The Click Brief - September 2025

Jeremy Packee and Emily Anderson dive into a jam-packed month of digital marketing updates designed to help advertisers fine-tune their Q4 campaigns. The hosts break down Google’s expansion of campaign total budgets to Search, Performance Max, and Shopping campaigns, sharing pros, cons, and Q4 testing advice. They discuss how Microsoft’s Supplemental Feeds bring long-missing flexibility to product updates, while Google’s new Demand Gen Drops showcase fresh features like promotion assets, omnichannel bidding, and comparable conversion metrics.

The episode continues with discussion on AI Max for Search, Google’s fully AI-powered campaign type, and the rollout of text guidelines for AI-generated copy, a much-needed control feature for marketers wary of overly creative machine-made messaging.

The duo also covers Meta’s big Reels and Threads advertising expansion, Microsoft’s enhanced Performance Max reporting, Amazon’s AI Ad Creator in Creative Studio, and YouTube’s new deep-linking ads to apps. They finish with a rapid-fire roundup of smaller but notable updates, including Google’s visual local ads, Meta’s new Ads Manager formatting tools, Microsoft’s consent tracking updates, and Amazon’s DSP partnership with SiriusXM.

Episode Highlights

• Biggest Winner: Google Ads advertisers—total budgets and AI tools open new testing opportunities for Q4.
• Hot Take: Emily calls the AI text guidelines “long overdue” after seeing AI create unwanted sale messages.
• Pro Tip: Jeremy recommends testing total campaign budgets on short seasonal flights (Black Friday, Cyber Monday).
• Q4 Reminder: Watch for pacing behavior changes when moving from daily to total budgets.

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Visit The Click Brief blog for more in-depth analysis and updates from September.

Episode Transcript

Jeremy: Hello, and welcome to the Click Brief podcast.

Emily: Your monthly download of what’s new and what matters in digital advertising and paid media.

Jeremy: I’m Jeremy Packee, here with Emily Anderson, bringing you the top updates from September that could shake up your strategy heading into Q4.

Emily: We’ve got a lot to talk about this month, and here’s what’s ahead. Google is expanding campaign total budgets to search, performance max, and shopping. New text guidelines are coming this fall to rein in AI-generated ad copy, and Amazon is introducing a new AI ad creator in the creative studio. And that’s just the start. We’ll cover plenty more updates you won’t want to miss. Starting off with some of the high impact updates.

Jeremy: Google expands campaign total budgets to search, P-Max, and shopping. So Google Ads now lets you set a total campaign campaign budget with a start and an end date for search, P-Max, and shopping campaigns, not just for YouTube and demand gen. Instead of managing daily budgets, you can allocate a fixed budget over 3-90 day flights. The platform’s AI will automatically pace and push spend when demand peaks to maximize results within your set time frame.

Emily: I love this update. I think it’s long overdue. I think before we get into this update and the others, I will say, as I was reading through the Click Brief this month, it felt like a lot of these were related to seasonality and really helping add a couple more tools to advertiser’s belts going into Q4. Now, saying that, I wish these would have happened last quarter because then you could have tested some of these things. Because obviously, if you’re algorithm, your historical account has been running off daily budgets for so long, lifetime budgets necessarily won’t act the same. It puts almost a little bit more restriction on the campaign, to be I think what I like about it is every year when I’m doing Black Friday campaigns, sometimes we have a different budget for Black Friday or Cyber Monday, Small Business Saturday.

Jeremy: Even the week of Christmas is a lot of times we’ll run campaigns on Metta, and We use lifetime budgets. You use them all the time. We’ll have these short flights. It’s like, Well, I always felt good about that because when demand came in, it would just adjust. You could do that in YouTube. Youtube, you could always do it. Now demand gen for some campaigns, but it was always a bummer to have to set a daily budget because it wasn’t exact. A lot of brands are like, We have $20,000 to spend on Google during this time. It’s like, Okay, well, just set the daily budget and hope. The way that Google does budgets, it’s like it won’t spend the budget during the course of a whole month. You don’t have a whole month when you’re just running ads for two days or whatever. You’re just like, I need to spend this now. This is huge for Black Friday, all those promotional days. We’re under 60 days away, I think, from Black Friday 2025. So, yeah, this is great.

Emily: Yeah, I like it for the algorithm. Like you said, for just that reason, it’s nice that you can tell Google, Hey, this is our intent with the campaign. Because otherwise, it was just going, Hey, this is a daily. This is going to run forever unless I guess there was an end date. But now you’re telling it, Hey, this is our max. And I feel like that’s going to give the algorithm more freedom to adjust spend on different days when volume is available.

