that's really where AO Max is at the moment. Now, I do believe that that will change, and I actually do believe that that'll change quicker than what happened with Performance Max. Performance Max was launched in 2022, but it wasn't a product that we were widely using until really at the end of 2023 and really into 2024. So we are getting closer to that stage where it will be something that there'll be a lot more reliable results where we can start recommending wide usage for the product. And the key reason for why we'll need to use AI Max inside of more and more campaigns is because of the new ad formats that Google is giving. And especially in the e-commerce space, AI Max for e-commerce or AI Max for Shopping is going to be a really, really powerful tool. And the reason for that is because if you could think historically, we had Google Search and then we had Google Shopping. But with these new AI Overviews and AI Mode ads, the benefit of AI Max for Google Shopping is it's going to be able to transition your ad to whether it needs to be a search-based ad or whether it should be a bit more of a shopping-based ad. And then obviously the other thing that we mentioned, because it's not going to come, be coming from a 3 or 4 or even 5-word search, it could be coming from a prompt which has, you know, multiple sentences, multiple questions. You are going to need that variability and that testing that AI Max is going to give you. And that brings me to the third point, which is a really, really important point. For me, this was a step in the right direction for AI Max, and that is the introduction of AI Briefs. Now for me, this was the first announcement that really gave me some confidence that we are getting closer to be able to see wide-ranging usage of AI Max. But as I said a couple of times for this video is I'm not advocating that right now you just toggle on that AI Max. I still do think we're a couple of months away before we need to go through and start breaking out into wide usage of AI Max. And then even further than that, I do still think that a vast majority of businesses will be comfortable with broad match or PMax for the next year to come. But what I do like about the AI briefs is it's starting to give us that functionality where we can set some guardrails for what we want we'd want it to not say. And one of my biggest issues or biggest concerns with AO Max to date is that I'm okay with Google going out and trying to find new search terms, but where I get nervous is, is the messaging. And because for a lot of businesses, they need to be strong on their messaging and they've got some really cool brand points that they want or need to be communicated in their ads. And then of course, above that, we know that AI is great, but it also does still hallucinate. So we need to be really, really clear that the messages are actually something that is relevant for our business or our product. And that's the problem that these AI briefs will solve because it allows you to add in some rules about what Google can and can't say in your headlines and what it can and can't say in your ad descriptions. Now, right now at the moment, you have got the ability to add up to 25 different term exclusions, and these could be things like don't say free, or don't say certain colors, or don't say certain attributes, whatever you need it to not say. And then you can also add up to 4,300-character messaging exclusions. And this gives you more power about the restrictions in the messaging that you don't want your ads to show. Now, as I said, this is definitely a step in the right direction, but it is also really, really important to note these text guidelines are very much in a beta feature. And Google even went even further, further to say that it's actually only experimental feature at the moment, but there still needs to be further testing done before we've got 100% confidence in the AI brief and what it can do for you and your business. So what I'd say in all of this is that, as I said right at the top of this video, is that while there's a lot of exciting announcements that have come out, Today's not the day to dive into your Google Ads account and make wholesale changes, but you do definitely need to be aware that the transition phase that we're going through in Google Search is real and it is going to become faster and faster over the coming weeks and months. So as a recap, yes, there was an endless list of announcements and features that is coming to Google Ads over the coming months and even year inside of your account. But right now, that is not the time to go through and make wholesale changes. But you do need to be thinking about these 3 core things. Firstly, Ads in AI overviews and AI are going to be coming more and more prevalent. So you really need to make sure that your ads— so you really need to make sure that right now your account is ready to show your ads in those placements. I'm still recommending that the best pathway for that is either broad match or Performance Max. The second cool thing is that you do need to start getting ready and thinking about AI Max because it is definitely coming regardless of whether you're in lead gen or in the e-commerce space. And what I want you to do there is just keep an eye out, and if you do start to see one, your click-through ratio dropping even further, or if even just when you're doing your own Google searches, you are starting to notice more and more ads appearing in those AI overviews and AI mode, that you do need to be ready, or it may even be the time to start testing out AI Max. But as I said, at here at Define Digital Academy, we'll keep you up to speed with the testing and the results that we are seeing, and we'll be sure to share that with you as soon as they come to light. And then thirdly, if you are going to go down the path of AI Max, make sure that you are using those AI briefs so that you've got the guardrails set in place to make sure that you're keeping that branding, that messaging on point for you and your business. So as always, it's been an absolute pleasure having you here. And if you do have any questions or any comments about Google Marketing Live and the latest round of announcements, just drop us a comment in below. Thank you for joining me. And because we've spoken quite a bit about AI Max in this video, if you'd like to know the frameworks for how we're recommending AI Max to be used right now, I want you to go through and watch this video right here. See you next time.