Google moves brand AI Overviews aside as buyers question search budgets

For more than a decade the right-hand column of a Google results page belonged to the knowledge panel, a tidy box of facts a brand could claim, correct and largely control. On Monday, November 2, that column started carrying something else. Barry Schwartz of Search Engine Roundtable reported at 12:15 Eastern that Google has moved AI Overviews for many brand keywords into the right column of desktop results, lifting them out of the top and middle of the main results where they had sat. The same Monday, Digiday published conversations with 18 media buyers who said clients no longer treat Google search spend as automatic. And Google's own help documentation, PPC News Feed noted, now says Performance Max may hand brand queries back to Search campaigns. Taken together, the three items describe a results page whose most valuable territory, the query for a company's own name, is being rearranged by the company that sells it.

The brand query changes shape

Chris Long of Nectiv spotted the layout on November 2 and posted about it on X. "Instead of a Knowledge Panel, they're showing AI Overviews for brand terms in the right column," he wrote. David McSweeney had flagged the same pattern on October 31, writing that AI Overviews for branded searches were generally appearing in a right panel on desktop. Schwartz's examples included searches for Apple, Zillow, Coke and Google, and he described the move as "essentially replacing brand knowledge panels with AI Overviews." He added that the right column suited the format far better than the main results, while questioning whether an AI summary should be trusted to describe a brand better than the brand's own site.

PPC Land reported that Google moved AI Overviews for brand searches out of the main results without any announcement, and that the published examples all showed US results. The context matters. Ahrefs found AI Overviews on 63 of 100 brand names by September 30, 2026, with 48 of those in position one, against just five of 98 usable results on July 1. A separate Ahrefs measurement on September 29 put AI Overviews on 82.91% of branded keyword results. The Zillow example also exposed a factual wobble: the AI text gave 2006 as the company's founding year, while a fact row in the same panel gave 2004. Moving the summary sideways makes the main column look more like the old ten blue links for navigational searches, but it also hands the panel that brands used to manage to a generated answer that brands cannot edit.

The paid side of the brand query is shifting too. Google updated how Performance Max handles brand searches, PPC News Feed reported on November 2. The revised help page says Performance Max campaigns "may filter out navigational and brand-specific searches in favor of dedicated brand Search campaigns," so that brand queries are handled by campaigns with tighter controls. The page tells advertisers to give brand Search campaigns adequate budgets and strong ads to capture the filtered traffic, and says adding Search Themes to Performance Max may help keep the two aligned. For years advertisers complained that Performance Max quietly harvested cheap brand clicks and claimed the credit. The documentation now concedes the point, at least as policy.

Buyers stop waving search budgets through

Those changes landed in a market already asking harder questions. Krystal Scanlon and Sam Bradley reported in Digiday that Google search has lost its free pass with buyers, drawing on 18 media buyers who described clients scrutinising Google spend as AI Overviews and AI Mode answer more queries on the page, reducing clicks and prime ad slots. Lindsay Marty, founder of Above the Bar Marketing, put the contested slice at "10% to 20% of the Google budget." "The incremental 10% to 20% is becoming less automatic," she said.

Farhad Divecha, group chief executive of Accuracast, said about 10% of the Google budgets his clients manage are under question now, possibly rising to between 20% and 30% around Black Friday and Cyber Monday. "We definitely see advertisers looking at other options to invest budgets in, especially ChatGPT," he said. Bryce Hamlin, vice president of data intelligence at Power Digital, cited 10% to 30% of search budgets being reallocated.

The numbers behind the mood are mixed. Google search ad revenue grew 12% in the third quarter, Alphabet's slowest pace of the year, and executives attributed part of the slowdown to AI Mode. Michelle Merklin, vice president of search at Tinuiti, said branded keyword cost per click rose 5% in the quarter, while Tinuiti clients' Facebook spend rose 16%. Search still took $114.2 billion of US digital ad spend last year, or 38.8% of the total, the article noted, citing IAB and PwC. A Google spokesperson said AI Overviews "create new opportunities for brands." Brand queries rising in price while their organic panels turn into AI summaries is exactly the combination that makes a finance director ask what the brand budget is buying.

