Today's News

Google Shopping Wants to Be the New FYP

Amazon Ads: New Tools for Advertisers

LinkedIn Updates Live Event and Other Ad Formats

Say Goodbye to Old Google Ads Data

Semrush Acquires Third Door Media

YouTube’s Lil Step into Authenticity

YouTube Lets the Bots Do the Talking

Google Shopping Wants to Be the New FYP

Google Shopping recommendations are about to get real personal.

The platform is rolling out a new personalized feed driven by user search history and YouTube engagement — similar to the algorithm-driven feeds of TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube.

How it works

The new feed shows up when consumers visit shopping.google.com or click on the “Shopping Tab” in Google Search.

The top of the homepage features a carousel of products users have recently interacted with.

Further down, Google will surface product recommendations and in-line videos consumers may be interested in.

Shoppers can fine-tune their experience by giving a thumbs-down to filter out unwanted items.

Google is also launching a personalized deals tab, showcasing offers based on users’ interests.

Updates to Search

Search results are also getting a revamp, featuring a new “top recommendations” section that includes insights on why each product stands out.

For instance, a search for “tea kettle for matcha” displays three suggested tea kettles and highlights features like “precise temperature control” and “fast boiling & keep warm function.”

The Google Shopping update will roll out to U.S. users on both mobile and desktop in the coming weeks.

Amazon Ads: New Tools for Advertisers

As Google refines its shopping experience, Amazon Ads announced several new updates for advertisers yesterday.

Enhanced data management

First, Amazon has revamped its user interface across its Demand-side Platform (DSP) by consolidating desktop, mobile, and app display inventory into a single line item.

Other new features include frequency cap controls.

A new campaign management hub is planned for release next year.

Amazon Ads is also launching an ads data manager, letting advertisers integrate first-party data from providers like Salesforce, which will let advertisers deploy, measure, and optimize campaigns across Amazon DSP and Amazon Marketing Cloud (AMC).

New ad creative tools

The company also introduced a new creative studio with tools for advertisers, including an audio generator for creating 30-second audio ads.

This tool is currently in beta for U.S. advertisers through Amazon DSP, and will be part of Amazon's creative studio.

The studio brings together Amazon's image and video tools, letting advertisers create ads from a product photo, webpage, or other assets.

These ads can then be used across Amazon's various platforms, such as amazon.com, Prime Video, and Twitch.

The studio is available in beta for select U.S. advertisers today.

Finally, ads on Prime Video will expand to new markets, including Brazil, India, and New Zealand in 2025.

LinkedIn Updates Live Event and Other Ad Formats

LinkedIn is also hoping to tap into your ad budget —the professional network announced several new ad options yesterday.

Live Event Ads

The platform is updating its Live Event Ads with several new features, including:

A new option for businesses to promote member posts related to their hosted live events, via Thought Leader Ads. These promotions link directly to the event, letting brands showcase user-generated content.

Brands will be able to share a “sneak peek” of their broadcasts, displaying a 30-second video to targeted users in their feeds during or after the event.

LinkedIn is also introducing more targeting options during the event setup process.

Expanding video opportunities

In terms of video, the platform is also expanding its “Wire” program to European brands, which lets businesses run in-stream video ads alongside trusted publisher content. Previously, this program was only available to select U.S. partners.

Accelerating campaign creation

Finally, LinkedIn is also updating its “Accelerate” automated campaign creation tool.

Soon marketers will be able to include video or document ads—such as eBooks, whitepapers, or customer testimonials—alongside single-image ads when setting up campaigns with Accelerate.

The platform is also rolling out new campaign objectives for Accelerate, including brand awareness, engagement, website conversions, and video views.

LinkedIn says these new features will be rolled out gradually in the coming months.

Say Goodbye to Old Google Ads Data

You have just 27 days to salvage any old data from Google Ads before it disappears into the digital abyss.

Google recently updated its data retention policy to indicate it will only store data 11 years old or newer.

What’s changing?

The new policy affects all account data, including performance metrics, billing information, and historical reports.

This means that when you query the Google Ads API using GoogleAds.Search or GoogleAds.SearchStream, you'll only be able to access data from the past 11 years.

Anything beyond that timeframe will be wiped from Google's servers.

Google recommends that if you need historical data older than 11 years, you should retrieve and store it before the cutoff date.

Semrush Acquires Third Door Media

The way many marketers get their industry news is shifting hands.

The popular SEO tool Semrush has acquired Third Door Media, which includes its industry news sites Search Engine Land, SMX, MarTech, and Digital Marketing Depot.

Search Engine Land says it’ll keep publishing, and the current editorial team will remain in place. The brands under Third Door Media will continue to operate as standalone entities.

YouTube’s Lil Step into Authenticity

YouTube is starting to pull back the veil on how your brand's content is made.

In response to the growing demand for transparency in the era of generative AI content, YouTube is rolling out new ‘captured with a camera' labels that tell users whether uploaded videos came from a real camera with unedited footage and sound.

While companies started implementing content credentials in hardware last year, it's not yet clear if these credentials will activate YouTube’s new labels.

Tech-driven authenticity

YouTube relies on the C2PA standard to detect video authenticity, which means this feature will only work with recording devices and tools that support the necessary metadata.

Creators must also use tools with C2PA version 2.1 or higher for the label to show up —so I wouldn't expect to see this label popping up regularly on content anytime soon.

YouTube Lets the Bots Do the Talking

Tired of the endless cycle of responding to comments on your brand’s YouTube videos? The platform just announced that it’s testing AI-generated reply suggestions.

These replies attempt to match your “tone and style,” as the platform learns from your past interactions to give you ideas for how you should respond to video comments.

So far, creators in the test group seem, well… less than thrilled, with one user saying:

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