Inside Google Ads podcast: Episode 101 - How to Win in 2026

The rules for Google Ads have changed. Are you ready to be successful this year?

In this episode, we're reviewing all the top Google Ads changes from the last year, because there were many, so that you know what you need to focus on for a successful 2026 and beyond.

Google recently released this lovely graphic sharing what they think are the top changes of the more than 100 feature announcements that have happened. But I'm going to share with you what I think you really need to focus on.

I'm your host, Jyll Saskin Gales. I spent six years working for big brands at Google, and now I work for you.

This is Inside Google Ads: Episode 101, How to win in 2026.

First things first, Google Ads has all these lovely bells and whistles, but Search is still the bread and butter. For most advertisers, you're going to want to get Search working before you even think about expanding into anything else here.

One of the big changes that happened this year is Shopping is sort of considered part of Search. For example, one of the biggest PMax changes is now we can see channel performance reporting. And if you want to see how your Shopping ads are doing in PMax, they are considered a segment of Search. Search with product feed equals Shopping.

So if you are a lead gen advertiser, meaning the thing you want someone to do as a result of engaging with your ads is to reach out to you, meet with you, then you're going to want to start with Search. If you are an ecommerce advertiser, meaning the thing you want someone to do as a result of engaging with your ads is buy something online, then you're going to want to start with Shopping ads.

While ads in AI overviews or ads in AI mode may sound exciting, I don't actually think that's the thing that'll make the biggest difference for you in 2026 and beyond. The first big change was getting an inside look at what Search Partners actually are. And I don't think any of us were surprised to see what kind of garbage those websites usually are. So I feel very confident telling you whether it's Search or Shopping, start with Search Partners turned off. For 99% of advertisers, that's gonna be the right choice.

On the Search side, AI max and Smart bidding exploration are interesting, but not needed for the vast majority of advertisers. These features only make sense for you if you are maxed out on your current profitable Search opportunity and looking for ways to expand. And honestly, most Search advertisers just don't have that problem. They wish they had that problem, but they're more focused on that initial scaling, initial optimization, hitting that profitable CPA or ROAS. They don't need this broad expansion yet. So most of you are not going to need AI Max or Smart Bending Exploration, and that is OK.

On the Shopping side, most of your new features actually came in Google Merchant Center rather than in Google Ads itself. So some of the things you should be focusing on are really optimizing your product feed, those titles, descriptions, product type category, and of course your images, the things that will determine the success of your Shopping ads more than any tweaks you could possibly make in Google Ads.

There are really great AI solutions in Merchant Center now to help you improve your product images, for example. And there's also a lot of insights there to let you know how you're doing in the auction and to suggest some things you might want to try, like different promotions, for example. So on the Shopping side, that's what I would focus on in 2026, taking advantage of all those new features in Merchant Center to make sure you're giving Google Ads the best possible product data for your Shopping campaigns to succeed.

Alright, once your Search or Shopping are under control or you're looking to expand, the next step is Demand Gen. And I am so bullish on Demand Gen. I will be talking about it a lot on my podcast, on my YouTube channel this year, because I do see it being a great opportunity for lead gen and e-commerce, small and large businesses alike.

Episode 70 of this podcast is all about Demand gen for lead generation. I'll put the link to that in the episode description. It's one of my most popular episodes and I'm working right now on a similar episode, demand gen for ecommerce. So stay tuned.

Google has really focused on bringing a ton of updates to Demand Gen. However, in typical Google fashion, a lot of these updates are things that only the largest of large advertisers will need.

What I recommend you focus on are first, experimenting with different bid strategies in Demand Gen and making sure it aligns to your goals. There's click and conversion-based bid strategies, as well as options to use Demand Gen for things like YouTube engagement. For most advertisers, you'll want to start Demand Gen on maximize clicks because remember, you're not reaching people who are searching right now for what you offer. You are putting your ads in front of an audience who you think is likely to be interested in what you offer. You have to bring them into your funnel. So for prospecting like that, Maximize Clicks is usually the right choice. Target CPC is also an option. 