Google's quieter changes to the ads machine

Trust in Google's sales outreach took a knock of its own. Schwartz reported at 7:31 Eastern on November 2 that Google Ads strategists appear to be using AI-generated names and profile photos. Joe Youngblood posted on X that a contractor from Google's Extended Workforce called to push more ads; an hour after he declined, an email arrived from "Kassy Garcia," who claimed to be a Google Ads strategist. A LinkedIn search found nobody of that name, and Youngblood said Google's own AI checking tool flagged the profile photo as generated. "Google is using AI-generated people for Google Ads contacts," he wrote. Google's support page says its representatives "always have an email address that ends with @xwf.google.com." On November 2, Youngblood posted an update: another SEO had reported that a worker at an outsourcing firm that may work for Google had used Gemini to create a headshot. He deleted the original post and reposted it as a trust issue with the Extended Workforce. Schwartz said he had asked Google for comment and had received no reply.

Smaller changes appeared inside the interface. Thomas Eccel spotted a new Promotions offers section within Promotions in Google Ads, Search Engine Roundtable reported, which lets advertisers filter promotions by three statuses: offered, expired and invalidated. "Spotted a new section inside Promotions called Promotions offers," Eccel wrote on LinkedIn, suggesting Google could use the space to offer promotions to accounts. And in-stream ads and bumpers now run on YouTube Playables, PPC News Feed reported, with skippable, non-skippable and bumper formats serving before and during casual games in the mobile app "without requiring any additional setup from advertisers." That last phrase is the familiar one: new inventory, opted in by default.

The most consequential of the technical changes arrives in January. PPC Land reported that Google ad tags will gain full visitor IP addresses in server-side Google Tag Manager from January 11, 2027. An undated email headed "Updates to network signal processing in server-side tagging" says server-side containers will move from container-wide IP redaction to tag-level processing. Tags for Google Ads, Display & Video 360, Search Ads 360 and Campaign Manager 360 "will now accept the full IP address," while Google Analytics tags will keep redacting it. Google Ads freelancer Adriaan Dekker posted the email on LinkedIn on November 2. Google describes the change as opt-out, and the email requires "proper end-user notices and legally required consents," with EEA advertisers bound by Google's EU user consent policy. It mentions privacy-enhancing technologies and invalid traffic filtering but names no technology and gives no measurement figure. As of November 2, the Tag Manager release notes carried no entry. Shiva Mishra, a performance marketing specialist, called it "a massive shift for sGTM" in a comment under Dekker's post. AdSense's equivalent full-IP control, PPC Land noted, is off by default.

Even the icons moved. PPC Land reported that Google Messages, Phone and Contacts are getting gradient icons, rolling out from November 2 "over the coming weeks," to match the gradient "G" Google adopted company-wide on September 29, 2025. "Don't worry, the functionality of these apps isn't changing as a result of the new icons," Google's post said. The three apps follow 14 Workspace apps that received the treatment from May 19, 2026. PPC Land linked the refresh to Message Ads with RCS for Business, which Google listed at Google Marketing Live on May 20, 2026, a reminder that the Messages app is becoming ad inventory as well as a utility.

Publishers sue Brave and build doors for agents

The legal pressure on AI answer engines found a new target on November 2. PPC Land reported that The New York Times and three other papers sued Brave over AI answers and ad blocking. The New York Times Company, the New York Daily News, the Chicago Tribune and the Orlando Sentinel filed two federal complaints against Brave Software in the Southern District of New York, cases 26-cv-9549 and 26-cv-9554. Each pleads five counts: direct, contributory and vicarious copyright infringement, circumvention under the DMCA over the browser's paywall blocker, and unjust enrichment under New York law for replacing publishers' ads with Brave's own.

The complaints are specific. In one Times test, Brave's API returned 1,291 of 1,295 words of a single story. The Times says it warned Brave in letters dated August 11, 2025 and April 13, 2026, the first written by intellectual property counsel Carl Mazurek to chief executive Brendan Eich, and that Brave ignored both. "Brave's revenue came from displacing advertisements from which The Times would have derived revenue," the Times complaint states. The suits name no dollar figure and seek damages, restitution and a permanent injunction. They cite third-party estimates of Brave's 2025 revenue above $100 million across all products. Brave had not answered either complaint at publication. The ad-replacement count is the novel element: it frames Brave's privacy-first advertising model, not just its AI summaries, as taking publishers' revenue.

Some publishers are trying to set terms rather than sue. Jessica Davies reported in Digiday that People Inc. is building custom APIs to make its journalism easier for AI agents to use, moving away from web crawling and Amazon S3 buckets toward feeds that send article text in Markdown with author and publication details attached. Jon Roberts, chief innovation officer, told Digiday's Media Strategies London event that crawling is an inefficient way for AI systems to gather information. "Every token that needs to be processed is expensive," he said. The move came the week after People Inc. laid off about 6% of its staff. The article cited HUMAN's 2026 State of AI Traffic report, which found traffic from AI agents and agentic browsers up 7,851% year on year. Carly Steven, director of SEO and editorial commerce at the Daily Mail, said: "So that is a fairly urgent need that we all need to address." Forbes has built Markdown versions and an MCP layer for its Vetted reviews, Time has converted its pages to Markdown and sells ads to agents, and The Economist is testing agent-readable marketing material. Roberts said People Inc. is not focused on advertising directly to agents.