Jeremy: Also, I didn’t even think this right now, but this also could be super scary, though, too. If you’re used to just, let’s just say spending more in an existing campaign, What happens if it doesn’t spend?

Emily: That’s why I wanted this before. What’s the learning period? That’s why I wanted this before Q4.

Jeremy: Yeah, that’s a good point.

Emily: I love it, but I’m afraid. But I like that we have it. I wouldn’t go all in on a huge Or watch it at least. A huge campaign. Yeah, I would be watching, obviously. But as soon as this is available in your account, I would try it and just see what the results are compared to the daily.

Jeremy: Maybe I’m thinking of it wrong because I’m so used to Google at times not spending the budget if it’s not hitting goals. This is a campaign total budget. Now that I’m thinking about it, it’s probably going to be forced to spend the budget, obviously, no matter what. I wonder if there’s any instance where you put in $10,000 and it spends $500. Can that We don’t know yet.

Emily: It doesn’t happen on Meta. They’ll find a way to get to that. They’ll find a way to get to that. They’re going to Google more now.

Jeremy: That’d be scary if it didn’t spend. You’re just waiting like, Oh, it spent.

Emily: Especially if you set and forget, which you shouldn’t do, but people do.

Jeremy: Right.

Emily: Yeah, definitely an interesting one. Definitely worth getting in there and testing. I know I’m going to try to find a campaign that I can run this on.

Jeremy: I actually haven’t seen it in the accounts yet. They announced it. Maybe it’s in a fresh campaign, but I don’t even know if we’re able to 100% try it, but it is announced, and hopefully we can try it soon.

Emily: Yeah, and is it going to be a drop-down, like daily or lifetime that you’re selecting? I hope so. In my mind, that’s what it would have to be. That’s how YouTube was. Then if you set it up as one or the other, then you can’t switch to the other way, like meta. But we’ll see, I guess, more on that to come. But overall, really excited for this update.

Jeremy: Same. Next update, Microsoft Merchant Center launches supplemental feeds. Microsoft advertising globally launched Supplemental Feeds for Merchant Center. This new feed type lets retailers update specific product attributes like titles, descriptions, custom labels, prices, etc, without reuploading the entire product catalog.

Emily: Okay, this was funny that I have to share with our listeners. I was reading through Jeremy’s Click Brief, and I read the launches supplemental feeds, and I made a note in the doc, and I’m like, Can you explain to me how this is different than what already exists? Then I went back and realized, oh, it was Microsoft. And then I realized Microsoft hasn’t had this.

Jeremy: It’s wild. I know that they didn’t have this because I had to update. We changed a promo code in one downfall of Microsoft prior to this update was if you ended a promo, you couldn’t really relaunch it. It just ended it forever. So you’d have to change the promotion ID, which might sound easy, but I was like, Oh, I can just do a supplemental feed and just I couldn’t change it in here. I couldn’t do that. But yeah, this is a no-brainer. I can’t believe this wasn’t here before. I don’t know if people are going to use it that much because like you said to Emily before we started recording, a lot of people are using GoData feed or importing from Google Ads, Google Merchand Center. But I think for the people that do need to make a quick change, this is a nice feature. For sure. Cool. Next. Google demand gen drops. Debut new features. Google introduced demand gen drops a monthly showcase of updates for demand gen campaigns. September’s drop includes new promotion assets to tailor creatives for sales and seasonal events, which Emily looked into this. This is basically, this isn’t like seasonal images.

This is just a general promotion asset. So show the date. Just think of it as on search.

Emily: Got it. Yeah, that’s cool. So if your promotion asset is in your account, is it now just basically available to show on?

Jeremy: I tried today. Again, some of these features come out, and they’re not in every account, but I tried in one account today to see if I could make a promotion asset and add it to demand gen like it normally would. I wasn’t able to. I think some of these things are in the process of coming out because when Google releases these, it’s not in every account right away. I have features in some accounts that other accounts don’t have.

Emily: I’m just curious where that’s going to be on the ad.

Jeremy: Well, I think it would be on a YouTube ad, an instream ad. Think of where Oh, like a pop-up?

Emily: Okay, sure. But what about Gmail or a discovery feed placement? Then I don’t… Unless I guess it’s a little box over it type of a sticker.

