Q3 2026 Digital Marketing Trends: AI, PPC, SEO & ChatGPT Ads

What'sNewin
DigitalMarketing?
Q32026
AllourSEO,PPC&Webexpertsinoneplace,withallthe
latestdigitalmarketingtrends,toolsandupdates.

TheDigitalMazeisaDerby-baseddigitalmarketingagencyworkingwithscaling
businessesinHomeandGarden,D2CeCommerce,SaaS,andProfessionalServices.
WecombineSEO,PPC,webdevelopment,andcontentmarketingtodeliver
measurablecommercialgrowth.Thirtyspecialists,onefocus:marketingthatmakes
youmoney.Thedepthofalargeagencywiththeaccountabilityofaclose-knitteam
HiThere…

Wehaveworkedwithloadsofvery
differentbrands

hello@thedigitalmaze.com
Whatwe're
goingtocover
Questions&Answers
PPC
Introduction
WebDesignandDevelopment
SEO
AI

Let'sGetStarted…
Okaythen,

EmlynDennis
7+YearsPPCexperience
B2B&B2CExperience
Platforms:GoogleAds,Microsoft,Meta,LinkedIn,etc.
In-house&agencybackground
PPCTeamLead

PaidMedia
Updates
What’sNewwith
ChatGPTAds?
What’sNewin
PaidMedia?

GoogleAds
Updates

AIMaxBecomingDefault!
Recap:
AIMaxmovesfromopt-intodefaultformanySearchcampaigns
From 1 Sep 2026, Search campaigns using Automatically Created Assets (ACA) or
campaign-level Broad Match settings will be automatically upgraded to AI Max.
Under the new AI Max settings, AI-powered search term matching and AI-generated text
customisation will be enabled by default.
Advertisers can opt out in campaign settings, but need to do so before the auto-upgrade
date.
Google is moving AI Max from an opt-in feature to the default for a large chunk of Search
campaigns overnight.
Perhaps this is a move to permanently move on from standard Paid Search?

AIMaxForSearch(Latest)
Recap:
AI Max is fully out of Beta with more than 500,000 advertisers adopted.
Google is claiming a 7% average lift in conversions or conversion value at similar ROAS.
We find that results are mixed with performance favouring accounts with high conversion data
and a simple service/product offering.

AIMax:NewWaystoSeeandSteerIt
1.Newreportingbreakdown
Google has added two new rows to the Keywords report to show exactly where your AI Max traffic is coming from:
"AI Max expanded matches" - clicks from searches AI Max found on its own, beyond your actual keyword list.
"AI Max landing page matches" - clicks where AI Max sent someone to a different page on your site than the
one you set, because it thought that page was a better fit.
In plain terms: for the first time you can see how much of your traffic AI Max is generating itself, versus how much
came from the keywords you actually chose.
Google's own advice: leave AI Max alone for at least two weeks after switching it on before adding negative
keywords, so it has time to learn first.
T
otal clicks from keywords you have added
T
otal clicks from what AI Max has expanded into
T
otal traffic from search queries that matched because of your landing pages or
assets, outside of your keywords
T
otal traffic to your URL inclusions that match your current workspace filters

AIMax:NewWaystoSeeandSteerIt
2.Apossiblenew"stayonbrand"control(notyetconfirmed)
Some advertisers have spotted a new “branded searches” setting in AI
Max settings. It lets you exclusively show up on non-branded search
terms.

Typically you would have to exclude each brand individually which can
take up a lot of time. This is why you do a blanket exclusion on all
brand terms. This will be great for keeping non-brand and brand
separate.
Google hasn't announced this officially yet, and it isn't showing up in
every account, so treat it as "one to watch" rather than something to
rely on right now.

AIMaxForShopping(New!)
Recap:
AIMaxforShoppingshipped24July2026—nowextendstoStandardShopping
T
ext customisation: Google rewrites your Shopping ad copy on the fly to match
conversational searches (rather than your product title)
Final URL Expansion: Matches your site’
s most relevant landing pages to a shopper's
intent.
Optimal Format Selection: Automatically selects the best format, text or
Shopping ads, based on what is most relevant to the shopper’
s needs.
Google Ads Editor 2.13 update now supports AI Max for Shopping & Search
Why it matters: it feels like a bridge between Standard Shopping & PMAX. For users that want to
maintain control, this could be a worry.

