Six weeks before Black Friday, the two largest advertising platforms each moved a little more of the shopping journey onto their own surfaces. Neither move asked the merchants involved for much permission.

Google began rolling out Universal Cart on October 15, and the product reached US Search and the Gemini app, but not YouTube, PPC Land reported the same day. The cart holds items from many stores at once, saves them across Search, including AI Mode, and Gemini, tracks price and stock, and alerts shoppers to price drops and restocks. It surfaces promotional codes and card perks through Google Wallet, and checkout runs either through Google Pay or by handing the cart to the merchant's site over the Universal Commerce Protocol. Nike, Sephora, Target, Ulta Beauty, Walmart, Wayfair and "many Shopify merchants" are named for checkout. The underlying Shopping Graph holds more than 60 billion listings, with over 2 billion refreshed every hour.

What is missing matters as much as what shipped. Google previewed the cart at I/O on May 19 and promised a US launch in the summer; it arrived about five months later, and without YouTube and Gmail, which Google had named in May. The launch post, written by Suresh Ganapathy, senior director of product management for consumer shopping, says nothing about merchant fees, how products are ranked, what data is shared or how many merchants take part. Merchants, Google said, "will remain the seller of record." For affiliates and deal sites, the more consequential change is that more of the steps before a purchase now happen on Google's pages. An Originality.ai scan found only 26 detectable UCP implementations across more than three million websites, PPC Land noted, so the protocol on which the cart depends remains thinly adopted.

Barry Schwartz of Search Engine Roundtable reported the rollout on October 15 through a post on X by Vidhya Srinivasan, vice president and general manager of ads and commerce at Google, who announced the US rollout across Search and the Gemini app. "It's giving everyone an intelligent shopping cart and a new hub for shopping on Google," she wrote. The phrase "a new hub for shopping on Google" is the plainest statement yet of the ambition.

Meta's default switch

Meta's move came by email. The company told advertisers it will turn on in-app product browsing in existing Facebook and Instagram ads on October 28, PPC Land reported on October 15. A tap on an eligible ad will open product details and suggested items inside the app rather than sending the user straight to the advertiser's site. Advertisers can opt out in advance or toggle the feature for each ad in Advantage+ Creative and Destination settings. Meta's notice claimed that "On average, businesses saw 3% more conversions with in-app product browsing experiences compared to campaigns that didn't use product browsing," based on an experiment run from August 6 to 21 across about 117,700 advertisers. It did not define the conversion metric.

The timing drew the objection. The change lands 30 days before Black Friday, on November 27, with 14 days' notice. "Forcing product browsing on RIGHT as the biggest season of the year starts is downright diabolical," wrote David Herrmann, president of Herrmann Digital, on LinkedIn. "Monitoring Meta for constant changes is far and away our biggest headache, not necessarily performance." The change follows a pattern PPC Land has tracked, from Dynamic Media being enabled by default for catalogue ads in September 2025 to the REI bike ad episode that exposed an auto-enrolment setting brands had missed.

On the same day, Meta offered a product built on the opposite principle: certainty, bought in advance. Allison Schiff reported for AdExchanger that Meta is selling ad slots TV-style through Ads Super Burst, now generally available. Advertisers reserve a window of between three and 24 hours on a single day across Facebook and Instagram, agree price and approximate reach up front, and get a commitment that delivery will land within 5% of the forecast, at a frequency of one. In the US, brands can reserve category exclusivity on select tentpole dates. "A major cultural moment prices differently from an ordinary Tuesday," said Simon Whitcombe, vice president of Meta's global business group for North America. "The day is a peak on top of an always-on campaign, not a substitute for it." Meta is also testing First Impression Ads, the first ad a user sees on opening Facebook, and a metric called Aggregated View Time that totals the time people spend with a brand across a week.