Jeremy: That’s what it seems like for me. It’s just a little piece of promotional ad talks.

Emily: Okay, keep going.

Jeremy: Yeah, also easier conversion lift tests are now viable at lower spend levels. I think some as low as $5,000. There’s the comparable conversion metrics aligned with other platforms’ attributions. That’s the platform comparable. I think that’s what it’s called. I can’t remember the name of the metric, but I’ve been using that for a while. We previously reported on it. There’s omnichannel bidding that accounts for offline sales and local offers to highlight Insta deals to nearby audiences. These incremental features aim to boost YouTube and demand gen results through AI and broader signals.

Emily: Interesting. Yeah, this is one that obviously Google making more I feel like every month we’re talking about demand gen. That seems to be their focus. And like you said, it’s the monthly showcase. Here’s what they’re rolling out this month. And I feel like the takeaway for me is, right now I’m only running one demand gen campaign for a client. And for me, the takeaway is I feel like I need to value that channel more and go dive into these new features because I think it’s been a minute since I’ve looked at it. I’ve really treated it as upper funnel advertising. Specifically, I’m using it for retargeting. That makes sense. This is just a good reminder that it exists and to check it out because this conversion, the conversion metrics, the conversion lift test, that sounds really interesting.

Jeremy: I think you got to be opted into that, but I believe you can spend $5,000 on demand gen, and you can see the incremental lift in brand searches and stuff. These are all new things. The problem is they’re not in every account right away, so it’s hard to be like, Go and try this out. But if you have this stuff, a lot of brands can afford a $5,000 test. The platform comparable metrics, which I couldn’t remember earlier. I love that because it basically… That includes view attribution on your demand gen campaigns. There’s just so much you can do with demand gen. You said you used it for remarketing. I actually use it a lot of times for new customers. You can use lookalikes there, too. So somebody that looks like your audience, but it’s never been to your site, but then add in signals from your competitor sites. So there’s just a lot you can do there. Offline sales and local offers, that makes sense, right? You’re on YouTube, you look for something, and it’s like, buy these shoes at this store near you. That’s cool.

Emily: Can you… Because I I feel like I’m a little unfamiliar with this, maybe someone else would be as well. Can you talk a little bit more about the comparable conversion metrics aligned with other platform attribution? Can you just go into that a little bit? Maybe I’m overthinking this, but…

Jeremy: I feel like that should be probably in most accounts by now, but essentially, we all know Snapchat, TikTok, Meta, the standard attributions, seven-day click, one-day view.

Emily: Oh, it just makes it available to see the other options of attribution, what you would have got at a seven-day click.

Jeremy: It’s comparable to other social platforms. So they’re including view conversions in there. So you can make… You can do a lot of different things with that.

Emily: Got it. Okay. I was overthinking in my mind.

Jeremy: It’s just nice. It makes more sense. It makes more sense. I’m just curious to see conversion data based on that because meta does great. We all know meta is amazing.

Emily: Yeah, you’re trying to even the playing field.

Jeremy: Yeah, and Google’s like, Hey, YouTube is really good, but nobody knows about it because you see an ad at the beginning of a video, you might watch it and not click. Then later you convert, and you wouldn’t necessarily see that in your standard demand gen YouTube campaign. Granted, there’s The name is eluding me now, but the 10 second where you watch 10 seconds of an ad and it counts as a conversion.

Emily: Got it. Yeah, the view.

Jeremy: Yeah, so that definitely helps. I want to say it helps even more, but really, it goes from not attributing enough to over-attributing, which is what meta does.

Emily: Got it.

Jeremy: Cool. Next. Google Ads AI Max for Search Campaign launches globally. Ai Max, Google’s fully AI-driven Search Campaign type, is now to all advertisers worldwide. This is the feature that automates search ads using Google’s AI for bids, creatives, and targeting, and also has one-click experiments available, which is neat and probably the way you should try this. We’ve talked about AI Max before. It’s almost hard to describe. It’s broader than broad match. You show up more in AI mode. That’s what Google has been saying, and the AI overview. The AI overview, the best way to get in those placements going in the Q4, if Google really starts opening those up for ads, is going to be using P-Max or AI Max. I think BroadMatch, and you still are able to show up with some of these other match types, but they’re really going to prefer I see this, and I see that as the main reason to try these campaigns. Or if you’re tapped out on budget and you’re like, We will take any new traffic we can, do that, but cautiously.

