Google's Universal Commerce Protocol (UCP) is getting some new (optional) capabilities for merchants. The UCP is Google's open standard designed to enhance agentic commerce and complete purchases directly across the web without relying on traditional storefronts or integrations.

In a new blog post released today, Google unveiled new optional capabilities available in UCP:

Cart This will allow agents to add or save items into a shopping cart from a single store.

Catalog This capability will allow agents to pull product details from a retailer's catalog, including items like variants, pricing, and inventory.

Identity Linking This will use existing standards and integrate so that customers can receive loyalty or member benefits in the same way they would on the retailer's site.

For more information, see the full release from Google.

A new response from Google on the UK's Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) supports the requirements for fairness across search. It also mentions an opt-out from generative AI features in Search.

The CMA has proposed new digital market rules with the goal of ensuring fairness, choice, and control, and a new blog post from Google was released today supporting the proposals. Google stated:

"We support the CMA's goals of ensuring fairness and promoting publisher choice and control, and here offer some ideas on how new digital rules can best serve the British public."

Many of the proposed "ideas" from Google are to be expected, with elements like "Keep Search Results Fair and Useful," along with making it easy for users to choose favorite services. However, the response goes a full step further, stating that:

"...Our goal is to make sure website owners have the right controls to manage how their content is used."

This "idea" floated by Google also states that they are "developing" further updates to controls to let sites specifically opt out of generative AI features in Search. This is big news for website owners that aren't happy they are feeding many of the Gen AI answers that are plaguing many businesses.

Google is now rolling out Ad Editor version 2.12, featuring helpful changes from the web interface into the software. This update should be a welcomed one, with a handful of changes that should allow for more meaningful work in Ads Editor, especially on Demand Gen campaigns. The changes in this update are:

Increase Performance Max video limit

You now have the ability to add 15 videos per asset group in Performance Max campaigns within Ads Editor
Vertical portrait images in Performance Max asset groups
9:16 images will now be supported for Performance Max asset groups.
Video non-skippable: 3 way mix and reservation

An updated version of non-skippable campaigns that utilizes the 'Responsive' ad format will now be supported.
Demand Gen campaign enhancements

A handful of supporting features will now be available for Demand Gen campaigns specifically. This will help better align Ads Editor with the web functionality while also adding a better flow for constructing campaigns.

• New customer acquisition (NCA) goals
• Brand guidelines
• Hotel feed integration
• Global budget floor
• Streamlined construction flow

Total budget for Search, Shopping, and Performance Max campaigns

This allows you to set a total spend for a specified campaign duration of 3 to 90 days. This "flighted" budget option could be beneficial for ebbs and flows of demand as it replaces the daily budget to help maximize performance over a set time. "Promotion Mode" to rapidly scale traffic and meet high demand during critical promotional periods.

Video bid guidance

Real-time bid guidance for video brand campaigns is now live in Ads Editor and can be found during the copy/paste workflow.

Text guidelines
Brand guidelines are now supported with a max of 25 term exclusions and 40 messaging restrictions per campaign. This is eligible for both Search and Performance Max.

Account-level tracking URL and final URL suffix

You can now set a tracking template and final URL suffix at the account level, not just at the Campaign, Ad Group or Ad level.

Expanded final URL assets

A new dedicated reporting tab in Google Ads Editor will make viewing expanded final URL assets easier to consume.

Expose 'Pending' and 'Ended' status

Users will have the ability to view 'Pending,' 'Ended,' and 'Draft' campaigns separately, not just 'Removed'.

Link check find and replace URLs

A "Link Check Find and Replace" feature will allow advertisers to check for broken links and bulk update as needed.

For the full release notes, head on over to the official Google Ads documentation.

Hana Kobzova has spotted a new segmentation option within the Performance Max (PMax) Channel Reporting that allows advertisers to view data from ads with video as well as without video. This feature is similar to how Google has given the ability to segment ads with products and without since the summer of 2025 in the report.