The rest of the checkout, rebuilt

Google's other advertising changes in the window were smaller but pointed the same way. Advertisers using Lead Form assets can now mark specific answers as qualifying leads, PPC News Feed reported on October 15 after Dafne Nazar shared the change on LinkedIn; how the setting affects conversion reporting is unclear. Google is also testing a redesigned billing menu, spotted by Govind Singh Panwar. "The new layout doubles the number of links available in the menu," PPC News Feed noted, adding that Summary and Billing Reports currently show the same information.

For developers, Google released version 26 of the Google Ads API, Schwartz reported on October 15. It adds streamlined EU political advertising declarations, travel bid modifiers that work across verticals, Search Lift measurements, Performance Max campaign creation for Local Services, and unified enhanced conversions configuration. And Google updated its sexual content policy with more examples of what is restricted and what is allowed, from euphemisms such as "making love" (allowed) to "Putting a condom on a vegetable" (restricted).

Microsoft is automating the front of the funnel more aggressively. New Microsoft Advertising accounts now get a Performance Max draft built from a "business snapshot" of the advertiser's website, brand guidelines and images, complete with ad previews and recommended budgets, PPC News Feed reported on October 16 after Hana Kobzova spotted it. The first step offers a choice to "create a campaign or import from platforms like Google Ads or Meta Ads." At the back of the funnel, Microsoft's Conversions API now supports restating and retracting conversions, so refunds and cancellations can be corrected after the fact. A restatement changes revenue without changing the count; a retraction sets the value to zero and removes the conversion.

Bing, for its part, is testing a module of related searches drawn from a user's browsing history, placed below the Microsoft Ads inside the sponsored results, Schwartz reported on October 15 from a screenshot shared on X by Khushal Bherwani.

Shoppers who arrive earlier, and search less

The platforms are building for a holiday season whose search patterns have already shifted. Marketing Signals, a Halifax-based search agency, found that UK searches for "Black Friday" have fallen 36% since 2019, PPC Land reported on October 15. Deal terms fell 40% and retailer-specific sale queries 68%, while searches for sale dates rose 39% and "when does Black Friday end" rose 439%. "Fewer people are typing in generic phrases like 'Black Friday deals', and more are asking when the sales start and finish," said Laura Salini, the agency's head of PPC and client success. The agency's conclusion was blunt: "Budgets built around a single weekend may be chasing demand that has already moved." PPC Land noted that the volumes, the full list of 19 terms and the methodology were not published.

Some of that demand is moving away from search altogether. Typeface's survey of more than 500 US and UK marketing leaders found that 49% plan to deprioritize or stop investing in traditional SEO, while 44% plan to raise spending on answer engine optimisation. The report found 62% saying brands trade content quality for AI citations, and 68% making content for AI that humans will likely never see. "Marketers are not waiting for proof," the report said. Abhay Parasnis, Typeface's founder and chief executive, offered a counterweight: "The answer isn't to optimize harder for machines." The survey gave no sample size, panel provider or margin of error.

At The Independent, social commerce has overtaken search as the larger engine. Jessica Davies reported for Digiday on October 16 that social commerce revenue edged past SEO-driven commerce revenue for the first time in September. Christian Broughton, the publisher's chief executive, told Digiday Media Strategies in London that the ad-funded model of the past decade was "dead." The Independent's 2025 revenue rose 4% to GBP 55.1 million, its AI news app Bulletin has 12 million monthly users, and four growth areas, AI, creator-led studio work, e-commerce and membership, are expected to make up nearly half of 2026 revenue. "I think we've all seen too many nice-to-have little experiments that people have done with AI," Broughton said.

Wirecutter is diversifying for the same reason. Sara Guaglione reported for Digiday on October 15 that the New York Times-owned review site is pushing beyond affiliate revenue as AI reshapes discovery, through sponsorable franchises, podcasts, video and "hybrid deals" combining display, licensing, partnerships and affiliate commerce, which grew more than 300% year on year. Its Hall of Fame Awards, launched on October 1, listed 50 products still recommended six or more years on and drew more than 3 million page views. Advanced Web Ranking data cited in the piece put click-through rates for commercial searches at 11.91% overall but 3.51% when an AI Overview appears. "Wirecutter has been on a pretty intense path of diversification," said Cliff Levy, its deputy publisher.

