Ads on Autopilot

Today's News

• New Tricks for Google’s Performance Max Campaigns

• Auto-Adjustments? Not Today, Zuck!

• How SMBs Are Running Their Marketing Game

• Is the Podcast Ad Boom Real After All?

• Hello, Daze! Goodbye, Foursquare App!

New Tricks for Google’s Performance Max Campaigns

Every other week, our Google ads correspondent Jyll Saskin Gales walks us through the latest platform changes. Jyll spent six years at Google in a senior ad role, and today runs the Inside Google Ads training program.¹

This week:

• Google announced new image and video generation features for Performance Max campaigns to improve creative automation.

• Video enhancements allow for automated resizing to different formats like vertical videos.

• Performance Max experiments enable A/B testing of features like final URL expansion and feed-only settings, offering more transparency to advertisers.

• Google is encouraging advertisers to adopt Performance Max through various changes like removing smart campaigns and incorporating Ad Grants.

Be sure to check out Jyll’s Inside Google Ads training program¹

Auto-Adjustments? Not Today, Zuck!

It may be a good idea to review your Meta ad account, as a new default setting is letting Meta adjust your campaigns without your permission.

What’s happening

The tech giant has quietly activated a new "automatic adjustments" feature across several advertising accounts, letting its system make major changes to ad campaigns without advertiser approval.

The system can:

• Pause or activate campaigns.

• Adjust budgets up or down.

• Consolidate ad accounts.

• Consolidate audience segmentations and more.

Ad performance issues

Several advertisers have confirmed the setting being turned on by default and reported unapproved changes:

• One user on X said “...I was so confused when our Advantage Plus campaign dropped 40% in spend yesterday. Now I know.”

• Another ad expert told Search Engine Land, “It actually turned off profitable ad sets and slowed our ad spend. It also combined some of [our] lookalike audiences but thankfully we caught it. Basically, it was defeating the purpose of segmenting them.” 

How to opt out

If you'd prefer to maintain full control over your campaigns, here's how to opt out:

1. Navigate to “All tools”

2. Select “Automated rules”

3. Click “See automatic adjustments”

4. Access the “Manage automatic adjustments” page

5. Toggle the feature OFF

How SMBs Are Running Their Marketing Game

Wonder how other small businesses are running their marketing and spending their budgets?

A new report from digital marketing agency LocaliQ sheds light on how small and medium-sized businesses are navigating their marketing strategies and budgets for 2025.

Social media reigns supreme

The data shows that social media marketing has emerged as the leading medium for small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs), outperforming search advertising, SEO and email marketing.

When it comes to specific platforms, Facebook takes the crown, followed by Instagram and LinkedIn.

Performance insights

• In terms of marketing performance, SMBs report the highest satisfaction with search ads.

• Video ads, despite them only being used by 3 out of 10 SMBs, ranked second in performance satisfaction.

• In contrast, satisfaction with social media marketing dropped to tenth place.

Emerging trends

As for emerging trends, video promotions are gaining traction, driven by the rising popularity of short-form content. While half of the SMBs surveyed expressed interest in influencer marketing.

The data also shows that more than half of SMBs are now incorporating generative AI tools in their regular workflows, primarily for content creation and social media management.