Like every other year in recent memory, Google’s advertising platform saw a lot of changes. This year’s updates include more automation, additional bidding tools, and even more AI integration.
While there are too many changes to list each from the year, here are the biggest changes coming to Google Ads in 2025 and what they could mean for you in 2026.
Contents
- Google promoted Power Pack
- AI Max for Search Campaigns Launched
- Performance Max saw an improvement
- Google introduced high value mode in Performance Max
- Smart bid search affects the scene
- An investment strategy tool was announced
- Google launched Asset Studio
- Brand guidelines helped with consistency
- Advertisers got the Responsive Search Ads Asset Report
- Google released its search network performance report
- AI review and AI mode changed the user experience
The Biggest Google Ads Updates for 2025 (+ What They Mean for 2026)
Here’s a roundup of the changes and updates to Google Ads in 2025 and what they mean for your strategy next year.
1. Google promoted Power Pack
At the Google Marketing Live event in May 2025, Google started talking about their Power Pack, now they plan to take over the Power Duo.
There are three campaign types in PowerPack: Performance Max, Demand General, and a new suite of tools called AIMax.
Here’s how to work in concert with each other.
- Demand General Creates awareness and interest in your business and products.
- Hey Max Engages users in search to capture and convert their intent.
- Performance max Orchestrates full funnel performance at scale.
As far as I can tell, with real-world advertisers running this setup, the jury is still out on whether this approach will actually work, but depending on the performance you’re seeing from your campaigns, it might be worth a try in 2026.
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2. AI Max for Search Campaigns launched
Along with the announcement of Powerpack, Google also announced the release of AI Max for search campaigns. Unlike Performance Max and Demand General, this is not an entirely new campaign type. Instead, it’s a suite of features you can apply to your search campaigns. Here are the features you can use:
The essence of AI Max for Search campaigns is that they effectively leverage broad match technology with targeted targeting (think DSA campaigns) to find new customers.
They also provide the option to use some of Google’s tools within Search from Performance Max, namely text customization and URL expansion.
If you want a more robust rundown of AI Max for Search, you can read this article.
3. Performance Max saw an improvement
Just because a new toy was launched doesn’t mean the old ones weren’t getting some upgrades this year.
Performance Max had a ton of changes, and almost all of them came as more than welcome news to advertisers. We get a little more insight into how campaigns are performing and control them to improve. Here’s a quick rundown of what came out:
- Campaign level negative keywords
- Extended search topics
- Brand List Costs
- Controls beyond the URL page feed
- Device and demographic targeting controls
- Channel performance reporting
- Search term reporting
- Improved asset group reporting for device and time
- The final URL and asset reporting extension
- Placement exclusions
An example of a channel performance report.
If you’re hesitant to use PMAX because it’s called Google’s black box, that’s no excuse not to check it out. We now have more control over who sees our ads and where, with negative keywords, brand costs, URL controls, device and demographic controls, as well as placement costs.
4. Google introduced high value mode in more than performance
One of the nuances in marketing is that acquiring a new customer is usually more expensive than getting a sale from a returning customer, but the lifetime value of that returning customer makes the extra expense worth it the first time.
The high value mode in PMAX campaigns is designed to help you be a little more flexible on marketing spend for that new customer by increasing your bid when it thinks it’s the result of a long-term customer.
This feature requires you to select the “Bid more for new customers” feature at the campaign level, then set additional values ​​based on your business.
If you are trying to find new customers and are willing to spend a little more to get a new long-term customer, this option may be great for you.
5. Smart bidding affects the search scene
Another new Google tool aims to help you, too Get more salesbut instead of knowing if someone is a new or returning customer, Smart Bid Search adjusts your expected profit to show for queries you didn’t show before.
This new AI-powered feature allows Google to temporarily lower the effective ROAs target, based on the acceptable range you’ve provided, by showing new users for queries that didn’t qualify for your previous ROAs target.
In my opinion, while all are billed as upside, this feature should really only be used by a select few advertisers who are seeing the best return on their campaigns with high conversion volume and can afford to see a low RRA to acquire new customers.
6. An investment strategy tool was announced
The latest launch from Google is still in beta and has not yet rolled out to all our accounts.
An investment strategy tool Intended to be used by advertisers who have incoming ad spend and want to know the most effective way to spend it in the near future.
The purpose of this tool is to show you the most efficient place(s) in your account that you can add budget, while staying close to your performance goals.
With this feature, you can specify how much you want to spend each week or how many additional conversions you want each week, and it will recommend a budget allocation based on all campaigns that are currently within budget.
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7. Google launched Asset Studio
Asset Studio launched in August, a new tool designed to help advertisers build and measure creative assets using AI. It leverages their Imagine 4 and VEO for photos and videos, respectively, but recently Google has been adding Nano Banana 4 for more control and higher-quality photos.
This is a big deal for advertisers, mostly because there’s no excuse for having poor creatives. Or worse yet, don’t run campaigns because you can’t create creatives in the first place.
With a few simple pointers and tons of editing options, you can do anything you need to engage your audience from within the Google Ads platform.
8. Brand guidelines helped with consistency
In addition to Asset Studio, Google has also admitted that some of their efforts in automation have resulted in creations that aren’t “on brand,” if you will. Many times in the past, I had to use automation because the resulting ads (either in text or visuals) didn’t fit the company I was advertising for.
In 2025, Google started using Brand guidelines Some campaign types let you control what colors and fonts your ads can be. It’s a pretty simple version, but it definitely opened the door for a lot of companies.
Over the course of the year, they are expanding these options further. Now you can guide Google’s text customization tools to ensure any new copy they provide for you stays on brand and maintains its tone. This includes identifying phrases that are off-limits or don’t mean things to Google about a brand and its usage.
There are many advancements that can really help companies that are more hesitant to take advantage of new automation features.
9. Advertisers Got Responsive Search Ads Asset Report
AD copy testing received a huge boost in effectiveness. Advertisers can now report on the performance of individual headlines and descriptions in their responsive search ads. We no longer need to rely on the overall ad unit and (fully leveraged) combination report.
With this information, we can now fully understand which messages are driving clicks, conversions and revenue, and create more effective ad creatives for future tests.
10. Google released its search network performance report
In 2025, we finally got insight into how different sites within the Search Partner Network performed.
This report lives under Content Appropriateness in the Report Editor, and while it only shows feedback, it’s infinitely better than nothing, so I’ll take it!
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11. AI overview and AI mode changed the user experience
A 2025 roundup wouldn’t be complete without mentioning the updates that Google is making to its AI results for users on the search side.
In the past year, Google began leveraging both AI review as well as advertising in AI mode, meaning advertisers can get their listings in Google’s “Response Engine” section.
The catch: As of the writing of this post, you need to use some of the automated solutions provided by Google and have your ads not only relevant to the query, but to display these AI offerings, along with the answer and supporting documents.
Beef up on 2025 Google Ads updates before the new year
It’s been a big year in the Google Ads interface. We got a lot of insight into performance and a lot of controls to affect that performance. At the same time, Google continues to invest in its AI-powered solutions, whether through new campaign features, new tools, or experiments on the SERPs themselves.
In my estimation, 2025 was a good year for advertisers and Google. Here’s hoping 2026 continues in its footsteps and we’ll all be just as happy next December.