Google's own answer to the referral problem came on October 15. Nick Fox announced on X that Google had updated how links appear in AI Mode and AI Overviews: more inline links, a top section highlighting one or two links for completing a task, news carousels expanded to more regions and languages, a "Dive Deeper" section with thumbnails, and clickable creator and publisher names on videos that lead first to Google's own Search profile pages. Google said use of Preferred Sources had grown more than sevenfold this year. What it still will not provide is click data in its AI performance reporting. "We're continuing to work with website owners to understand what insights will be most helpful to inform their strategies, and we'll introduce additional metrics over time," Google told Schwartz. "The metric we want and find most helpful is clicks," Schwartz replied.

The search box is changing too. Google is testing a redesigned search bar in the Google app that reads "Ask Google" instead of "Search" and carries a plus button for uploads, Nano Banana and AI Mode, Schwartz reported on October 15 after Akshay Gangwar spotted it. And one corner of Google's search empire simply stopped working: Google Dataset Search returned no results for any query on the evening of October 15, with a reader reporting it had been down for 24 hours.

Brands are adjusting their spending to the same forces. Ruggable, the washable rug company, has shifted about 10% of its spend toward ShopMy creators and brand channels, Kimeko McCoy reported for Digiday on October 16. Upwards of a million dollars moved out of its Meta performance budget into ShopMy, and the partnership drove roughly $3 million in revenue in its first month, doubling the following month and tripling in the third. Lauren Sherman-Kaoud, chief marketing and creative officer, described a mix of hundreds of affiliate creators and a handful of ambassadors: "It's sort of like a sandwich approach a little bit." Brand spending is set to grow another 15% to 20% next year, ahead of an IPO targeted within three years.

YouTube is selling creators to advertisers with a figure that moved. Its latest creator playbook claims that Creator Partnerships Boost lifted Demand Gen conversions 30% on average, up from 20% on the same data, PPC Land reported on October 15. Both figures rest on January 2025 to January 2026 data, and YouTube has not explained the change. The playbook also claims that 99% of viewers reached by a boosted creator video are fully incremental to organic reach. Creators appear in premium video too. The Video Advertising Bureau found that 53% of Black creator followers would be more likely to buy brands in TV shows featuring those creators, against 45% of Hispanic and 40% of non-Hispanic white followers. PPC Land noted that the Black and Hispanic subgroups numbered 122 and 193, with margins of error it estimated at about nine and seven points.

Agents enter the trading desk

The machinery behind media buying is being rebuilt for software agents, and the people who run it are arguing about it in public. At the Prebid Summit in New York on October 13, addressability returned as a headline concern, Digiday's editors reported on October 15, after Apple's iOS 27 revived a problem many had treated as settled when Google kept Chrome's third-party cookies. "The future challenge is going to be about addressability," said Alan Chapell of The Monopoly Report. Ian Meyers of The Trade Desk went further: "I think transparency is a significant liability." Joe Root, chief executive of Permutive, pointed to the walled gardens: "What Meta did next is they rebuilt everything on top of their supply-side signals."

James Hercher's AdExchanger column on October 15 argued that heated debates between Prebid members are what make it the programmatic melting pot. He described a working group arguing over how to integrate with Google Ad Manager, a main-stage panel on iOS 27, and a live podcast in which Scope3's Brian O'Kelley attacked The Trade Desk for forking Prebid's code. On the same stage, The Trade Desk's Mike O'Sullivan put a question to ID5's chief executive Mathieu Roche: "Is it just grief or personal grief?"

Supply-side targeting is where much of that fight is heading. OpenX's trend report put supply-side targeting at 37% of its spend in the fourth quarter of 2025, up from 11% in 2023, PPC Land reported on October 15, with CTV spend using it up 500% between the first halves of 2022 and 2025. "The doubling of spend in 2025 shows that buyers increasingly understand the need to work more closely with SSPs," said Tyler Romasco, executive vice president, commercial, at OpenX. PPC Land noted that OpenX sells the products it measures and that the data is its own.