Emily: I I describe AI Max as if Broadmatch and DSA had a baby, I guess. The campaign I’m running for it, I paused our DSA campaign because it wasn’t spending for the longest time. I’m not sure Why. We do exclude- I still love DSA campaigns, by the way. I do, too, for sure. We had a lot of website page exclusions, so maybe that had something to do with it, but it just wasn’t spending. It really feels like Google was forcing us into this AI Max. I’m like, All right, let’s lean in. Let’s give it a try. Granted, it’s still early, but the search terms that I’m seeing come through are very broad. Really? It feels like- Because they’re based on everything.

Jeremy: They’re like, It’s based on your previous searches.

Emily: Well, we could exclude some websites. However, I think if you opt in to… There was something funny. If you opt in to doing that, you also have to opt in to them being able to alter your ads.

Jeremy: Yeah, the automatically create a text.

Emily: Correct, which I didn’t want to do because I was really unsure about that.

Jeremy: Which I think is a play for AI mode to make things more conversation.

Emily: Oh, right. That totally makes sense. But yeah, still early. I launched this maybe not even a month ago. Really broad. However, you get a search query report and you can add negatives. So it might be just one of those things where you have to take time to craft the copy. I just haven’t seen anything that’s super blown me away, and I’m still a little nervous it’s competing with my search campaign.

Jeremy: Right. I think Google is going to push us into trying this to really show up in AI mode.

Emily: That’s their selling point.

Jeremy: We know AI mode’s the future. It’s going to be probably a default at some point. I think, allegedly, AI Max can help get you into tracking the intent of the AI mode conversation. Ai mode is going to like, you could have a whole conversation with this thing, and then at the end, it could be like, Oh, I think they’re in the market for a Florida vacation. Then that’s where AI AI, Max would match.

Emily: Here are some options. Yeah. I can’t wait to explain to my kid how Google used to work, which is how it’s working. It seems so primitive. He’d be like, Wait a minute. They gave you 10 plus pages of results. You had to click on each one and then search. It’s embarrassing for me. It is. It’s like, yeah, I’m also older than Google.

Jeremy: We find answers, mom. We don’t search for anything. But yeah, you’re right.

Emily: It’s totally the future. This is the selling point. I feel like advertisers here, they can get in AI mode, and they’re immediately like, We have to try this. So I agree. Give it a try.

Jeremy: Watch it carefully. Even Microsoft has the copilot mode. We know ChatGPT is probably going to do ads at some point. The last thing I wanted to say that I find interesting, and I probably could just literally find the answer out right now, but I do this all the time where I’ll be golfing, say, and I see somebody’s golf club, and I’m like, What golf club is that? Take a picture of it and then search Google that way. I would imagine that AI Max would maybe see commercial intent. How is Google going to show an ad for that? Because I haven’t really seen ads with the image lookups. I’ve seen products. But if I take a picture of a pair of headphones, wouldn’t you think that Google would then give me ads for that telephone when I looked it up? Maybe AI Max will do that. I don’t know currently if there’s a way to do that. We’ll maybe find out.

Emily: Just wait till Apple’s doing it in your camera roll, identifying the product and linking it. You get that stuff. Yeah. And then you can go buy it directly off your camera roll.

Jeremy: Totally. All right, this next one is sweet. It rolls right into what we’re talking about. Google is introducing text guidelines to control AI-created copy in fall. Actually, right now, I started to see some of this. So this is to help brands steer AI-generated ad text in P-Max and AI-Max campaigns. This feature at the campaign level lets you set term exclusions up to 25 words or phrases. So think of that as negative keywords for your ad copy, which is a weird thing to think about. And then also message restrictions, so up to 40 custom rules. An example that could be like, never say the word free. You know what I mean? You can just give it instructions, which is cool. And the AI is supposed to avoid that in auto-created assets. Excluding things like cheap and don’t mention discounts or don’t, I don’t even don’t mention a competitor. Maybe you wouldn’t have to do that. But when stuff is automatically created, I’ve just seen problems, and this should have been launched with that.

Emily: I was going to say, I feel like you are the person who has seen this the most. Where like Meta, for instance, you’ll just see it’s all of a sudden just, apparently I’m running a sale. I didn’t know about the sale, but Meta says we’re running this.

Jeremy: What’s this affiliate promo code sale we’re running?

Emily: Yeah, definitely much needed. I know Jeremy, you sent an email out to the team this week to like, Hey, go check this out.