Fox and Apple post their advertising quarters

Two very different companies reported strong advertising quarters on November 2. PPC Land reported that Fox's advertising revenue rose 47% to $2.08 billion in the three months to September 30, driven by the FIFA Men's World Cup, early midterm buying and Tubi. Advertising, at $2,081 million, came within $3 million of distribution revenue of $2,084 million. Total revenue reached $4.57 billion, up 22%, and net income rose 57% to $957 million. Television advertising rose 60% to $1,708 million. "It's now over $350 million in political revenue throughout the cycle," said Lachlan Murdoch, executive chair and chief executive. The 10-Q also says FCC licences with a gross carrying value of $2.1 billion will be amortised over 20 years from July 1, 2026.

Allison Schiff of AdExchanger reported that Fox did not want to talk about Roku but had plenty to say about Tubi and politics. Murdoch said shareholder and foreign regulatory approvals for the Roku deal are in, but antitrust clearance from the Justice Department is still pending. Tubi revenue grew 35% and total view time rose 23%; Tubi for Creators, launched in 2025 with six creators, now has more than 600. About $50 million of the political haul came through Tubi and $250 million plus went to local stations. "It's effectively local local revenue because it's targeted," Murdoch said. Fox News primetime viewership fell 17% to 2.1 million on Nielsen figures cited in the piece, and about 97% of new Fox One subscribers lack a cable subscription.

Apple, which publishes no advertising figure, said something unusual about it. PPC Land reported that Apple's ad business set an all-time record as Services grew to $31.6 billion in the fiscal fourth quarter to September 26. Services revenue was $31.573 billion, up 9.8% from $28.750 billion, and produced 43.7% of gross profit from 27.6% of revenue. Chief financial officer Kevan Parekh said advertising set an all-time revenue record, with Maps ads live in the US and Canada since August 21, 2026. Total revenue was $114.477 billion. Chief executive John Ternus, presenting his first results since succeeding Tim Cook, cited "a September quarter revenue record of $114.5 billion, up 12 percent from a year ago." Apple guided Services growth to 8% to 9% for the December quarter, citing third-party licensing and foreign exchange, after growth of 16% in March and 12% in June.

Streaming measurement reaches Australia and the Gulf

Netflix's ad tier is joining a national currency. PPC Land reported that Netflix's ad tier will enter Australia's official TV ratings in February 2027 under a multi-year agreement with OzTAM, bringing census-level viewing into VOZ, the industry currency developed with Nielsen. Stage one went live on November 2 in OzTAM's Q3 2026 Streamscape report, which splits Netflix ad tier viewing from ad-free viewing on connected TVs. Stage two starts February 1, 2027, when the ad tier joins broadcast and broadcaster streaming data in one database, with Netflix data delivered monthly rather than daily. In the third quarter, Netflix held 19.7% of connected TV streaming, the ad tier 5.1% and ad-free plans 14.6%. Karen Halligan, chief executive of OzTAM, called it "a significant step towards a more complete view of how Australians watch video." No financial terms were disclosed.

Gulf viewers, meanwhile, say they will tolerate more ads than East Asian ones. PPC Land reported that Gulf streamers are open to 8 minutes of ads per hour, Magnite found, in a survey of 1,184 adults in Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Qatar conducted with Bounce Insights in September 2026. That is one minute more than Magnite's South Korea and Hong Kong editions. Among connected TV streamers, 83% always or often watch with others, and 79% say they stream more than a year ago. Only 34% of smartphone and connected TV viewers could clearly recall details of an ad from their last session, and 81% want generative AI ads disclosed. The report is self-reported, produced for a seller of streaming inventory, and publishes no margin of error.

SiriusXM bets on creators and anglers

SiriusXM's podcast strategy is moving from networks to individuals. Alyssa Mercante reported in Digiday that Giggly Squad's SiriusXM deal signals a shift from podcast networks to creator ecosystems. The multi-year agreement with Paige DeSorbo and Hannah Berner, reportedly valued at $160 million, was signed in October, and weeks later the pair sold out four nights at Madison Square Garden, which Digiday called a first for a female-hosted podcast. "We're working with specific talent as opposed to a specific network," said Adam Sachs, senior vice president of podcast content, who described a podcast as audio, video, social and live. "It's even caught us on our heels, honestly, the demand for Giggly," said Kelli Hurley, head of content and podcast partnership, adding that the company "took a total pause" to reset its sales approach. Tom Webster of Sounds Profitable said podcast reach has been flat since 2024, though 8% of listeners started in the past month.