Television is wiring agents into its sales process. Fox is expanding what it calls the TV ad industry's first end-to-end agentic platform, adding agency partners and extending it to linear transactions and eventually the upfront, Bill Bradley reported for Adweek on October 15. Out-of-home is being reprogrammed by television executives. Mubadala Capital has completed its $6.2 billion acquisition of Clear Channel Outdoor and installed Wade Davis, formerly of Univision, as chief executive and John Halley, formerly of Paramount Advertising, as chief commercial officer, Bradley reported. Clear Channel has more than 70,000 displays. "These things don't happen tomorrow. They're going to require investment," Halley said.

Outdoor, office and audio count their audiences

Out-of-home is producing research to justify a larger share of budgets. Keen Decision Systems and Accretive reported that out-of-home turns a profit for 89% of brands that buy it, with digital OOH adoption rising to 3.4% from 1.1% and OOH's share of total media spend at 1.6%. Both companies gain when advertisers spend more on the medium, and the release gave no sample size or definition of profitability. Executive Channel Network, which runs office lobby screens, published a Lumen Research study claiming its screens earn 3.4 times the attention of comparable DOOH, based on 603 office workers in the UK, France and Germany. "Every ECN screen is available in the platforms buyers already use, so that attention advantage is one deal away," said Charles Parry-Okeden, its global chief executive. On the buying side, AdXact's DSP gained programmatic access to VIOOH's outdoor screens, with no screen counts or prices disclosed.

Audio is doing the same arithmetic. Triton Digital, owned by iHeartMedia, added Datonics third-party audience data to its ad platform in 12 countries. "Advertisers now no longer have to guess who they're reaching," said Spencer Morris, Triton's executive vice president of data operations. IAB Australia's new glossary counts a play after one second of listening, an audible ad impression after two, and an active download after 60, and defines a month three different ways. Audioboom, meanwhile, lifted its 2026 EBITDA forecast to at least $7.7 million after a record third quarter in which revenue rose 17% to $23.8 million and political advertising began to arrive ahead of the US midterms.

New channels are buying their way into the conversation. Skai added Uber ads in eight markets, but not the US, through a direct integration with Uber Advertising's own technology; the release gave no reason for leaving out the home market. "Commerce media is expanding far beyond the traditional definition of retail media," said Matt Vignieri, Skai's chief growth officer. Thrad committed up to $1 million in advertiser spend to AI chat apps testing in-chat ads, double its first fund. And Almedia said its rewards app Freecash has paid users more than $500 million as the company nears a $1 billion revenue run rate, figures that are unaudited and come from the company. "We only grow when our partners do," said Moritz Holländer, its founder.

Retail media's healthcare corner grew fastest of all. DocMorris gained 1.5 million customers as German prescription sales rose 78% in local currency in the third quarter. Its Digital Services unit, which includes the dmr Advertising retail media business, grew 46.1% to CHF 13.9 million but was flat on the second quarter, and advertising revenue was not broken out.

Courts, codes and the automated decision

Regulation in the window concerned who may decide by machine. California's SB 947 bans AI-only firing and discipline decisions from July 2027, requiring human corroboration when an employer relies primarily on an automated system, with a $500 penalty per violation. In Luxembourg, Advocate General Laila Medina told the Court of Justice that an automated refusal to offer pay-later options can be an Article 22 GDPR decision, so that Universal Versand faces an EU ruling on the algorithm and must justify it. "The burden of proof for this lies with the mail-order company," the opinion states. A Max Planck paper argued that the EU Data Act lets device makers block rivals from using connected-device data for rival products, working against the Act's own aim of liquid data markets.