Jeremy: Because it’s in PMax. I’m seeing it in the PMax campaigns. I’m not seeing it in AI mode, or sorry, in AI max yet. Okay.

Emily: So it’s not account level, it’s campaign level. I thought you said you could set it for the account. It would be cool if you could do account level. Here’s the for sure, but then in these specific campaigns, especially depending on how you segment, that could be interesting.

Jeremy: That could get you in trouble, though, too. If you say, Never say sale, And then you’re like, Why is my Black Friday?

Emily: Oh, that’s true. I don’t know.

Jeremy: But interesting. Obvious, duh. Let’s get this now. All right, next. We’ll go into… Threads? Okay, we’ll talk about that one.

Emily: We haven’t given them any love.

Jeremy: Meta expands reels and threads, ads formats for broader reach. Meta rolled out several updates to increase brand engagement across its platforms. Reels trending ads are now open to more advertisers. These let brands tap into popular real trends and have shown up to a 20% boost in awareness. Meanwhile, threads, and they claim with over 400 million users, but it helps when you’re automatically.

Emily: I was like, wow.

Jeremy: Is introducing new ad formats and more straightforward campaign setup, expanding inventory for advertisers as threads gains traction. Meta has also refined its AI targeting with its updated value-based optimization rules for awareness and engagement. Additionally, a new landing page view optimization option is driving more quality traffic at a lower cost for brands without direct pixel access. I’ll hop in and provide some clarity here. The reels trending ads, super cool. Again, I haven’t tried to use this, so I’m not actually sure if it’s in any of my accounts yet, but you can just find videos that are trending and then buy placements in those videos. That’s awesome.

Emily: Really? One by one?

Jeremy: I’m not sure what the interface looks like, but you can find You can find trending ads. It would just be videos that are trending and you can show off those videos.

Emily: This is on threads or reels?

Jeremy: This is on reels. There’s a couple of things.

Emily: This is like a jammed-packed update. It is. I’m trying to follow. I’m like, Oh, my gosh.

Jeremy: I was reading it myself. I really put a lot in here.

Emily: Yeah, that’s okay. All right, circle back.

Jeremy: Yeah. The trending ads, it’s open to more advertisers, which obviously means it’s not open to all advertisers. It’s probably some of your big brands, your Coca Colas or Nike’s, stuff like that. But pretty sweet if you have a huge brand that you could be like, Hey, I just want to get eyeballs on trending content. I don’t know how much control you have over it, but if you’re like, I don’t know, there’s a new trend, and you’re like, I just want awareness, I think it’s cool.

Emily: Yeah. A lot of things you could maybe do creatively, especially when brands are more and more trying to humanize themselves and jump on the trend. If they’re showing ads related to that trend, I could see that being a powerful play, especially when… Let’s say we all know when the Super Bowl happens or we’re at the big game, so we don’t get- Yeah, the big game. When the big game happens, that’s obviously going to be a trending thing. There’s going to be videos trending around it, jumping on like, Hey, I just want to be in those ads. Yeah, if that inventory is available. It’s just to It’s been cool. I’m relevant. I’m human. Cool. All right. Cool update. More real estate for Meta as well. True.

Jeremy: Yeah, the Meta with its new value-based optimization rules, I I have seen. It says for awareness and engagement, which maybe is a little bit different, but I have seen these value rules in meta before. But it’s basically saying if you’re this gender or if you’re on this placement, you can just make it more valuable, almost like new customer acquisition where you value a new customer at $20 more. I don’t really have a reason to use that unless you’re like, just make a reels conversion much more valuable in the ad platform because I want to show on reels more. I haven’t figured out a great way of using it, but it’s just another tool that I find interesting. Then this other one-Yeah, we got to talk.

Emily: This was the one that stuck out to me.

Jeremy: There wasn’t a lot of details in this, and we should probably go into it in more detail, but the new landing page view optimization option. That’s interesting for brands without direct pixel access. I just think that’s neat. If you wanted to run… I’m trying to think of why you’d use this, but in a where you wouldn’t have access to the pixel, you could run a landing page view optimization. Maybe if you’re a brand that’s running to a distributor.

Emily: That’s what I was immediately thinking of. I feel like distributor this… Because otherwise, it’s like, what are the other cases you don’t have a pixel and you want to pay for ads? But yeah, this could maybe be a reason. But okay, then let’s talk privacy because I don’t know about you, but I think- I think what I didn’t add is I think it’s pixel-less.