AIMax:TheNumbers!
Recap:
Google's own claimed uplift has already been revised down. From 14% more conversions at beta
launch (May 2025) to roughly 7% more conversions/value at similar CPA/ROAS today.
Independent data tells a rougher story: an August 2025 Ezra analysis of ~30,000 search terms
across client accounts found 99% of AI Max impressions led to zero conversions.
Thekeyhereistotestitforyourselfanddecidewhetherornottouseit!
AtTheDigitalMaze,ithasworkedwellforsomeclientsbutnotforothers.

LocalServicesAdsFoldedIntoPerformanceMax
•
•
•
•
•
Google's changing how Smart Bidding handles budget-constrained Target CPA/ROAS
campaigns. Live across Search, Shopping, PMax, Demand Gen and Travel.

Right now, when a campaign's limited by budget, the algorithm chases the most efficient
auctions first. That usually means actual CPA sits comfortably below target (or ROAS runs above
it).

From 17 August, the target starts acting more like a real dial between volume and profitability.
The looser the target, the more the algorithm's willing to pay per conversion.

So if your actual CPA has been running well under target, expect it to creep upward once this
lands.

Google's advice: don't panic and start adding data exclusions or bid caps, and don't touch
bidding strategies right before or just after the 17th. Give it a couple of conversion cycles first.

MicrosoftAds
Update

CopilotSearchAds:ANewAdvertisingSurface
Microsoft is launching ads directly into Copilot search, in the form of a new
placement for Performance Max campaigns. It’
s effectively joining ChatGPT Ads
as another platform adding ads to AI.
Ads appear beneath Copilot's response in an "ad block," where Copilot explains
its reasoning for including that ad. Microsoft calls this "ad voice."
Why it matters: Microsoft's answer to Google's AI Overview ads, the first real
advertising surface inside a conversational AI product, not classic search.
Also new: Ad Preview Hub now extends to PMax (see auto-assembled creative before it
spends) · Clarity added T
opic Insights (groups AI citations by topic) · new bulk edit tool for
disapproved assets.

NewPMaxTestingTools:ProvingItActuallyWorks
Microsoft has launched two new experiment types so you can measure whether
Performance Max is actually worth it, instead of just trusting the headline stats.
Uplift experiments: test the incremental impact of adding PMax alongside your
existing Search or Shopping campaigns.
Upgrade experiments: migrate a Search or Shopping campaign to PMax, then
compare it against the original to see if switching was worth it.
How to run one properly (Microsoft's guidance): get at least 30 conversions in the last 30
days before you start, keep bidding targets, product groups and settings identical between
test and control, and give it 4 to 12 weeks before judging results.
Why it matters: this is a proper before and after test that you control, rather than relying on
Microsoft's own claimed 8% average incremental conversion uplift from PMax.

PaidSocial
Updates

MetaAdsUpdates
Advantage+ targeting is now mandatory, Meta has removed the ability to opt out of
audience expansion.
The Advantage+ Shopping conversion threshold has dropped from 50 to 25
conversions per week, opening it to smaller ecommerce accounts.
Lookalike audiences are being phased out in favour of Advantage+ audience targeting.

LinkedInAdsLatestUpdates
DMP segment cap - Linkedin ads is adding a hard-limit for audiences. 1,000
segments across Matched & Predictive Audiences. Over-limit requests return a 429 error
.
Dynamic UTM parameters Can now be set at ad-account level. So advertisers can
track where leads are coming from in their CRM. This will be extremely useful for
managing lead quality or understanding what segments of the account are resulting in
sales.

Latestwith
ChatGPTAds

ChatGPTAdsRecap
Placement: Ads sit beneath the response, not mixed into it.
ChatGPT Ads officially launched in the UK on 11 August 2026,
alongside Mexico, Brazil, Japan and South Korea. Why it matters:
now live and relevant to UK clients, not a future consideration.
Earlier in January, OpenAI confirmed something that many fellow experts
in the paid media space have long since expected - paid ads are
officially being tested inside ChatGPT
.
ChatGPT ads now appear in 51% of US replies across 6
countries, a sign of how fast this has scaled since the January
pilot.
During the test, ads may appear for logged-in users on Free
and Go plans.

