Google revised the default set of ad technology partners inside AdSense on July 16, 2026, adjusting which vendors automatically receive user consent signals across publisher sites in the European Economic Area, the UK, and Switzerland. The change was published in the AdSense Help Center's Announcements section and takes effect immediately for publishers who have not built a custom partner configuration. It is the third distinct revision to this list that Google has disclosed since the spring of 2025, following updates in June 2025 and an experimental cycle that began in April 2026.

For publishers who never touch the relevant setting, the practical effect is simple but easy to miss: the companies permitted to serve and measure ads on their sites under GDPR-governed consent flows can change without any action on the publisher's part. Whatever list Google publishes becomes, by default, the list of vendors that receive user consent.

What changed on July 16

According to Google's announcement, the set of commonly used ad technology partners was updated on July 16, 2026. The company describes the criteria for inclusion in familiar terms. According to Google, the list reflects partners that work most closely with publishers globally, determined by data collected from all programmatic demand sources, as well as meeting the company's privacy standards. That phrasing has appeared, with only minor variation, across each of the prior update announcements Google has issued for this same list.

The commonly used set is not a static roster. Google states plainly, and has stated in each previous version of this documentation, that publishers who do not engage with the partner selection controls will have this list serve on their behalf by default. Because the criteria driving inclusion are tied to revenue data and privacy compliance rather than a fixed roster of names, the list is designed to shift over time. Some vendors gain default status; others lose it. Neither Google's announcement nor its companion documentation page discloses a specific count of additions or removals tied to the July 16 revision, and no comprehensive machine-readable diff between the April 2026 version and the July 2026 version was published alongside the update.

The current version of the list, as published on Google's Manage Ad Technology Partners help page, continues to include many of the largest names in programmatic advertising. Amazon, Criteo, Adform, Adobe Advertising Cloud, AppNexus (operating as Xandr), Index Exchange, Magnite, PubMatic, OpenX Technologies, and The Trade Desk all appear in the commonly used table, alongside measurement and verification firms including Nielsen, comScore, Kantar, DoubleVerify, and Integral Ad Science. Media owners and platforms such as Meta, LinkedIn, Yahoo, Roku Advertising Services, and Samba TV are listed as well, along with data and identity providers including LiveRamp, Oracle Data Cloud, Bombora, Epsilon, Neustar, and Dynata.

How the commonly used set functions inside AdSense

The mechanism behind this list is documented on Google's Manage Ad Technology Partners (ATPs) page, a companion resource that predates the July 16 update and explains the underlying architecture. Google built these controls, according to the documentation, so that publishers can choose the ad technology partners they work with and remain in control of activity on their own sites. The commonly used set exists specifically as a fallback for publishers who do not exercise that choice directly.

The distinction between engaging with the controls and relying on the default is not incidental; it is the entire point of the mechanism. According to the documentation, if a publisher does not engage with the controls, the commonly used set of ad technology partners indicated will serve. Google adds that this set comprises the ad technology partners representing the most revenue to publishers from all programmatic demand sources - a criterion based on aggregate market data rather than any individual publisher's preferences.

Publishers can inspect both the controls and the list of ad technology partners currently active on their account inside Privacy & messaging, under the European regulations settings page, in the menu labeled "Your ad partners." The same controls surface across three Google properties. According to the documentation, these settings are available in Ad Manager, AdSense, and AdMob accounts, meaning the July 16 update carries implications beyond AdSense publishers alone, touching app monetization through AdMob and larger publisher operations running Ad Manager.

Two separate consent mechanisms determine how partner data flows through the list. The first is the IAB Transparency and Consent Framework, the industry-standard mechanism through which a publisher's consent management platform communicates user choices to advertising vendors. The second is Google's own Additional Consent specification, a supplementary mechanism for vendors that are not registered on the IAB's Global Vendor List but still require a distinct consent signal to serve or measure ads.

