Digital Marketing and Google Ads Bidding gets its biggest update in a decade, Gemini 2.5 AI tools enhance marketing workflows and reasoning, and Index Now SEO boosts AI shopping visibility for ecommerce.
1. Google Ads Bidding Gets Largest Update in Over 10 Years
Google has been busy! Google Ads also got an update recently.
In the largest update in over a decade, Google announced the launch of Smart Bidding Exploration, a new opt-in feature. It’s a fundamental shift in how advertisers can find value in queries and was designed to help them capture more conversions with their Google Ad campaigns.
Your Ads platform will also show you the impact of allowing Smart Bidding Exploration in your reports so that you can effectively determine if using this new tool is right for you. The reports won’t get incredibly granular, but they will show the number of unique search categories generating impressions and conversions, how much traffic came from those categories, and the volume of new conversions compared to your baseline.
2. Google Ads Rolls Out More Creative AI Tools
Bidding wasn’t the only part of Google Ads that got an update recently. Google also rolled out a ton of new creative AI tools to help optimize ads.
Now, advertisers have access to:
- Cinematic tools, including image-to-video transformation, and AI out painting
- AI updates to Google’s Product Studio that suggest trending campaign ideas, optimized titles, and relevant product offers
- New and improved Merchant Center with customizable brand profiles, curated images, and refreshed product descriptions
- Shoppable video ads at scale
The tech giant is working behind the scenes to help marketers improve how they interact and communicate with their audiences, hopefully leading to higher sales and more successful Google Ads.
3. Google Marketing Advisor is Coming to Chrome
Google had another big announcement at the recent Google Marketing Live 2025 event: Google Marketing Advisor.
This AI-powered assistant will live within the Chrome browser to help advertisers better manage their marketing tasks across all Google platforms. The tool can:
- Identify missing tags
- Fix issues
- Surface seasonal insights
This anticipated tool is expected to roll out later this year, with integrations with Google Ads, Google Analytics, and other popular marketing stack tools.
Why We Care: Many marketers use a fragmented tech stack to help them with their work. Google Marketing Advisor could potentially streamline marketing tasks by putting everything in one centralized location.
4. Google Launches New AI Training Certification for Marketers
Do you want to increase your knowledge of generative AI and boost your resume? Google just announced a new generative AI certification program for marketers.
The course covers only Google’s generative AI tools. It could be helpful for marketers and other non-technical users who work in Google-centric environments.
While the training is free, the certification exam costs $99 and covers four areas:
- Basic concepts and terms
- How Google Cloud tools help AI-powered work
- How to get better results from AI
- Best practices for safe, responsible AI use
Action Item: Look into this new certification if you want to embrace the use of Google’s Generative AI tools in your work.
5. Google Releases List of HTTP Status Codes They Care About
Ever wonder which HTTP status codes Google actually cares about? On a recent episode of the Search Off the Record podcast, Google’s Gary Illyes and Martin Split revealed which ones Google is actually paying attention to – and which ones you can skip.
The conversation wasn’t a comprehensive guide, but it did offer some valuable insights, including:
- For redirects, focus primarily on the permanent vs. temporary distinction
- Don’t invest resources in optimizing 1xx responses specifically for Google
- When troubleshooting network errors, look beyond HTTP to deeper protocol layers
- Continue to implement standard status codes correctly, including those not specifically discussed
Why We Care: Understanding how Google processes signals like HTTP status codes is critical to creating an effective technical SEO strategy.
6. Index Now Improves AI Search and Shopping SEO
Ecommerce sites – listen up! Microsoft Bing announced this week that the Index Now search crawling technology is a powerful tool for ecommerce companies who want to appear at the top of the SERP.
According to the announcement, pairing Index Now with Schema.org will help to ensure faster indexing, meaning your correct product information will appear within AI search and shopping features.