The same company is selling to a narrower crowd. PPC Land reported that SiriusXM now offers its Fish Mapping app for $199 a year without a satellite plan. The rebuilt app, developed with OceanBytes of Herndon, Virginia, launched on November 2 at $24.99 a week, $199 a year for mobile or $299 a year with desktop access, against $109.99 a month for the satellite plan that previously carried it. It adds AI-generated daily Hot Zones. "We are thrilled to bring this data to the recreational sportfish market together with SiriusXM," said Vipul Prasad, chief executive of OceanBytes.

Amazon and TikTok Shop tighten the commerce rules

Amazon raised the bar for small sellers in risky categories on November 2. PPC Land reported that Amazon now requires $1 million of liability cover from small sellers in safety categories, regardless of monthly sales, for new and existing listings. The named categories include children's products, cosmetics and ingestibles, and lithium batteries. Sellers based in mainland China must buy insurance through the Amazon Insurance Accelerator. "Starting November 2, 2026, we will reject newly submitted insurance policies that are not obtained through AIA," the notice states. The older rule, requiring cover within a month of passing $10,000 in monthly gross proceeds, still applies to everyone else.

Amazon also priced the holiday table. PPC Land reported that Amazon is selling a Thanksgiving meal with an 8 lb turkey for $25, announced on November 2 with 15 product lines, seven of them Amazon Grocery private label, and free same-day delivery on qualifying orders in more than 2,300 US cities and towns until November 26. Frozen turkey is $0.79 a pound through November. "Customers love the convenience of getting everything they need for the holidays delivered," said Jason Buechel, who leads Amazon Worldwide Grocery Stores and Whole Foods Market. Walmart's competing basket costs $35 and claims to feed 10. Amazon gives no serving count.

TikTok Shop wants credit for sales that happen elsewhere. PPC Land reported that TikTok Shop now counts brand website sales in a new long-window LIVE metric, published in TikTok Shop Academy on November 2 for US brand merchants. LIVE long-term GMV adds direct, indirect, onsite spillover and offsite spillover sales over a two-week attribution window, with offsite spillover requiring a Pixel. "The value of brand live commerce goes beyond the sales generated inside the live room," the guide says. It warns of duplicate counting when shops share a Pixel and contains no incrementality testing, and its Live Diagnosis tool uses a 24-hour window, so the same stream can show two different sales figures.

Deals, chairs and new tools in ad tech

Several companies used November 2 to announce changes. PPC Land reported that Yext completed its acquisition of Flamel.ai, an AI platform that runs localised paid campaigns for franchise and multi-location brands, a little over a month after signing at its Envision conference on September 30. No price was disclosed. "Joining Yext gives our customers a faster path to new networks through Yext's direct publisher relationships," said Paul Ehlinger, Flamel's founder. Yext's fiscal second-quarter revenue was $111.1 million.

Two in-content placement firms are combining. Trishla Ostwal reported in Adweek that Rembrand and Whisper World will merge and are eyeing an IPO. The largely stock deal, expected to close in January, creates WRLabs, led by Whisper World founder Manav Kapoor as group chief executive, with Rembrand chief executive Omar Tawakol as co-chair. WRLabs claims about 450 employees in eight countries and around 3,000 advertisers. Whisper World completes about 30,000 insertions a year. "They solved a problem nobody had solved, including us," Tawakol said.

OpenX has another leader. PPC Land reported that Robert Horler became OpenX's third chief executive since January, following the death of longtime chief John Gentry in January 2026 and the departure of Matt Sattel at the end of June. Interim chief Joshua Metzger returns to his legal role. The release claims "15 consecutive quarters of year-over-year revenue growth"; a November 2025 release had cited 12. "I've sat on every side of the table," Horler said.

Smartly launched a planning tier. PPC Land reported that Smartly's Intelligence Pro flags where extra ad spend may stop paying off, bundling Reach Planner, Headroom Analysis, Benchmarks and INCRMNTAL Connect for eligible customers. Smartly says it manages more than $7 billion of spend for over 800 brands; no price or validation data was published. "As AI accelerates campaign execution, the quality of each decision matters more," said Maxwell Tang, chief product officer.