ChatGPTAds
LatestUpdates
OpenAI opened its “
Advertise in ChatGPT” self-serve portal publicly on 22 July
2026, with Best Buy, Lowe's and VistaPrint named as early advertisers.
Two ad formats are now properly live: a shopping product carousel (built on Etsy and
Shopify partnerships, letting users check out inside ChatGPT or click through) and an
interactive display card with an “
Ask ChatGPT about this ad” button, where ChatGPT
answers questions using product info the advertiser has uploaded.
Why it matters: named big-name advertisers and two working formats - this has moved
well past “pilot” territory into a real channel with real case studies.

ChatGPTAds
LatestUpdates
Scale: over 2,000 brands now advertise on ChatGPT through ad-tech partner Criteo
alone.
Criteo and StackAdapt have lowered ChatGPT spend minimums recently - easier
for smaller advertisers to test the channel.
Next markets: pilots starting soon in Canada, Australia and New Zealand.
Still worth flagging: oCPC bidding is in beta for product feed campaigns, and
Automatic Advanced Matching becomes default for all Web pixels (including
existing ones) from 17 Aug 2026.
Why it matters: falling spend minimums plus a widening ad-tech ecosystem make
this genuinely accessible for mid-size ecommerce clients, not just enterprise.

emlyn.dennis@thedigitalmaze.com

PassionateabouttheworldoftechandhowAI
canhelpimproveeveryone'sworkflows.
15+yearsofexperienceintheworldofdevelopment.
Leadadesignanddevelopmentteam.
LiamNelson
TechnicalDirector
Workedwithhundredsofclientsacrossdifferent
manysectorsovertheyears.

AI,Web&
What'sNew
What'snewinAItools?
What'snewindesignand
build?
What'snewineCommerce?

GPT-5.6,released9July
Three variants rather than one model. Sol is the workhorse, T
erra
sits in the middle, Luna is the cheap one. Built to drive projects
rather than answer questions: it manages its own context,
orchestrates tools and hands back finished results.
A new Ultra setting coordinates several agents across
parallel workstreams on a single task.
Thentheycutthe‘cost’
On 30 July, three weeks after launch, OpenAI dropped the price
of Luna by 80% and T
erra by 20%.
The models got better and then got dramatically cheaper
inside a month. If you costed an AI feature six months ago
and shelved it because the numbers did not work, the
numbers have changed.
GPT-5.6-Cyber
Released 10 August. A security-specific model that solved
95% of the cybersecurity problems it was set.
The same capability cuts both ways, which is worth
remembering before you hand any agent real access.
ItisnowinsideFigma
GPT-5.6 powers Figma Make, so the model is doing the first
pass on real design and build work.
This is the shift worth noticing: it has moved out of the
chat window and into the tools people actually work in.

ClaudeOpus5,released24July
State of the art on coding and knowledge work benchmarks,
at the same price as the model it replaced: $5 per million
input tokens and $25 per million output.
Better model, same price. That is becoming the pattern
rather than the exception as they all start to compete.
Theeffortdial
Y
ou now decide how much thinking the model does before it
answers. Turn it down for routine work and it keeps most of its
performance while using far fewer tokens.
The genuinely useful one. Most people run everything at
maximum and wonder why the tokens run out so quickly
.
Thefamilynowsplitsbyjob
Fable 5 at the frontier
, Opus 5 at close to that for half the
price, Sonnet 5 as the everyday workhorse. Opus 5 is the
default on Max and the strongest model on Pro.
Choosing the right model for the task now matters more
than always reaching for the biggest one.
Threevendors,sixweeks
GPT-5.6 on 9 July, Opus 5 on 24 July, Gemini 3.6 Flash on 21
July, then Gemini 3.7 Flash on 13 August.
Lots of activity and there are rumours of more ‘powerful’
models coming by Q4

Gemini3.6Flash,21July
Uses 17% fewer tokens than 3.5 Flash for the same work, with
better precision on code edits and stronger results across the
agentic benchmarks.
A solid, unglamorous efficiency release.
Gemini3.7Flash,13August
23 days after 3.6 they released 3.7! Introductory pricing at
$0.75 per million input tokens and $3.75 output, with the same
one million token context window.
Gemini Flash is good because its very fast but output quality
is knowhere near GPT 5.6 and Opus 5.
Gemini4teased
Google trailed it alongside the 3.6 launch. No date given.
Expect it before the end of the year
.
Whatthismeansforyou
Cost per token keeps falling while capability keeps rising,
across all three vendors at once.
Anything you ruled out on cost is worth pricing again.

