Continuation protocol
A continuation protocol is the submission or study plan that lets approved human research, and its participants, carry on past an expiring approval or trial.
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Smart Bidding
Smart Bidding is Google Ads' set of automated bid strategies that use machine learning to price each auction for conversions or value. How it works and why.
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Game: Follow the budget to find who really runs the account
Sixteen terms, four groups of four. Sunday's grid sits in the middle of the week's range, built on vocabulary that has held still for years, with one sly group.
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Meta grants itself the right to crawl advertisers' websites for AI
Meta's new terms let it crawl and train AI on advertisers' websites from October 30, 2026, as a survey found 16% of consumers grant AI data access reluctantly.
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Google Ads PM says target or budget changes cause no learning period
Bids scale in proportion to new targets on steady campaigns, Tal Akabas said on Oct 15. Re-engagement mode reaches PMax; Search and Shopping are next in line.
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Adobe's $275.1bn holiday forecast gets a correction, not new numbers
Only one phrase changed: Amazon's October event now dates to 2022, not 2021. The first test of the forecast, Prime Big Deal Days, came in at $9.86bn vs $9.9bn.
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ChatGPT gains control of Chrome tabs to fill forms and send messages
Work mode can send messages, fill forms and download files in open Chrome tabs, while Chat only reads them. Which ChatGPT plans get tab control is unclear.
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Explaining Customer Match
Customer Match is Google's feature for uploading hashed first-party customer lists, such as emails and phone numbers, to target or exclude known users in ads.
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Explaining automated decision-making
Automated decision-making is a decision about a person taken by technical means without meaningful human involvement, restricted in the EU by GDPR Article 22.
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Explaining inference cost
Inference cost is the compute and money spent each time a trained AI model answers a request. How it is priced per token, who pays it, and why ads now fund it.
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Engineer sues Cassie Millz over gym clip in 3.3m-view transition Reel
Captioned "Me before I became a girl," the clip allegedly steered viewers to OnlyFans. Could a June copyright registration unlock $150,000 in statutory damages?
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Floodlight gains Google signed-in data to recover unattributed conversions
DV360, Search Ads 360 and Campaign Manager 360 reports are in scope, and DV360 also retires an advertiser-level page. How far will conversion counts shift?
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Pulse
News from the programmatic advertising and ad tech industry. PPC Land covers platform updates, acquisitions, privacy and policy shifts, research, and product launches across display, video, search, social, retail media, audio, digital out-of-home, and mixed reality — and the data and AI developments reshaping how ads are bought and sold.
Meta grants itself the right to crawl advertisers' websites for AI
Meta's new terms let it crawl and train AI on advertisers' websites from October 30, 2026, as a survey found 16% of consumers grant AI data access reluctantly.
Google Ads PM says target or budget changes cause no learning period
Bids scale in proportion to new targets on steady campaigns, Tal Akabas said on Oct 15. Re-engagement mode reaches PMax; Search and Shopping are next in line.
Adobe's $275.1bn holiday forecast gets a correction, not new numbers
Only one phrase changed: Amazon's October event now dates to 2022, not 2021. The first test of the forecast, Prime Big Deal Days, came in at $9.86bn vs $9.9bn.
ChatGPT gains control of Chrome tabs to fill forms and send messages
Work mode can send messages, fill forms and download files in open Chrome tabs, while Chat only reads them. Which ChatGPT plans get tab control is unclear.
Engineer sues Cassie Millz over gym clip in 3.3m-view transition Reel
Captioned "Me before I became a girl," the clip allegedly steered viewers to OnlyFans. Could a June copyright registration unlock $150,000 in statutory damages?
Floodlight gains Google signed-in data to recover unattributed conversions
DV360, Search Ads 360 and Campaign Manager 360 reports are in scope, and DV360 also retires an advertiser-level page. How far will conversion counts shift?
Google's DV360 now requires a business name and logo on YouTube ads
Brand auction and instant deals are covered, and one rejected logo disapproves the whole ad. Which YouTube formats can actually carry the new assets in DV360?
Google lets gambling advertisers apply for certification inside Google Ads
Online gambling is the only category in the new Admin > Policy > Account section, and existing certificates stay put. Who gets it first, and what changes next?
Google's Universal Cart calls retailers once, and only at transfer
Merchants get no signal when a shopper saves a product, and Google's reports start at Clicks to Buy. Can retailers measure a cart they never see filling up?
Character.ai faces creditors under oath on November 19, a day before bids
No deadline yet for claims against the chatbot maker, so ad partners and states owed money wait, while a Jan 19 cutoff already applies to fraud-type claims.
Landline
The daily newsletter from PPC Land, covering programmatic advertising and ad tech. Each edition arrives in your inbox with the day’s key developments: DSP and SSP shifts, privacy rules, measurement changes, and the deals and lawsuits shaping the industry. Skim it in minutes or follow the links for the full story. Free to subscribe, with a Supporter option for an ad-free experience.
Meta grants itself the right to crawl advertisers' websites for AI
Meta's new terms let it crawl and train AI on advertisers' websites from October 30, 2026, as a survey found 16% of consumers grant AI data access reluctantly.
Google's Universal Cart reaches US shoppers as Meta flips browsing on
Google's Universal Cart went live in US Search and Gemini, while Meta set in-app product browsing to switch on by default in existing ads on October 28, 2026.