The courts handled older forms of advertising too. A New York federal judge allowed a $15 million libel suit against Thryv over a "nude gay massage" Yellow Pages listing to proceed, refusing to enforce Thryv's forum clause because it offered no evidence of how its terms were shown. In California, the Court of Appeal ruled that Purple Lotus need not answer fraud claims over a 10mg THC gummy sold as anxiety relief, noting that one case cited in the plaintiff's brief does not exist. Copyleaks launched a WordPress plugin that flags AI text in drafts before publication, claiming "over 99% accuracy" without explaining the figure. "AI is reshaping how content is created, but trust remains the foundation of publishing," said Alon Yamin, its chief executive.

Character.ai's bankruptcy, the lead of recent editions, produced two new orders. Judge Brendan L. Shannon granted an interim order to keep the company's $59m cash system running, so that advertising, app store and subscription payments continue to flow, with a final hearing set for November 17. A separate wages order authorised up to $1,361,000 in prepetition pay but dropped a $61,000 severance line for one former employee, leaving the itemised chart about $61,000 short of its printed total.

Publishers in London, brands in New York

Publishers meeting in London under the Chatham House Rule on October 13 described what AI crawlers cost them. Fiona Spooner of the Financial Times said one trial account tried to access about a million articles in roughly eight hours from about 700,000 IP addresses, Davies and Guaglione reported in Digiday's Media Briefing on October 15. SPUR, the publisher usage rights group, now counts more than 80 members in 20 countries, with The New York Times, The Atlantic, The Economist and AFP among the latest. Its co-founder David Buttle said a fair and liquid market for content to fuel AI systems does not yet exist.

The brand stories of the day were about loyalty of other kinds. Michelob Ultra celebrated the Knicks' 2026 NBA championship, the end of a 53-year drought, with bottle openers containing pieces of the Finals court and a film debuting on NBC on October 20, Mark Mwachiro reported for Adweek. Land O'Lakes' chief marketing officer Heather Malenshek explained at Brandweek how a 106-year-old farm co-op sells cultural moments. Elizabeth Rutledge, American Express's chief marketing officer and a 37-year veteran, will retire in March 2027, Mitchell Parton reported. Matt Barker rounded up the 2026 Halloween ads from Twix, Rivian, Reese's and e.l.f., while Chris Watling argued in a guest column that most branded entertainment goes unwatched, "Nine times out of 10" for reasons of overlooked fundamentals rather than weak ideas.

Television news held its audience. ABC World News Tonight averaged 8,219,000 viewers in the week of October 5, and CBS Evening News, the only network up week on week in the key demographic, gained 5% in adults aged 25 to 54, Mwachiro reported. In the mornings, all three network shows gained total viewers in the week of September 28, with Today ahead at 2.848 million.

What the day added up to

Read as one story, the window's news was about defaults: who sets them, and who has to opt out. Google built a cart that sits between shoppers and stores and launched it without saying how products are ranked. Meta chose to switch on in-app browsing for ads already running, a month before Black Friday, while selling Super Burst to advertisers who want to know in advance exactly what they will get. Google added links to its AI answers but not the click data that would show whether they work. Publishers from The Independent to Wirecutter are building revenue that does not depend on any of those defaults, and the shoppers themselves have stopped typing "Black Friday" and started asking when the sales end.

By the numbers

60 billion
Product listings in Google's Shopping Graph, the catalogue behind the Universal Cart launched in the US.
Google's Universal Cart reaches US Search and Gemini, but not YouTube

October 28
Date Meta switches on in-app product browsing for existing ads unless advertisers opt out.
Meta will turn on product browsing in existing ads on October 28

36%
Fall in UK searches for core "Black Friday" terms since 2019, as interest spreads across November.
Black Friday searches drop 36% in UK since 2019, Marketing Signals finds

37%
Share of OpenX spend using supply-side targeting in late 2025, against 11% two years earlier.
OpenX data puts supply-side targeting at 37% of spend, up from 11% in 2023

$1 billion
Annual revenue run rate Almedia claims for its Freecash rewards business, unaudited.
Freecash passes $500m in user payouts as Almedia nears $1bn run rate