This Month in Paid Media: May 2026

May was dominated by one event: Google Marketing Live. As ever, it came with a wave of announcements – some incremental, some more significant. We’ve pulled out the four updates that stood out to us and what they mean in practice.

1. Google introduces Prospects Mode

Google has introduced a new customer acquisition setting that goes beyond targeting “new customers.” Prospects Mode specifically targets people who have never encountered your brand at all – genuinely cold audiences, not just unconverted ones.

It’s a meaningful move for upper funnel activity. What to keep in mind:

• This opens up new ground for brands focused on building awareness and wanting new customers
• It works differently to existing customer acquisition goals, so existing setups may need revisiting
• Early testing will be key to understanding how it performs against more established targeting approaches

One to watch closely as it rolls out more broadly.

2. AI Brief comes to AI Max

You can now give Google’s AI an actual brand brief before it starts generating your ad content – covering tone of voice, audience, messaging priorities and guardrails. For anyone who has felt uneasy about how much creative control AI Max takes, this is a meaningful step forward.

In practice, this means:

• The machine has more context about what your brand is and isn’t
• AI-generated copy should, in theory, stay closer to your actual messaging
• It doesn’t solve everything, but it reduces one of the bigger concerns around AI Max adoption

3. Google launches Universal Cart

Google introduced Universal Cart, an intelligent shopping cart that works across merchants and surfaces, letting users add products while browsing Search, chatting with Gemini, watching YouTube or reading Gmail.

What makes it more than just a cross-platform cart is what it does in the background. The moment a product is added, it starts finding deals and price drops, tracking price history and alerting users when items are back in stock.

The implications for advertisers:

• The path from product discovery to purchase is getting significantly shorter
• Universal Cart is rolling out across Search and Gemini in the US this summer, with YouTube and Gmail to follow – UK expansion is on the roadmap too
• Product feed quality, pricing accuracy and data structure will matter more than ever as Google’s AI actively monitors and surfaces deals on your behalf

4. AI-powered Shopping ads get more personal

Rather than just displaying a product, Google is now using Gemini to explain why a specific product matches what someone searched for. Available in Performance Max and AI Max, it adds a layer of contextual relevance on top of the standard product listing.

Things to keep in mind:

• The impact on click-through rates could be meaningful, even if the change looks subtle
• If you’re running Shopping campaigns, this is worth testing sooner rather than later
• As with most AI-driven features, the brands that test early will have a learning advantage

What this tells us about the direction of paid media

Google Marketing Live 2025 made one thing clear: Google is embedding AI deeper into every stage of the paid journey, from cold awareness all the way through to checkout. The pace isn’t slowing down.

If you’d like to talk through how any of these updates could affect your paid media strategy, get in touch with our team.