If you're using Demand Gen for remarketing purposes, then you could start with Maximize Conversions or Maximize Conversion Value before moving to Target CPA or Target ROAS. Over time, it is possible to run Demand Gen on a prospecting to a cold audience with a conversion-based bid strategy. But I wouldn't start there. You have to validate your audience, validate your creative, validate your offer to make sure you will actually get conversions from this campaign type.

Demand Gen lets you show ads on YouTube, Gmail, Discover, and the Display Network. Never choose that one. And Google is rolling out Maps as an option as well. So if you are a local business, definitely keep an eye out for that because you will be able to use Demand Gen for a local objective. Up until now, the only way to really do that was PMax. Now you can do it in Demand Gen, which is an awesome change.

I would also keep an eye out for a feature called Attributed Brand Searches. This is something Google has announced, but hasn't rolled out widely yet, where you'll be able to see the impact of your video ads on your Branded Search activity. 

So for example, let's say 10,000 people see your Video ad via Demand Gen or via YouTube, and you don't really see conversions from that, because you wouldn't expect to see conversions from that, but you want to know what kind of impact this is having. There's a new metric rolling out called Attributed Brand Searches or just Branded Conversions where you'll be able to see people who then go Search for your brand after seeing your videos. 

A nice little way to work this around is if you're running any kind of YouTube ads, regardless of what campaign type you're using to do it, make sure you set up YouTube remarketing in your Google Ads account and then apply that on observation to your Search or Shopping campaigns. And that way you'll be able to see how the people who have viewed your YouTube ads then go engage with you in Search results.

Melissa Mackey gave a great talk about how to do this in B2B. Yes, really, how YouTube can help B2B paid Search performance at a recent PPC Zone event. I will put the link to her talk in the episode description as well.

Most of the big YouTube updates are, once again, things most advertisers won't use. The one I'm definitely curious to test with my clients this year is the Creator Partnerships Hub. There's now a set place within the Google Ads interface where you can try to find different creators to work with you on creating content for YouTube. I have not personally seen anyone use this yet, but it's definitely something that I would recommend you think about if video creative is a big part of your plans for 2026.

All right, we've covered Search, Demand Gen, YouTube, and Shopping. Now it is finally time to talk about Performance Max. This is the campaign type that changed the most this year. And all of these changes were things advertisers have been asking about for years. So the biggest takeaway for you about Performance Max in 2026 and beyond, it is no longer a black box. While you cannot control what Performance Max does, you can absolutely see what your Performance Max did and this is huge. This is probably the single biggest change to happen to Google Ads and the single biggest one you're going to want to focus on next year if you're thinking of using PMax or already a PMax advertiser.

On the reporting side, we have search term reporting, final URL expansion, asset-level reporting, and the channel performance report.

The TLDR is that you have the same visibility into your PMax campaign now that you would in any other campaign type like Search, Shopping, Demand Gen, et cetera.

Now on the controlling side, more changes, not as many. We do have the ability to add negative keywords now within PMax. There are device and demographic targeting options at the campaign level. So previously, for example, if you chose to only show ads to females, that would just be part of the audience signal, which means it's just a signal, not true targeting. You could show ads to anyone. But with that rolling out at the campaign level, you can now specifically exclude certain ages or genders, for example.

Customer lifecycle goals means you can actually truly run a retargeting PMax if you want to because again, adding a retargeting list to your audience signal does not mean your Performance Max is doing retargeting. But using customer acquisition or customer retention goals can help you do prospecting or remarketing as long as you set them up correctly.

I would say that if you're spending at least $50 a day in Google Ads and you've never used Performance Max before, 2026 is the year to try to make that happen. 

Make sure your measurement and conversion tracking is all in order. Make sure you have excellent creative. Prove your offer, prove that you're actually selling something that people want to buy, then bring all those learnings together to see if Performance Max can drive more efficiency and growth for you. PMax is end game. That doesn't mean that it's the right choice for every person right now, but we know by all the innovation that's happening there, all the launches that are happening there, that's where Google Ads is going. 

If you can get Performance Max working well for you, that's the best possible outcome. And if you can't get Performance Max working well for you, then we need to figure out what's going wrong in your Google Ads account or your business so that we can change that. Performance Max is end game, for better or for worse.