Jeremy: I don’t know if it just knows there’s a pixel on that page, and it can just say, Oh, a land… I don’t know how that’s really worked.

Emily: It connects. It might not be your pixel, but there is a Facebook pixel on.

Jeremy: There’s nothing shared besides a page view.

Emily: Because it’s interesting. Because when you, and this is going to be maybe more of a tough question to answer because it’s always it depends. But when you’re running and optimizing, let’s say, a traffic campaign, you want to get people to a website, are you optimizing in 2025 for link clicks or landing page views?

Jeremy: It’s hard with the privacy updates, like you said, because if you’re opted out, Facebook doesn’t always know that you ever even went to the page.

Emily: Where it knows the link clicks.

Jeremy: It knows the click.

Emily: But then it’s also counting clicks potentially just around your ad, see more. I remember when everyone was like, Oh, longer format copy is better. And it’s like, Well, maybe. But also I think it’s that link click.

Jeremy: It can’t be that great, but it just gives you something to go off of.

Emily: Better than landing page view. That’s why I thought this was interesting. But I’m not going to argue with getting more features and more metrics to look at. So we’ll take it.

Jeremy: Pixel-less tracking, cool. All right, next. Microsoft Performance Max gets reporting and acquisition boost. Microsoft Ads rolled out new enhancements to Performance Max campaigns. First, asset-level group reporting is now available, letting you see PMX performance broken down by asset group across dimensions like device, audience, and time, finally giving more transparency into what creative sets and targeting signals are driving results. Second, when creating new PMX campaigns without a product feed, you’ll now see budget suggestions and performance estimates to help guide how much to spend for desired outcomes, with feed-based forecasts coming later. Additionally, Microsoft’s open beta for new customer acquisition goals continues, allowing PMAX advertisers, optimizing for purchases to bid extra for new customers or even target only new customers. A lot of this stuff is just things that Google already had.

Emily: I just can’t believe they call it PMAX. Yeah, I know. That’s crazy. I can’t believe that’s allowed. Also, anyone else think it’s a huge miss? Microsoft Max sounds way cooler.

Jeremy: That does sound good. I think that.

Emily: Or at least, I don’t know, to me, just straight up copying the name, and then it does get confusing when we’re talking about it.

Jeremy: You know what’s nice, though? If you just want to import from Google.

Emily: I hate importing. I don’t hate it. I recently had a very bad experience doing that.

Jeremy: I know because they changed it and made it really hard. If you just want to do once import, it is hard to do.

Emily: Because I recently I recently did it. It messed everything up. Then I was like, Yeah, I did this. Everyone was like, It’s always been bad. I’m like, No, I’ve done it before and it’s worked. I don’t know what happened. This was a month ago.

Jeremy: They tried to automate it. I just did it, so I noticed that.

Emily: It was a mess. It was a total mess.

Jeremy: Even if you update an existing campaign, then all of a sudden, your budgets will go up to $400. You’re like, I don’t want that.

Emily: I’m really sour about this. But thank you for… I got a lot. You validated.

Jeremy: I had the same thing Because I knew it had worked in the past. I’m like, How many clicks do I need to get to just import once?

Emily: I’m not doing it anymore. I’m putting my phone on.

Jeremy: I’m still going to do it.

Emily: I don’t know. I can’t do it. Well, maybe I’ll do it.

Jeremy: It’s not the worst, but I totally hear you.

Emily: It does save time. If you can do it, it does save time.

Jeremy: If you have a small brand, I would even just set up a merchant center to import, too. There’s no point.

Emily: That for sure.

Jeremy: Well, cool. I mean, you’re getting more reporting. That’s good. We like it. Emily doesn’t like parts of it, but That was on a different note. Next. Amazon introduces… Now you got me saying this word weird. Amazon introduces a Agenic AI Ad Creator in Creative Studio. Amazon ads launched a new Agenic AI AI tool within Creative Studio. Now, advertisers can click Chat to engage in a conversational AI partner that handles product and audience research, creative brainstorming, storyboarding, and full ad generation, video plus display. It draws on Amazon’s retail data, so product pages, brand assets, shopper signals to suggest concepts, visuals, tag lines, animate scenes, add voiceovers, music, and produce ads readyForDSP, sponsored display, sponsored brands, and sponsored stores. This tool is in beta and meant to speed up production of high-quality ads at no extra cost. I tried to find this because I have played around in Creative Studio, and it was one of the earlier AI tools. I was like, You might be able to use something from this. That’s how I judge AI tools. I’m like, Is this passable? Some instances, things in Creative Studio where if you wanted to make your images more Christmas-themed or something like that.