They recommend using the following Schema.org product types:
- Title (name in JSON-LD)
- Description
- Price (list/retail price)
- Link (product landing page URL)
- Image link (image in JSON-LD)
- Shipping (especially important for Germany and Austria)
- Id (a unique identifier for the product)
- Brand
- GTIN
- MPN
- Date Published
- Date Modified
- Optional fields to further enhance context and classification:
- Category (helps group products for search and shopping platforms)
- Seller (recommended for marketplaces or resellers)
- Item Condition (e.g., New Condition, Used Condition)
Key Takeaways: Ecommerce sites that want to be discovered should perform a website audit to ensure that they’re using all of the right schema product type properties to be discovered by AI search engines.
7. New AI Tools Come to Google Gemini
Google announced new upgrades to Gemini 2.5 models this week at Google I/O.
The new capabilities are designed to enhance reasoning, improve interface interactions, and create more efficient workflows. Updates include:
- Google Live camera and screen sharing to allow for real-time visual help
- Integration with Google Maps, Calendar, Tasks, and Keep
- The ability to create calendar events from conversations
- Deep Think abilities allow the AI model to consider multiple solutions before responding
- Thought summaries to explain the reasoning process
- Thinking budgets to control costs
- MCP support to allow for integration with open-source tools
Key Takeaways: Google Gemini is evolving and could become more beneficial for marketers, their analytical workflows, and their work product.
8. Google Search Expands AI Mode
Google announced major upgrades to AI Mode at its recent I/O developer conference. The upgrades aim to improve accuracy and global reach and create a more interactive search experience for Google users.
In addition to being available all over the US, AI Mode is also now available in over 200 countries and more than 40 languages. And users no longer need to opt-in to use it. Thanks to the ease of use of AI Mode, Google has reported a 10% increase in search activity in major markets like the US and India.
Updates include:
- Deep Search to build expert-level, fully-cited reports in minutes
- Live Visual Search
- AI Agents that can complete multi-step tasks
- Improved shopping capabilities such as personalized visuals, virtual try-ons, and AI-powered checkouts
Key Takeaway: Google is clearly pushing toward a user-centric experience. As marketers, your content and SEO strategies should adapt to meet the evolving expectations of Google and its users.
9. YouTube is Making it Easier to Interact with Viewers
YouTube rolled out new features designed to make it easier to interact with your audience.
Now, creators have the ability to create quiz stickers for Shorts and reply to comments with voice replies. All creators have also been given access to YouTube’s Shorts visual guide to make it easier to place where UI buttons will appear on your video.
It seems that YouTube is most excited about the quiz stickers, saying, “[w]ith this one-click sticker, creators can quiz their audience, and evaluate if they understand a particular concept. This, in turn, can inspire future content creation. Whether you’re testing their knowledge on a recent video topic, diving into a niche subject, or simply adding a dose of light-hearted competition to your channel, the possibilities are endless.”
Action Item: Log into YouTube and play around with these new options to create a more interactive experience for your audience.
10. Meta Tests Option to Create Unattached Threads Profile
Is Threads separating itself from Instagram? In the EU it is!
Some EU users are now able to create a Threads account without using an Instagram login. Since some users weren’t thrilled about having their Instagram account so deeply intertwined with their Instagram account, this could lead to more Threads users.
Why We Care: Making it easier to create a Threads account could greatly increase the app’s user count. Between this and the recent introduction of ads on Threads, you might want to consider adding it to your social media strategy soon.
Weekly Homework:
- Open up your Google Ads dashboard to learn more about whether Smart Bidding Exploration could be right for your organization.
- Look into the new Google generative AI certification process to see if it might benefit your work as a digital marketer.
- If you are an e-commerce site, perform a site audit to ensure your schema aligns with the new suggestions from Index Now.
- Play around with Google AI Mode to see how you can tailor your content to users relying on this new AI-based search tool.
- If you are a YouTube creator, start using the new tools to see if they help form stronger connections between you and your audience.
