Google Marketing Live always brings a wave of announcements, and 2026 was no exception.
Between the AI-powered this, the Gemini-powered that, and the inevitable buzzword count, it can be hard to work out what actually matters.
Of everything announced, these are the five updates we think are worth your attention as an advertiser in 2026, what they actually do, who they’re relevant for, and what we’d recommend you jump on as soon as it becomes available to you.
Conversational Discovery Ads
The first big announcement was a new ad format built specifically for AI Mode, Google’s Gemini-powered search experience.
Conversational Discovery Ads use Gemini to generate ad creative that responds to the specific query someone has typed, with a Gemini-written explainer alongside it.
The example Google showed involved someone asking a fairly elaborate question about making their home smell like a spa, with Gemini surfacing a sponsored result from a diffuser brand.
It’s not the example we’d have picked, the sort of question you can’t imagine people are going to type into Google in practice, but the underlying point stands.
As AI Mode becomes the default search experience, advertisers need a way to appear within it.
For now, ads in this format will be “clearly labelled” as sponsored.
Whether your AI Max campaigns have been delivering yet is another question.
We’ve been running them across client accounts and the results so far have been mixed, but if you want to be in the AI Overviews and AI answers, this is the route to it.
Universal Commerce Protocol (UCP)
UCP is Google’s answer to Amazon-style shopping.
Instead of clicking through to a website to complete a purchase, shoppers can check out directly through the search results page, with Google’s systems talking to the merchant’s systems on the back end.
It pairs with Universal Cart, which lets shoppers add items from different retailers and check out via Google Pay in a few taps.
If you sell products online, this is the announcement to pay attention to.
We’ve no idea what customer adoption will look like in practice, particularly outside the launch retailers, but this is the sort of shift you want to be ahead of rather than catching up on.
The retailer remains the merchant of record, which is worth knowing if you’re weighing up whether to integrate.
AI Brief
AI Brief is Google’s response to a long-standing advertiser frustration, that we hand over more and more control to automated campaigns without a way to feed in the context that matters.
It lets advertisers provide a brief covering business goals, audience personas, brand guidelines, and contextual insights, which Gemini then uses to shape how PMax and AI Max campaigns operate.
In theory, this should stop some of the issues we’ve seen with AI Max and PMax burning through budget on search terms and audiences in the wrong places.
Whether it delivers on that promise is something we’ll only know once our PPC management team have tested it across our clients’ Google Ads accounts.
Google Maps on Demand Gen Campaigns
Demand Gen ads are expanding to Google Maps, which is genuinely useful news for brick and mortar businesses.
If you run a physical location and want to drive footfall, this gives you a way to reach people in the moments they’re actively looking for somewhere to go.
We can already see this feature available in client accounts so we’ll be testing it out next week.
[Side note: but with anything in the Demand Gen side, we’d recommend turning off the display network]
Worth a note for automotive retailers and the education section specifically: Google is also expanding Demand Gen to support product feeds for your industries.
That’s a meaningful change if you operate in one of those verticals and have been waiting for a sensible way to use Demand Gen with your stock.
Pomelli
Pomelli is a Google Labs tool, built in partnership with DeepMind, that scans your website to build what Google calls a Business DNA profile, your tone, colours, fonts, and core messaging, then uses that to generate social posts, ad creative, and campaign assets on demand.
It’s aimed at small businesses without a design team or agency retainer, the sort of operations that have historically had to choose between paying for professional creative or making do with off-brand templates in Canva.
We’ve not had a chance to test it ourselves yet (apart from getting this screenshot), so we can’t comment on the quality.
What we can say is that it sits in an increasingly crowded space. Tools like Claude Design, Adobe Firefly, and the growing list of AI-first design tools are all chasing the same problem.
Pomelli’s advantage is that it pulls from your live website, which is a sensible starting point for smaller businesses with limited brand documentation.
Whether the output is good enough to replace a designer is unlikely.
Whether it’s useful for SMBs producing a steady stream of on-brand social content, probably yes.
What we’re testing next
We’ll be running each of these updates across client accounts in the coming weeks and reporting back on what worked, what didn’t, and the nuances that don’t come through in the keynote.
If you’ve already had a go at any of them and want to compare notes, get in touch.
If you’d like to talk through what any of this means for your own Google Ads management, we’re here to help.