Emily: You’re saying this was one of the first platforms to have something like this?

Jeremy: Yeah, it was okay in some instances. This is crazy. In a good way, it’s scary. I tend to love trying these tools because it just makes me more dangerous at my job. I like creative. I wouldn’t say I have a huge creative background, but I know what works and what looks good. This helps me tell somebody, Grant at Granular, this is what I’m looking for. It’s a good starting point. But Amazon is making it seem like one person is going to be able to do all of this. I find that hard to believe, and I don’t know how long the videos will be. But for things like sponsored brand, a lot of times we’re waiting on images, and even some of the Google products, these new AI products, probably not for really big brands, but for actual brainstorming and just doing concepts, I think they’re usable, but maybe not for the final product yet. But maybe I’ll be surprised. I don’t know.

Emily: To me, all of this stuff, it’s great for the smaller, maybe mid-size brands who don’t have a huge creative department or can’t churn and burn hundreds of creative assets a day. I almost think there needs to be more PR for these platforms that this is how we’re helping small businesses. Yeah, that’s true. I feel like they always… I remember Metta took out, I think, a huge New York Times ad. I remember that. Talking about how they were helping small businesses.

Jeremy: I think that was when they were taking away the privacy stuff.

Emily: The privacy stuff? That was Apple.

Jeremy: That was iOS 14.

Emily: Okay. I was like, We’re helping small business. Okay, that was it. I was trying to think about it, and it backfired. It’s like, This is actually going to crush small businesses. This is, I think, If I was their PR, this is what I would lean into because this is really good. If you don’t have that, what a great tool to lean into. Now, you have to learn how to use it.

Jeremy: From what I’ve seen, it looks pretty easy. Tiktok has stuff like this where they can script, right? I find these tools just helpful, but they do still need the human touch big time. I don’t think this is taking any designers’ work away because I think the majority of this is going to be people that don’t have a design background being like, Hey, can you make something like this? Maybe it can make designers’ jobs easier.

Emily: Yeah, because it’s like, You at least got me to 30%. Now I can take it 70%, whereas before I was starting at negative 20% because I have no idea what it has to look for.

Jeremy: It’s Hey, I want to make a sponsored brand ad like IMAGE. Where do you go to find that? You search Google and you’re like, Here’s one from 1997. I’m joking, but you know what I mean? So this could be helpful.

Emily: Jeremy’s kids are going to be like, The year started with a one?

Jeremy: Next. Youtube ads. My computer just glitched there.

Emily: I like this one.

Jeremy: Youtube ads now drive directly to apps. So YouTube video ads can now deep link straight into your mobile app or the app store, if not installed. Eligible YouTube ads can include an install or open app call to action that launches the advertiser’s app, creating a seamless jump from the ad view to in-app content or download.

Emily: Amazing. Correct me if I’m wrong, and if I am wrong, we might have to cut this. But before this, was the only other way you could drive directly to app on a common platform meta?

Jeremy: Yeah, where you could deep link. I’m sure the other… I think we did it on Twitter X back in the day. Okay, yeah. Yeah, Google is always just app installs. I haven’t run an app campaign a while, but this is obviously a YouTube ad that can link to an app. That’s cool.

Emily: I love this.

Jeremy: Do your taxes link.

Emily: I don’t know. I think this is so cool, especially with brands putting more and more emphasis on getting people to download the app. Shout out McDonald’s for bringing back Monopoly, except it’s going to be on the app. Really?

Jeremy: I didn’t even know that.

Emily: Yeah, I was a huge Monopoly player. They got rid of it 10 years ago, and now they’re bringing it back. But again, more and more brands are realizing if we get people to download the app and make purchases on the app, we own the data.

Jeremy: True.

Emily: So then we can advertise, give them push notifications and so forth.

Jeremy: I’m glad you got excited about this one because I almost didn’t even include it.

Emily: Are you serious? This was actually one of my… This is awesome.

Jeremy: Maybe this is high impact then.

Emily: Yeah, and I don’t have a lot of… I have one client who does have an app, and we’ve done some meta app advertising. I don’t have a ton of experience in this realm, but this is something I would really be interested in doing more of.

Jeremy: Yeah, that’s cool. I’m glad we included that one.

Emily: Yeah, because I got to talk McDonald’s monopoly, and I didn’t…

Jeremy: The documentary in that whole situation.