The list published in Google's documentation marks, for each partner, whether that partner requires consent via Google's Additional Consent specification. Companies such as AppLovin, ironSource Mobile, Unity Ads, and Cloudflare are marked as requiring consent through this Additional Consent mechanism rather than through the standard IAB framework alone. That distinction carries technical weight for consent management platform providers. A CMP configured only to pass standard IAB TCF strings may not automatically transmit consent signals to vendors that sit exclusively under the Additional Consent specification, creating a gap between what a publisher believes is being disclosed and what is actually reaching every vendor on the list.

Google maintains a separate, machine-readable version of the commonly used partners list as a JSON file, published at a fixed URL and updated each time the underlying list changes. According to the documentation, this file can be used by certified consent management platforms to help inform ad vendor selections for publishers using their consent management solutions. In practice, this means the July 16 revision propagates automatically into any CMP that queries the file programmatically, without requiring that CMP's operator to read Google's help center announcement at all.

Opting out through a custom list

Publishers who want to avoid future automatic changes retain a specific mechanism for doing so. According to Google's announcement, publishers can select "Do not automatically include commonly used ad partners" in the "Your ad partners" menu. Choosing that option creates a custom list, pre-filled with the publisher's current selections, which the publisher can then modify independently of whatever Google does with the commonly used set going forward.

Once a custom list is in place, changes such as the July 16 revision no longer apply to that publisher's account. The tradeoff is that the publisher then assumes direct responsibility for maintaining that list, adding new vendors manually as relationships develop and removing vendors that no longer apply. Publishers using a third-party consent management platform face a related distinction: according to the underlying ATP documentation, when a third-party CMP is used to collect GDPR consent, the list of ad technology partners is managed through that CMP provider rather than through AdSense settings directly, meaning those publishers would need to confirm with their CMP how a Google-side list change is reflected in their own consent configuration.

Underneath both paths - the default list and the custom list - sits an obligation that does not change based on which option a publisher selects. According to the documentation, it is the publisher's responsibility to build a vendor list that meets IAB TCF and GDPR transparency requirements. The EU User Consent Policy requires that publishers clearly identify each party with whom data will be shared, according to Google, and that requirement applies equally whether the publisher relies on the commonly used set or maintains a custom configuration.

A pattern with two prior cycles on record

The July 16 update follows a documented sequence rather than arriving as an isolated event. Google previously announced an update to this same list on April 30, 2025, with that revision taking effect on or after June 2, 2025. Nearly a year later, Google announced a two-phase experiment on April 6, 2026, under which a modified partner list began testing with a subset of publishers on or after April 20, 2026, with a permanent update to follow on or after June 5, 2026 if the experiment was judged beneficial for publishers. At the time that experiment was announced, the underlying JSON file listed 199 providers spanning both the IAB Global Vendor List and Google's Additional Consent specification.

Neither Google's July 16 announcement nor its companion ATP documentation page states explicitly whether the current revision represents the outcome of that April 2026 experiment, arriving roughly six weeks after the June 5 target, or whether it constitutes a separate, subsequent cycle layered on top of it. The announcement text does not reference the April experiment by name, and no changelog connecting the two events was published alongside the July update.

What is clear from the pattern itself is its frequency. Three distinct update announcements - April 2025, April 2026, and July 2026 - have altered or proposed to alter this same default list within a period of roughly fourteen months. Each has used substantially similar language to describe its rationale: partners are included based on the revenue they represent to publishers from programmatic demand sources, tempered by compliance with Google's privacy standards. Publishers assessing the list as a fixed reference point, checked once and left alone, would have missed two revisions before this one and are now facing a third.