CodeLayers
Turn any design layer into working, interactive code with a single
click or a prompt. Early access opened in July.
The prototype is no longer a clickable picture of the thing. It
is the thing.
FigmaMotion
A proper animation timeline with keyframes and ready-made
presets, built into Figma.
Animation stops being a separate tool and a separate
handover
.
AIshadersandgenerativeplugins
Shader based fills and effects generated by AI, and you can
now build a plugin by describing it to the Figma agent rather
than writing one.
Design work that used to need a developer no longer
does.
Agentchatsaresharedbydefault
Y
ou can see what directions your colleagues are exploring
and build on them, instead of everyone prompting privately
in parallel.
Useful tool for when multiple designers are working on
the same project.

WhatsNewin
eCommerce

VS
E-commercemarketshare:23%*
Source:Statista
E-commercemarketshare:24%*
Source:Statista

ShopifyworkedheavilyontheirAIacross
theproducttheirnewfeaturesinclude:
Lastquarterrecap
What'snewwith
Shopify
•
•
•
•
Summer'26EverywhereEdition,17June,over150updates
UCPnowavailableonstores,soAIshoppingagentscan
readyourcatalogueandbuildcartsoutofthebox
Horizonthemesystem,builtonnestedblocks,withtennew
freethemes
LegacyShopifyScriptsstoppedrunningon30June,
anythingnotmigratedtoFunctionshasalreadybroken
Upcomingfeatures
•
•
•
NativeAImerchandisingforcollectionsort,
cross-sellandinsights
Continuedexpansionofagenticcommerce
features
Furtherrefinementsacrossstore
management,frontendandcheckout

What'snewwith
WooCommerceworkedonandreleased:
LastQuarterRecap
•
•
•
•
WooCommerce11.0released4August,551
pullrequests,oneofitslargestever
28performanceupdatescoveringspeed,
cachinganddatabasescalability
Objectcachingforproductsonbydefault
fornewstores,opt-inforexisting
Customerscannowclaimtheirprevious
guestorders
Upcomingfeatures
•
•
•
11.0.1followedon10Augustwith
WordPress7.1compatibility,updatethis
beforeupdatingWordPress
Continuedperformanceworkonbasketand
checkout
Furtheradminperformanceimprovements
forlargestores

liam.nelson@thedigitalmaze.com

10+YearsB2B&B2Cexperience
SEOandGEOSpecialist
ManagesTheDigitalMaze’sSEOTeam
NeilBates
SEOTeamLead
Experienceworkingacrossmultiplesectors
FormerSEOManageratSportsDirect

KeyChangesinSEO&GEO
May-August2026

August2026spamupdate,thethirdthisyear
GooglestartedrollingouttheAugust2026spamupdate
Wednesday18August,ataround17:30UKtime.Itapplies
globallyandtoalllanguagesandshouldtakeafewdays.
This is the third spam update of 2026 after March and June. Notably Google
published nothing alongside it, no blog post, and the spam updates
documentation has not changed since December
. No new spam policy types
were announced either
, so the existing policies remain the reference point.
The June update followed a clarification on 15 May that the spam policies also
cover attempts to manipulate generative AI responses, including AI Overviews
and AI Mode. Google has not said whether August targets that specifically. For
scale, March took 19 hours and 30 minutes and June took just over two days.
Why it matters: it is live right now and can have a big impact on your
SEO performance
What to do: pull Search Console data from 18 August onwards and
watch it across the rollout rather than reacting on day one. If
something has moved, check policy compliance first, because
Google is clear that recovery takes months