Last but not least, before we wrap up, something Google Ads kind of snuck in there right at the end of the year is this agentic category, the Ads Advisor and the Analytics Advisor. I will say right off the bat, I got to test these before they went live and I am, how shall I say this, underwhelmed but optimistic.

If you haven't seen them yet, these are AI chatbots within Google Ads and within Google Analytics, and you can interact with them and ask them questions. So the first thing I'll say is right now, they are not agentic. Agentic AI just means it's AI that can go take action on your behalf. 

So for example, if you're just in ChatGPT and talking to it, it's not agentic. You could research a flight and ask what the departure times are and what are the options, and it could recommend a flight to you. If you have to then click and go book that flight, that's not agentic. 

But if you can say, go book it for me, and then it comes back in a few minutes, your flight is booked. (And your flight actually is booked, by the way, it's not just saying that.) Then that would be agentic because it is leaving your chat, going out and doing things on the internet on your behalf, and then coming back. 

So if you test Ads Advisor, at least as of right now, it can't actually make any changes in your Google Ads account for you. It can't actually do anything, so it is not yet agentic.

In my tests, I found that when I asked it questions both about my own account and about Google Ads in general, it was wrong about 50% of the time. Now, to be fair, there might be some Google Ads experts, where if you talk to them, they're wrong about 50% of the time. But that is not a ratio I want for my business or my clients' businesses. So I'm not going to say never use Ads Advisor. Yes, it's helpful to have something right there. I would just treat everything it tells you with extreme caution because you know what? It will get better. It's going to get better. 

Govind Singh shared this great screenshot that got picked up by a lot of outlets where Ads Advisor was actually quoting me as a source, which I love. Great. Good job, Ads Advisor. But it's also quoted a lot of other websites that I've never heard of. And I'm not even going to say that they're a bad source, but it's picking up things that are really old. I have a video that's about 10 to 15 minutes where I go through Ads Advisor and show you some of the things it does well and some of the things that doesn't do well. So if you haven't seen that, I'll link it in the episode description. But some of the biggest problems I'm observing right now are that it gives really out of date information or just plain wrong information, which by the way, ChatGPT, and Gemini, these things all do as well.

I do give Google big credit that it is not just a recommendations engine. Ads Advisor will recommend things to you that completely contradict what Google says. 

For example, the Google Ads interface is always going to try to nudge you to turn on Display Network in your Search campaigns, to use broad match keywords. But Ads Advisor may recommend you don't actually do those things because it's searching the open web and not just Google's own documentation. So I do think it has that going for it, although of course that can have the additional unintended consequence of more wrong info.

This also means if you're someone who offers Google Ads services, the game just keeps getting harder. People are using AI tools or Ads Advisor, not knowing what they don't know. So if you want people to pay you for your Google Ads expertise you have to really demonstrate unique value and expertise to succeed in 2026 and beyond. 

I spent a little less time with the Analytics Advisor in Google Analytics. To me, it's kind of like, OK, I've been underwhelmed. For example, I asked it to show me which of my pages had the highest engagement and the page it put at the top is one that no human would ever put at the top. Why? Well, yeah, it had a 100% engagement rate, but that's because it only had three visits. It didn't know the basic thing of show me the pages that actually get traffic, which has the highest engagement rate. So again, good for some basic things. Maybe it's got a long way to go and it is not agentic yet.

So how are you going to win with Google Ads in 2026?

I want this to be the last year that I have to remind you that in order for your Google Ads to succeed, you need proper, full-funnel conversion tracking. Excellent, above average creative, whether it's text, image or video, and a proven offer that people actually want to buy. That part hasn't changed.

What is changing, of course, is consumer behavior, more use of AI solutions, whether it's AI overviews, the most used AI tool in the world, by the way, or things like Chat GPT and Gemini which really just means more sophisticated consumers, but also more overwhelmed with choice consumers. You want to make it as easy as possible for them to choose you. So yes, your landing page is very much still important for it to be understood by AI and humans alike.

Your offer has to be something people actually want to spend their hard-earned money for.

And your creative has to convey that in your ad if you're gonna get people away from what they're currently doing and onto your website to check you out.