Why this matters for the marketing community

The commonly used set functions as an operational default with direct revenue consequences, not merely as a piece of internal Google documentation. PPC Land's coverage of the April 2026 experiment noted that a vendor removed from the commonly used set, and not explicitly added to a publisher's custom list, is treated in EEA, UK, and Swiss contexts as lacking the consent needed to serve or measure ads - meaning ad requests to that vendor are either blocked outright or served without personalization, typically at a reduced effective rate. The July 16 revision operates under the identical mechanism: whichever companies hold default status after this update are the companies collecting user consent on a publisher's behalf starting now, and whichever companies do not hold that status are not, absent a publisher's custom configuration.

This list update also does not arrive in isolation from the broader consent infrastructure Google has been building out across 2025 and 2026. Google mandated that all publishers and consent management platforms complete migration to TCF version 2.3 by February 28, 2026, a deadline that passed with enforcement confirmed active in March 2026, introducing a specific error code for ad requests where the required disclosed-vendors segment was missing, malformed, or excluded Google's own vendor identifier. Publishers managing that transition were, within roughly six weeks of the enforcement deadline, also asked to absorb the April 2026 partner list experiment. The July 16 revision now adds a further data point to an already dense compliance calendar, one where framework version requirements, default vendor lists, and consent optimization settings are each capable of shifting independently of one another.

The compressed timing raises a practical question for publisher operations teams: how many of these list changes are being tracked systematically, as opposed to assumed static once reviewed. A publisher who confirmed their vendor list was accurate in April 2026, satisfied that IAB TCF and GDPR transparency requirements were met, would need to have separately checked again in July to know whether that same list still reflected reality. Nothing in Google's announcement structure - a help-center post, without a dedicated notification requiring active acknowledgment - guarantees that check happens.

For the trade side of the marketing community, the recurring nature of these updates also complicates any assumption that "commonly used" implies stability. The phrase describes a category defined by revenue share and privacy compliance, recalculated periodically, rather than a fixed roster that publishers can treat as settled once reviewed.

Timeline

  • April 30, 2025: Google announces a prior update to the commonly used set of ad technology providers for AdSense
  • June 2, 2025: That prior update takes effect
  • February 28, 2026: Mandatory deadline passes for all publishers and consent management platforms to migrate to TCF version 2.3
  • April 6, 2026: Google announces a two-phase experiment to update the commonly used ad technology partner list, with the underlying JSON file showing 199 providers at that time
  • April 20, 2026 (on or after): The experiment begins with a modified partner list tested among a subset of publishers
  • June 5, 2026 (on or after): Target date for a permanent list update, contingent on the experiment being judged beneficial for publishers
  • July 16, 2026: Google updates the commonly used set of ad technology partners for AdSense, effective immediately for publishers relying on the default configuration

Summary

Who: Google, through AdSense, Ad Manager, and AdMob, affecting publishers globally who rely on the default commonly used set of ad technology partners for consent management in the European Economic Area, the UK, and Switzerland. Certified consent management platforms that query Google's JSON file are also affected.

What: Google updated the commonly used set of ad technology partners inside AdSense on July 16, 2026. The list determines which vendors automatically receive user consent under GDPR-governed flows for publishers who have not configured a custom partner list. The update is the third disclosed revision to this list since April 2025, following a prior update effective June 2025 and an experimental cycle announced in April 2026.

When: The update was published July 16, 2026, in the AdSense Help Center. It follows a June 2, 2025 effective date for the previous list version and an April 2026 experiment that targeted a permanent update on or after June 5, 2026.

Where: The changes apply to AdSense, Ad Manager, and AdMob accounts, with operational effect specifically in the European Economic Area, the UK, and Switzerland - the jurisdictions where GDPR and Google's EU User Consent Policy govern which ad technology partners may serve and measure personalized advertising by default.

Why: According to Google, the list reflects partners that work most closely with publishers globally, based on data collected from all programmatic demand sources, as well as meeting the company's privacy standards. For publishers, the consequence is direct: any vendor gaining or losing default status changes which companies collect user consent and, correspondingly, which companies can serve or measure ads on a given site without further publisher action.