GA4canfinallyseeAIassistanttraffic
On13May,GoogleAnalyticsaddedadedicatedwayto
measuretrafficarrivingfromAIassistants.ThereisnowanAI
AssistantchannelintheDefaultChannelGroupreports.
The mechanics are straightforward. When the referrer matches a recognised AI
assistant, GA4 assigns a new "ai-assistant" medium, groups the visit under the AI
Assistant channel, and labels the campaign as "(ai-assistant)". It covers the ones
you would expect, ChatGPT
, Gemini and Claude among them.
Until now this traffic was scattered through referral or direct, which made it
almost impossible to answer the question every client is asking. Y
ou can now
track clicks from AI tools, see which sources are trending, and compare the
whole channel against organic search side by side.
Why it matters: this turns AI visibility from an argument into a number
,
with clear traffic acquisition and engagement data available to all
What to do: check the channel is populating on your account and
begin reporting on it as a genuine organic channel
Forfulldataoverlastfewyears,youstillneedtoaddacustom
channelgroup.Ourblogtellsyouhowtodothis:
https://thedigitalmaze.com/blog/how-to-track-ai-traffic-in-ga4/

GSCAIvisibilityreportisnowinmostaccounts
GooglelauncheddedicatedgenerativeAIperformance
reportsinSearchConsoleon3June,butonlyforasliceof
properties.ButitnowseemsthevastmajorityofGSC
accountsshouldincludethisdata.
Y
ou will find it as an expandable tab under the main performance report. It
covers AI Overviews, AI Mode and the generative features in Discover
, and
gives you impressions, pages, countries, devices and dates with hourly, daily,
weekly and monthly granularity.
Still no clicks and still no query data, which remains the frustration. Data also
starts from late May 2026 with no historical backfill.
Why it matters: similar to the previous slide, you now have
more free data on how your site is performing in AI search
What to do: add this data to your general reporting
alongside the GA4 AI assistant data to begin to build a
proper AI engine picture

SearchConsolenowcoverssocialandvideotoo
Googleintroducedplatformpropertieson7Julyandmade
themgloballyavailableon29July.Itisanewpropertytype
coveringInstagram,TikTok,XandYouTube.
Y
ou can see clicks, impressions and the actual search queries driving people to
your posts across your social channels. That data flows into the Performance
report, the Insights report and the Achievements section.
Until now this was a genuine blind spot. Y
our TikT
ok could be ranking in Google
for a commercial query and you would never know, because Search Console
only ever measured websites. Google also published a guide on 29 July
covering how to analyse social and video performance, including using Insights
to spot trending query groups.
Why it matters: you can finally see social search
performance in Google's own data
What to do: connect whichever of the four platforms you
actively post on, then compare which queries your website
wins against which your social content wins

ShopifysaysAIsearchisadding,notreplacing
OnitsQ2earningscallon5August,ShopifyreportedthatAI-
driventrafficandorderstomerchantstoresbothtripledyearon
year.PresidentHarleyFinkelsteincalledAIacomplementto
searchratherthanasubstituteforit.
Search remains one of the largest sources of buyer traffic to Shopify
merchants and it is still growing, with sessions up 1.3x over two years and still
around a third of storefront traffic.
What has changed is shopper behaviour: half of all AI-referred sessions land
directly on a product detail page, 2.5 times the rate of traditional search,
because agents match structured product data against a specific intent rather
than a keyword.
Why it matters: it is the strongest counter yet to the AI-is-
killing-traffic story
What to do: if you sell online, go and look at how complete
your product attributes actually are. Specs, dimensions,
materials and compatibility are what let an agent match your
product to a very specific request.

Apropertestsaysschemadoesnotliftrankings
Mozpublishedaten-weekcontrolledstudybyEvergrow
Marketingaskingaquestionmostofushaveonlyeverguessed
at:doesaddingschemamarkupactuallyimproverankings?
The methodology was tighter than most. 29 landscaping businesses split into
control and test groups, with LocalBusiness markup added only to the test
group. They deliberately avoided any schema type that could generate a rich
snippet, including breadcrumbs, priceRange and reviewRating, specifically so
they were measuring the presence of schema itself rather than a knock-on effect
from improved click-through rate.
The result was no direct ranking impact across Google, Bing or Yahoo. A couple
of specific queries hinted at some influence on Google and Bing, but nothing
strong enough to confirm.
Why it matters: it backs up what Google has always said, that
structured data is not a ranking factor
What to do: keep schema, but change what you expect from it. Its
job is making pages eligible for enhanced results and easier for AI
systems to read, so put your effort into the types that actually still
produce something visible

