Welcome to our weekly PPC roundup — the news from October 9–15, 2026 that actually changes how you should run accounts, with the dates and fine print that the announcement posts tend to bury. Two themes this week: Google handing back budget control it never offered before, and Meta turning things on by default right before Black Friday.
1. Google Ads gets channel prioritization and percentage budget caps
The biggest story of the week. On October 14, Google announced two optional controls — channel prioritization and budget allocation — rolling out progressively from October 15 across Search, Shopping, Performance Max and Demand Gen campaigns (PPC Land).
How it works: channels within a campaign can be ranked High or Low priority (everything defaults to High, so nothing changes on day one). For a Low-priority channel you can set a percentage cap against the campaign’s average daily budget — set Display to 5% of a €1,000 daily budget and Google aims to spend at most €50/day there. Setting 0% stops spend on that channel entirely. The cap is best-effort rather than guaranteed, and resets daily with no carryover.
The fine print worth knowing:
- In Performance Max and Demand Gen, Google-owned surfaces (Search, YouTube, Maps, Gmail, Discover) are grouped as a single “Google channels” bucket — you can tier Search partners and Display separately, but you cannot rank YouTube below Search;
- At launch it’s UI and Search Ads 360 only; Google Ads API and Editor support is “coming soon,” and it can’t be managed from MCC level;
- Mark your calendar for February 2027: the old Display Expansion behavior on Search campaigns goes away and campaigns auto-migrate. To preserve today’s behavior, Google itself recommends setting Display Network to Low priority with a 50% allocation (Common Thread Collective).
Why it matters: advertisers have asked for exactly this for years — third-party studies have found Search partner placements delivering roughly 37% lower ROAS than Google Search proper. If you run Shopping or PMax at scale, the 0% and percentage caps are the most useful budget lever Google has shipped in a long time. It’s also precisely the kind of setting worth getting a second opinion on before Black Friday — it’s now part of our standard checklist in Google Ads management accounts.
2. Google Ads API v26 ships with Search Lift and a faster release cycle
On October 15, Google released Google Ads API v26 (Search Engine Land). Highlights:
- Search Lift measurement via API — 15 new metrics covering incremental searches, relative search lift and impressions;
- Local Services Performance Max campaigns can now be created through the API (the setting must be specified at creation and can’t be changed afterward);
- Unified account-level settings for enhanced conversions, listing-type support extended to Shopping campaigns, and minimum daily budget data for Demand Gen by currency.
The structural news: v26 kicks off Google’s new twice-monthly API release schedule. If your reporting or bid tooling depends on the API, library upgrades are about to become a more regular chore — full details in the official release notes.
3. Reminder: Google is auto-applying website coupons since October 12
Announced earlier, but it took effect inside this week’s window: from October 12, Google Ads automatically extracts discount offers from advertisers’ websites and attaches them as promotion assets — default-on, opt-out (PPC Land).
Scope is narrower than the headlines suggested: only Search and Performance Max campaigns that have linked location assets and no existing promotion assets. Campaigns with manually-set promotions are skipped. The opt-out is a single account-level switch (“Automated promotions” under account-level automated assets). One operational quirk: auto-sourced promotion assets with zero impressions don’t appear in Assets reporting — so you only see the offers that actually served. If margins on auto-discovered coupons matter to you (hello, Q4), either curate your promotion assets manually or flip the switch off.
4. Meta turns on “product browsing” in existing ads on October 28
A notice that circulated among media buyers around October 14: starting October 28, Meta will enable product browsing on existing Facebook and Instagram ads by default unless advertisers opt out first (PPC Land). Tapping an ad may open an in-app product experience with personalized suggestions instead of sending the click straight to your site.
Meta’s justification is a footnote citing “3% more conversions” from a 16-day August experiment across ~117,700 advertisers — with no detail on attribution windows, metric definitions, or ROAS impact. Media buyers’ main complaint is the timing: a default-on change to click destinations exactly 30 days before Black Friday. The opt-out lives in the notice itself (before Oct 28) or per-ad in Advantage+ Creative and Destination settings afterward. If your funnel depends on landing-page conversion (most do), decide deliberately rather than letting the default decide for you — that’s true whether we run your account’s Meta Ads management or you do.
5. Meta’s new ad terms take effect October 30 — silently
Announced October 8, effective October 30: updates to Meta’s Commercial Terms and Self-Serve Ad Terms. There is no opt-in — continuing to advertise after October 30 constitutes acceptance (Common Thread Collective). Three changes stand out:
- Meta explicitly reserves the right to run tests across campaigns — affecting pricing, delivery, targeting, reporting and creatives — with no advance notice and no stated exclusion for peak season;
- Advertisers become legally responsible for all AI-generated content in their ads, including content produced by Meta’s own tools, and may not strip AI watermarks or authentication metadata. Notably, 14% of Meta ad rejections in 2026 already involve undisclosed AI content;
- Meta gains broad rights to crawl advertisers’ websites and use the content — landing pages and blog included, not just product catalogs — for developing and training its products.
Why it matters: if you use third-party AI tools for ad creative, disclosure at campaign setup is now a compliance requirement, not a nicety — Meta’s native tools auto-label, third-party tools usually don’t.
6. Merchant Center: new store_address attribute for local inventory
On October 14, Google introduced the store_address attribute in Merchant Center, required for products submitted to Local inventory ads and Local free listings (Search Engine Land). Multi-location retailers should review feeds now: missing or badly formatted addresses can break product-to-store associations and feed compliance. If you run local inventory through Shopping campaigns we manage, this is already on our feed checklist for the coming week.
The takeaway for your accounts this week
- Do now: check the Automated Promotions switch (on since Oct 12) and decide on Meta’s product browsing before Oct 28;
- Do before Oct 30: audit AI-generated creative disclosure in Meta accounts;
- Do before Q4 peaks: test the new channel prioritization controls on one campaign — and note Feb 2027 in the calendar for the Display migration;
- Developers: plan the v26 client library upgrade.
Defaults are quietly becoming the biggest line item in ad accounts — most of this week’s changes spend your money unless you actively decide otherwise. If you’d rather have someone whose job is reading the fine print, start with a free Google Ads audit or book a call — we’ll tell you which of these changes actually touches your account.