What used to be considered average or okay is now mediocre and not good enough. To succeed with Google Ads, you have to be excellent at all the key components, so that formats like Performance Max and Demand Gen can actually work for you and continue to grow and drive your business efficiently.

And of course, I'll be here on the Inside Google Ads podcast every week sharing my best tips, tricks, and strategies with you to help you succeed.

Before I sign off on this episode, whether this is the first time you're seeing me or you've been following this podcast for all 100 episodes, I want to share with you how I'm thinking about the next 100 episodes, what's staying the same and what's changing with the Inside Google Ads podcast.

First, we are staying with a weekly format, new episodes every Thursday. Multiple people, human and AI alike, have tried to convince me that it's too much work. And although it is, I just love this time that we get to share together. So we are staying weekly.

Second, no sponsors and virtually no guests. This podcast is for me to share my expertise and experience with you. And if you do hear any advertisements, they are for my own products and services like my coaching, my Inside Google Ads course, or my Google Ads account audits.

That being said, I do host a whole other podcast called PPC Zone. If you've never checked that out, you can find it wherever you are watching or listening to this one. PPC Zone is a bi-monthly live event that I host on YouTube and LinkedIn, where three speakers each share their expertise in a seven minute talk. Just seven minutes, easily digestible. And this is a mix of new and experienced speakers with unique perspectives in paid advertising.

After the event, I take each speaker's talk and edit it into a podcast episode. And PPC Zone is partly supported by sponsors. So if you would like to hear what I'll call Jyll vetted expertise, expertise from other great folks in the industry, then I recommend subscribing to the PPC Zone podcast.

And third, the Insider Challenge is here to stay. I don't have one in every single episode, but whenever I meet you in person at conferences, one of the number one things people say to me is, I love your podcast and I love doing the Insider Challenge. I do it in the car. I do it while walking my dog. I do it with my colleagues in the office. So don't worry. We've got a lot more Insider Challenges coming up for you.

Now, here are a few things that are going to change about the Inside Google Ads podcast going forward. First, my initial format was that in every episode, I answered three of your burning questions about Google Ads. And while I am still going to answer your questions, I found that some of the top performing episodes, the most viewed and most downloaded, are where I do something a little different. Sometimes I'll do a special episode where I feature an interview that I did on another podcast. And those tend to do really well here, too. So I will continue to do more of that. As I guest on other podcast episodes, if I think it's a conversation that you would find interesting that is tactically about Google Ads, I will share it with you here as well.

And if I do a webinar or workshop or something, those also tend to do really well here. So I will share that expertise with you to make sure that you can just follow the Inside Google Ads podcast and know that you are getting the best of all the expertise I'm sharing publicly, even if I'm sharing it in other forums.

I also did an experiment a few months ago where I let YouTube Studio suggest to me the kinds of topics my audience would be interested in. And those episodes also did very well on YouTube and on traditional podcast apps. So I'll try to do more of those as well. Single topic episodes where it may not be a question someone has directly asked me, but YouTube's insights share that it's something you would be interested in because you already consume other content about that. So we'll have more of those kinds of episodes coming into the mix as well as the usual answering your burning questions.

And finally, I am planning to do a little bit more crossover between my newsletter, The Insider, and Inside Google Ads. The big difference is that my free bi-weekly newsletter, The Insider, comes out every other Tuesday. And in every issue, I share a real life Google Ads case study, what happened with my coaching client, and how we solved it. The episode before this one, Episode 100, is where I tested that out, sharing a real case study and what happened.

And I know again from talking to you in the DMs, and at conferences, that you really like to see this. It's one thing to talk about Google Ads and the changes and features and another to actually demonstrate what's happening in real accounts right now.

So I'll make more of an effort for the next 100 episodes to bring you more of those real life case studies that actually show some of my advice and expertise in action. And sometimes we're going to achieve the desired results, sometimes we won't, but we will definitely learn from all of that together.

Thank you for tuning in to the Inside Google Ads podcast for 100 episodes. I look forward to at least 100 more with you. 

I'm Jyll Saskin Gales, and I'll see you next time on Inside Google Ads.