T-Mobile reshuffled its creative roster. PPC Land reported that Highdive won T-Mobile's lead creative account, with Anomaly named strategic brand transformation partner and the in-house T-Studios adding AI production tools. "By combining world-class strategic and creative talent with the power of AI," said Lucy McLellan, chief brand and communications officer. T-Mobile reported $2,783 million of advertising expense in the first nine months of 2026.

Agencies are feeling the AI effect from the client side. Michael Bürgi's Digiday Media Buying Briefing from the Media Buying Summit in Newport Beach recounted agency-only sessions under Chatham House rules where attendees said client briefs have worsened. "I've seen some of the worst briefs I've ever seen in my career recently," one said. Another described an 18-page brief clearly written with AI whose author "didn't have any idea what was in it."

Labels, ratings and oversight for AI

How AI-made ads should be labelled drew a pointed argument. Sourin Chakrabarti, a Meta software engineer writing in a personal capacity, argued in AdExchanger that AI labels do not tell consumers whether an ad's claims are real. Labels "flag the production tool, not the illusion," he wrote, citing a Full Fact investigation into a fake doctor claiming ties to Guy's and St Thomas' NHS Foundation Trust, which called the posts "completely fraudulent." Advertisers created three times as many Gemini-generated assets on Google in 2025 as in 2024, including nearly 70 million in the final quarter. He proposed a risk-based approach built on the IAB's January 2026 framework, rejecting fabricated endorsements and invented experts outright. "A generic label tells consumers that AI was used to build an ad," he wrote.

Apple tightened age ratings. PPC Land reported that Apple will force an 18+ rating on dating and relationship apps by January 12. App Store Connect adds Shared Location and Dating and Relationships descriptors from November 16, and "Apps that include Dating and Relationships receive a minimum age rating of 18+," Apple told developers on November 2. All apps must complete the declarations by January 12, 2027. Deepsee research cited by PPC Land found 2,589 of 4,346 AI companion apps rated accessible to minors.

OpenAI published a safety figure. PPC Land reported that OpenAI made more than 200 law enforcement referrals in the third quarter of 2026, in a post dated October 30 that also said ChatGPT will give less detail on past mass attacks, may end chats fixated on harming someone, and will publish a Community Safety Report every six months from early 2027. The post gave no baseline for the referral number.

Bluesky gave users a view of their own records. PPC Land reported that the Bluesky app gained a moderation inbox that shows strikes against accounts, in beta from October 30, collecting reports, actions and appeals and flagging accounts at risk of permanent suspension. "The beta release gives us the chance to find and fix problems," Bluesky said. It did not say how many strikes trigger a ban.

Two pieces of research questioned how far automation can certify itself. PPC Land reported that no algorithm can certify that AI agents keep their goals, a SUSTech paper argues, in a preprint posted on October 30 by five researchers at the Southern University of Science and Technology. Using a halting-problem argument, the authors say human checkpoints remain a structural requirement; "Verification is already falling behind output," they write. The paper has not been peer reviewed. And PPC Land reported that Aleyda Solis turned Google's content quality guidance into 83 checks, published November 2 with a Claude Skill, with 76 of the checks linked to 11 Google documents and no numeric score. "Zero problems is a valid outcome," the skill's instructions state.

Holiday creative goes handmade

The season's creative leaned on craft and celebrity. Katie Duffy reported in Adweek that Kay sends Colin Jost on a gift-seeking odyssey, a Martin Agency campaign in which a bearded Jost braves a blizzard in the manner of Homer to find a silver Kay necklace. "The holidays often bring pressure to find the perfect gift," said Julie Yoakum, president of Kay. The work cites an American Psychological Association survey finding 40% of people struggle to find the right gifts.

Rebecca Stewart reported that Levi's rings in sweater season with Gus, a claymation yeti, in a "Let's Get Fuzzy" spot that took four hours to film each second and nods to the brand's 1995 "Clayman" commercial. Chief marketing officer Kenny Mitchell called it a "celebration of the craft and human creativity synonymous with the Levi's brand." Alixandra Rutnik reported that e.l.f. Cosmetics recruited Alan Cumming to narrate its first holiday ad, "Made to Stand Out," a stop-motion story of three friends who never fit in at school. And Andrea Michelson reported that Vaseline is staging a lotion swap in New York at Flatiron Plaza on Saturday, November 7, where people can trade disappointing moisturisers for its Cherry Aura and Vanilla Comfort scents. Kate Godbout, head of Vaseline North America, said the brand offers "sensory with substance." In a week when Google handed brand panels to generated text, two of the biggest holiday campaigns chose clay.