AIcontentisgettingcaughtasthincontent
GooglehasalwayssaidAI-generatedcontentisnot
automaticallybad.AmanualactionhandedoutinJuly
suggeststhepracticeiscatchingupwiththepolicyanyway.
A large forum received a partial manual action on 17 July for thin content with little
or no added value. It named one URL pattern, the /threads/ directory, which
covered 168,290 threads and over half a million posts built up over twenty years.
Two other sections of the same site were far more obviously thin, an old syndicated
headline feed and an archived knowledge base, and neither was touched.
The likely explanation came from the SEO community rather than Google. The
forum runs an AI chatbot as a listed staff member
, and it had posted over 100,000
replies since 2023. The value of a forum is that answers come from lived
experience. AI has none, it works from received knowledge, so in that setting it
adds nothing a user came looking for
.
Why it matters: the risk is not AI content in the abstract, it is AI content
in places where users came specifically for human experience, and
Google can act on a whole directory at once.
What to do: look at anywhere on your site AI is publishing at volume
without a human checking it

Claudetextisnowwatermarked
Anthropicconfirmedon14AugustthatfutureClaude
modelswillgeneratetextcontainingawatermark.Itisaway
ofdeterminingthelikelihoodthatClaudewasinvolvedin
writingapieceofcontent.
Nothing is added to the text and there are no hidden characters. The
watermark works by changing the source of the randomness Claude uses
when choosing between two equally good words, so a reader cannot tell the
difference and there is no impact on quality, creativity or readability. It carries
no identifying information and cannot be traced back to a person, an
organisation or a chat.
As of 2 August the EU requires AI providers serving its market to mark AI-
generated content, and around 190 signatories to the same Code of Practice
will be rolling out their own watermarks.
Why it matters: AI-assisted content is about to become far easier to
identify than it was with detection tools that only guessed from phrasing
What to do: Maintain significant human editing pass on anything AI-
assisted, since the watermark only attaches to words the model chooses

Googleisdoingthesame,andfurtherahead
Anthropicisnotactingalone.Googlesetouthowfaritsown
contentprovenanceworkhasalreadygone,andconfirmed
itisputtingtheverificationtoolsinfrontofordinaryusers.
SynthID, Google's watermarking technology, is three years old and has
already marked over 100 billion images and videos plus 60,000 years of
audio. Verification arrived in the Gemini app earlier this year and has been
used 50 million times, and it is now expanding into Search, with Chrome to
follow. Users can ask "Is this made with AI?" through Lens, AI Mode, Circle to
Search or Gemini in Chrome.
Google is also rolling out checks for C2PA Content Credentials, the same
open standard Anthropic uses on generated files, so you can see whether an
image is an untouched camera original or what edited it.
Why it matters: anyone will soon be able to test whether the
imagery and content on your site was machine generated
What to do: make sure you know where all your content has
come from and any tools used in putting it together

SohowcanyouuseAIforwebcontent?
ThehonestansweristhatGoogledoesnotcarewhethera
humanoramodeltypedit.Itcareswhetherthepageadds
something.Thatisthewholegame,anditchangeswhereAI
earnsitskeep.
The safest wins are the parts either side of the writing. Research is one: clustering
keywords, reading through competitor pages at a scale you never would
manually, pulling out the questions people actually ask. Briefing is another
,
turning that into a structure with the gaps identified before anyone writes a
word. And proofing at the end, checking consistency, readability and whether
you have actually answered the question you set out to. None of that touches the
published words, so none of it carries risk.
Then the more interesting bit. A piece written entirely by AI can rank perfectly
well, if it contains something the model could not have known by itself. Y
our own
sales data. The objections your team hears every week. Results from a test you
ran. Original photography. A price comparison nobody else has bothered to
compile. Give a model genuinely unique input and it will write that up well. Give
it nothing and it produces a competent summary of what already exists, which is
exactly what my earlier slide on thin content was all about.

neil.bates@thedigitalmaze.com

Q3 2026 Digital Marketing Trends: AI, PPC, SEO & ChatGPT Ads

Q3 2026 Digital Marketing Trends: AI, PPC, SEO & ChatGPT Ads

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