Emily: Crazy. Wild. Yeah, I know. So now they had to wait 10 years, but now they’re bringing it back.

Jeremy: Now AI is going to cheat whoever controls the bot.

Emily: Well, so that I don’t quite know. I still think you’re going to have to peel it off the French fries and then probably scan it and get the prize on your app. But I feel like there could be some manipulation. I know. Where you peel it off. I got a free Coke. I was in college, and my college My college roommates, we printed the board.

Jeremy: That’s sweet. I love it.

Emily: I didn’t win, obviously.

Jeremy: Hopefully this time you will. Yeah. All right, next, we’ll just power through some of these smaller updates that are interesting, but maybe not as ground-breaking. We saw this one in the wild, which is why I looked into it. So local card style ads return to Google search results. So Google has brought back a more visual local ad format and search. For certain local queries, ads can appear as a card-like business listing with images, map pin and details at the top of results. So they look like the Google business profiles. I actually thought that they were, and I still think that they are. But we have a lawyer client that somebody did a search for recently, and we saw this and we’re like, What is this? It look good. Yeah, this is what it is. I don’t know. I think it’s fine. I mean, hopefully, I would say I would imagine this is pulling from your business profile. So just make sure those are all up to date because stuff could be eligible to show. Next, Microsoft ads purges made for ads, low-quality sites. I’m not even going to get into the exact update. I feel like it says it.

Those are those crappy sites that just try to show ads to make money.

Emily: I read this and I’m like, Okay, great.

Jeremy: That makes sense. I feel like we talked about something like this for Google last month. Next, we’ll get visibility.

Emily: Yeah. Now that we’ve cleaned things up. Yeah, exactly.

Jeremy: Now we’ll show you search partners. I’ll I’ll just mention this. I’m not getting into every update, but there’s been a lot of political ad policy changes. So Google, Meta, Microsoft, especially EU stuff. These changes are happening. So if you have anything political, just really check.

Emily: Or honestly running ads in Europe.

Jeremy: Yeah, true. Very true. This one, I think, is cool. I will probably never use it, but if for some reason I had to show a client something in the ad platform, I would. So MetaAds manager adds flexible conditional formatting. So you can just set more conditional formatting Basic stuff that’s been in Excel and Google Sheets for years, where it’s like, make low CPA green, that stuff. So sweet. Love it. I will probably never use it, but I do like it.

Emily: I want the option to be able to color the rows just slightly different color because I always have to highlight it to look across. That might be in there. I didn’t look at all the options. And that’s just a standard user experience for looking.

Jeremy: I never even thought about that being nice, but I do that in every Google Sheet that I work on.

Emily: Yeah, because it just messes with my mind. If I could just slight variation of color. Mark, if you’re listening, I would really like that.

Jeremy: That does help. I usually customize my reports and put that in there. Next. Whatsapp ads can link to status updates. I don’t really do a lot of WhatsApp. I’m not going to focus on this one, but just know that you can do that. Microsoft UET Consent Tracking Dashboard. Microsoft added a consent signal status view. And a test or tag tool so you can verify consent flags and event health across the UET tag. This is important. I’m not going to focus on it, but pay attention to that stuff. I feel like it’s such a great area. Every time I look into this, I leave feeling more confused, but I know what’s going on. But this is changing a lot.

Emily: Yeah, it’s again, if you’re advertising in that area, it’s a must.

Jeremy: Then the last one here, Amazon DSP adds Serious XM audio inventory via a programmatic integration. That’s the update. Cool. I don’t know how many people are using Serious XM, but I guess another placement.

Emily: Yeah. Isn’t that when you get a new car, you get Serious XM?

Jeremy: Yeah, you get it for a year.

Emily: Where are the ads, though? Isn’t the whole thing of Sirius is there’s no ads?

Jeremy: I think it was like that. I don’t know if Sirius had ads or XM. My dad always had it growing up.

Emily: Maybe there’s an ad version and then an ad-free version.

Jeremy: Yeah, we have to look into that.

Emily: Okay.

Jeremy: And that’s a Click Brief podcast for September 2025. This episode was edited by Asia Blue and produced by Grant Nelson, Emily Anderson, and me, Jeremy Packee. Any parting words, Emily?

Emily: Nothing for me. Just everybody, I hope they have a happy Q4. And remember, again, that you can check out the full Click Brief blog at granularmarketing. Com. Thanks for listening, and we’ll see you next month.

Jeremy: The end.

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