Meta named a future that never came. Amazon Ads Agent names one that exists
Facebook's 2021 rename to Meta backed a metaverse that lost over $70bn. Amazon's Ads Agent rename backs software already live, so the real test is its fees.
Google Ads lets advertisers cap Display spend, on a best-effort basis
Google Ads now lets advertisers rank channels and cap Display and partner spend by percentage, as 40 attorneys general set terms for Character.ai's user data.
Norway fines Xandr NOK 92m over Grindr data after nearly seven years
Norway fined Microsoft's Xandr NOK 92m over Grindr users' data nearly seven years after the complaint, as EU rules, Google ad policies and budgets shifted.
Meta's Muse agent puts well-known merchants first as it gains ad accounts
Meta's Muse shopping agent must rank well-known merchants first and now reaches ad accounts, as agents, verifiers and footnotes shape the day's marketing news.
Turkey orders state age tokens for social media from November 1
Turkey will require state-issued age tokens and bar under-15s from social media from November 1, as Apple, Anthropic and an AI sandbox face questions of proof.
Google optimises its own revenue. Advertisers have to optimise theirs
Google's August 17 bidding change, AI Max defaults and court findings on ad pricing show a platform optimising its revenue while advertisers fight for theirs.
EU Council draft cuts cookie consent re-ask wait to four months
An EU Council draft lets websites ask again for cookie consent after four months and exempts contextual ad measurement, while Ireland's DPC took 2,951 days.
Google's September spam update ends after 13 days as manual actions rise
Google's September 2026 spam update finished on October 8 after 13 days and 16 hours, its longest run since August 2025, as SEOs report more manual actions.
Decoded
Reference articles that each go deep on a single ad tech term. Every entry in the Explaining series opens with a plain-language definition, then covers the mechanics, origins, key dates, limitations, and commonly confused adjacent terms - grounded in PPC Land coverage, platform documentation, and industry standards from bodies like the IAB.
Continuation protocol
A continuation protocol is the submission or study plan that lets approved human research, and its participants, carry on past an expiring approval or trial.
Smart Bidding
Smart Bidding is Google Ads' set of automated bid strategies that use machine learning to price each auction for conversions or value. How it works and why.
Explaining Customer Match
Customer Match is Google's feature for uploading hashed first-party customer lists, such as emails and phone numbers, to target or exclude known users in ads.
Explaining automated decision-making
Automated decision-making is a decision about a person taken by technical means without meaningful human involvement, restricted in the EU by GDPR Article 22.
Explaining inference cost
Inference cost is the compute and money spent each time a trained AI model answers a request. How it is priced per token, who pays it, and why ads now fund it.
Explaining native advertising
Native advertising is paid media that matches the form and function of the content around it, from in-feed units to branded articles, sold direct or via OpenRTB.
Explaining plagiarism detection
Plagiarism detection is software that compares text with indexed sources to flag copied or paraphrased passages, as used by Turnitin, Copyscape and Google.
Explaining target frequency
Target frequency is a buying setting that aims ad delivery at an average number of exposures per person per week or month, used in YouTube and Meta campaigns.
Explaining consumer privacy ombudsman
A consumer privacy ombudsman is a neutral expert appointed under US bankruptcy law to advise a court before a debtor sells customer data its policy shields.
Explaining automatic stay
An automatic stay is the legal freeze on lawsuits, debt collection and asset seizures against a debtor that starts the moment a US bankruptcy case is filed.
Gridlock
Daily word games for advertising professionals. Test how well you really know the industry: a new Connections-style grid every day, sorting 16 ad tech terms into four hidden groups, plus a weekly crossword built from the terminology that fills programmatic briefs, DSP dashboards, and measurement decks. Free to play, no account needed. Come back each morning for a fresh puzzle — and find out whether you know your bid shading from your supply path optimization.
Game: Follow the budget to find who really runs the account
Sixteen terms, four groups of four. Sunday's grid sits in the middle of the week's range, built on vocabulary that has held still for years, with one sly group.
Game: For the person who reads release notes so nobody else has to
Sixteen terms, four groups of four. Friday's grid is the hard one: it leans on the plumbing under the platforms, and one group rewards a groan.
Game: What a strategist actually does between kickoff and the deck
Sixteen terms, four groups of four. A standard Thursday grid that runs from page markup to planning theory, with one group that is easier to see than to name.
Game: Every measurement debate eventually reaches the denominator
Sixteen terms, four groups of four. A standard midweek grid leaning on commerce, creators and reporting, with one group that is harder to close than it looks.
Game: Dynamic creative ships faster than anyone can proof it
Sixteen terms, four groups of four. A gentle one that leans on production work and the companies under the cloud, with one group hiding in plain sight.
Game: Every new job title arrives with its own private glossary
Sixteen terms, four groups of four. A gentle start to the week across search, privacy and platform history, with two tiles that look at home in two places.
Game: Marketing vocabulary that sounds friendlier than it is
Sixteen terms, four groups of four. This grid leans on search and the legal side of the job, and one group rewards a long memory more than daily practice.
Game: Client calls expose which words you only half know
Sixteen terms, four groups of four. Fluency in one corner of the business will not carry you through this grid, and one group resists it entirely.
Game: The channel you grew up in shows in your vocabulary
Sixteen terms sort into four groups of four. Three sit in corners of the job plenty of buyers never work in, and the hardest group predates the web.
Game: Inside a walled garden, even the nouns are proprietary
Sixteen terms sort into four groups of four. Two come straight off the daily stack, one is gentler than it looks, and one has nothing to do with screens.