I feel like I have seen this in accounts, so it might not be completely new, but either way, it is a great tool. I'd imagine that most advertisers may not even know that ads can be running with video if they haven't uploaded one, but PMax can auto-generate video assets on your behalf. Taking some time to see how those auto-generated video assets are working (or how much they aren't) may give you the boost you need to invest in real video.

A new asset optimization screen has been spotted by Thomas Eccel that features a quick addition panel with checkboxes.

Options include:

Video

• Shorter Videos
• Longer Videoes

Image

• Landing Page Previews

This was spotted in a Demand Gen campaign and Thomas also points out that you can always still see the "view example" in order to see what the assets will look like before setting live. If you do use the Landing Page preview option, you will need to confirm that you own all legal rights to the images.

For more, follow Thomas Eccel on LinkedIn.

Announced back in November, the branded query report is now rolling out for all eligible sites. This filter gives users the option to quickly browse traffic that is branded in nature versus non-brand queries.

This rollout will gradually occur over the coming weeks and is only available for top-level properties, not URL paths or subdomains.

This should be a welcome change for webmasters, as filtering out branded terms in the past was possible but required a manual process. The new filters will automatically dissect the two types of queries and will break out branded queries as those that 'include your brand name or closely associated products (for example, Gmail for google.com).'

For more info see Google's LinkedIn post or the official documentation.

A new agency-first product from Google has launched: Merchant Center for Agencies. This new centralized hub provides a unified interface for those managing multiple Google Merchant Center (GMC) accounts, while also adding features designed for teams with multiple users.

We first heard about this back in October, but Merchant Center for Agencies will be launching for users in the U.S. and Canada. The goal? To reduce friction for multi-account users by providing a centralized location for management while making it easier to troubleshoot and optimize.

Single View Interface
One of the biggest draws of Merchant Center for Agencies is a single account login that contains diagnostic data, warnings, and more across all GMC accounts.

Diagnostics Across All Accounts
Instead of toggling from one GMC account to the next, the new Merchant Center for Agencies interface surfaces issues from all clients in one location. Quick diagnostics notify users of account suspensions, warnings, and accounts with no issues.

Account Optimization
A "Client Optimizations" tab gives merchants the ability to view promotions, top out-of-stock products, store quality, and shipping/return information.

Essential information from each client's top products (such as out-of-stock items and paid and free click data) is displayed in an accordion format by client. It doesn't appear that a large amount of data from each client is pulled into this view, but quick links into accounts and report sharing appear to be readily available.

Opportunities
Lastly, an Opportunities tab gives advertisers a bird's-eye view of potential areas for growth across all accounts. The current options include highlighting low-traffic products, low prices, and trending brands for each advertiser.

Overall, this will be a welcomed improvement for agencies or companies with multiple brands as it simplifies the experience and should stop the repeated leap-frogging back and forth from account to account.

The folks at PPCSurvey have released a comprehensive new "State of PPC" report that covers the full gamut of PPC, with responses from over one thousand PPC practitioners. The 72-page free report covers everything from ad platform adoption to LLM usage and includes a wide breadth of responses from in-house marketers and agencies, all with different budgets, company sizes, and locations.

Is PPC Easier Today?

One of the most interesting answers that I found in the survey was that 53% of respondents claimed that managing PPC campaigns is "harder" than it was 2 years ago. A mere 16% thought that it was "easier" than it was 2 years ago, and 31% said it was "about the same."

Of those in the minority who thought it was easier, their rationale was:

• Improved automated bidding - noted by 45% of "easier" respondents
• The use of AI/LLMs - noted by 39% of "easier" respondents
• Improved automated targeting - noted by 38% of "easier" respondents

The more important question, however, may be why the majority think that PPC management is harder than it was two years ago. The most common reasons are:

• Less insight from ad platforms - noted by 62% of "harder" respondents
• Less accuracy - noted by 62% of "harder" respondents
• Increased competition - noted by 45% of "harder" respondents
• Less control - noted by 43% of "harder" respondents

There is a treasure trove of PPC information, facts, and figures in the State of PPC report, and the full report is available as a free (ungated) download over at PPCSurvey. Head on over to get all the deets on challenges, platforms, AI, pricing models, and more!