Google Marketing Live 2026: 5 changes that affect your ads

AI Mode gets ads: your ads will soon appear in AI answers

This may well be the biggest shift Google announces on May 20th. AI Mode, the conversational search experience Google launched last year, is now getting ads. Two new formats, to be precise: Sponsored Stores and Direct Offers. And if you've never heard of them, you're not alone. But it affects you directly.

Sponsored Stores appear when your customer searches for products in AI Mode. For example, if someone types “best laptop stand for working from home” and AI Mode gives a comprehensive answer. Your shop appears between those product panels, clearly marked as sponsored. The difference with the old search results? Your competitor is no longer in a list of ten blue links. They are in an AI-generated answer that your customer might not scroll through at all.

Direct Offers go one step further. They allow you as an advertiser to show a personalised offer at the moment someone is ready to buy. Think of a discount, a bundle deal or a loyalty benefit, embedded within the AI answer itself. Google calls this “closing the sale in the moment that matters” and frankly, that’s accurate. The consumer no longer has to navigate to your website to see a deal. It comes to them, precisely when purchase intent is at its highest.

What does this mean for you as an SME business owner? Quite simply: if you’re running Performance Max or Shopping campaigns, these new placements will be included automatically. You don’t need to set up a separate campaign. But you do need to understand that the rules of the game are changing. Traffic from AI sources to retailers rose by 393% in Q1 2026 compared to last year. That trend is here to stay. If your product feed isn’t up to scratch, you’ll miss out on this entire channel.

Consent Mode is changing on 15 June: if you do nothing, you will lose advertising data

This is where it gets technical, but it’s too important to skip. On 15 June 2026, Google is changing how data flows between Google Analytics 4 and Google Ads. And that change is not optional.

At the moment, this is how it works: if you haven't configured Consent Mode perfectly, Google Signals acts as a sort of safety net. This safety net still sends ad data to your Google Ads account, even if the consent settings aren't quite right. Many business owners aren't even aware they rely on this. They think their tracking is set up correctly, but in reality, everything hinges on this fallback.

On June 15th, that safety net is gone. The ad_storage This parameter becomes the sole switch that determines whether GA4 ad data goes to Google Ads. If it's not configured correctly in your Consent Management Platform, you will be silently losing your remarketing audiences, your conversion data, and your ability to optimise based on real results. And the worst part? You won't notice it immediately. Your campaigns will just keep running. Only the data behind them will become increasingly sparse.

For the average SME that has installed a cookie banner and never looked at it since, this is a problem. And the figures show that around 70% of Dutch SMEs are struggling with the current Consent Mode v2 implementation. That percentage isn’t going to magically drop before 15 June.

The solution isn't complicated, but it does require action. You need to check that your CMP (Cookiebot, Complianz, or whichever tool you use) is correctly ad_storage, analytics_storage and ad_user_data parameters are passed. And you need to test if that data actually arrives in Google Ads. Not in two months. Now.

Agentic commerce: Google will soon buy for your customer

This sounds like science fiction, but it's the direction Google is clearly heading. Agentic commerce means AI agents carrying out tasks on behalf of consumers. Not just searching and comparing, but actually ordering, paying, and returning. Google itself calls it an “agentic shopping era” and they mean it seriously.

The concrete mechanism behind this is the Universal Commerce Protocol, or UCP for short. This is an open standard that allows AI agents to communicate directly with webshops. The consumer tells the AI what they want, the agent searches for the best offer, compares prices, checks availability, and completes the purchase. All without the customer ever visiting your website. Etsy and Wayfair are already connected. Shopify, Target, and Walmart will follow soon.

For the average Dutch entrepreneur, this might still feel a long way off. But we thought the same about AI Overviews, and they are now standard in Dutch search results. The patterns are clear: Google builds something in the US, tests it for six months, and then rolls it out worldwide. If UCP goes live in America in 2026, you can expect it in the Netherlands in 2027.

What does this mean in practice? Your product data must be machine-readable. Not just for Google Shopping, but for any AI agent that will soon want to shop on behalf of your customer. Structured data, correct prices, up-to-date stock, clear product descriptions. Everything a human customer sees with their eyes on your website, an AI agent must be able to read via data. That is the new standard.

Meridian Studio: measuring becomes easier and stricter

Google also announced Meridian Studio at GML 2026. This is a new platform that allows advertisers to manage their marketing mix models. It sounds dry, but it's more relevant than you might think. Because the problem Meridian solves is one that every entrepreneur recognises: you spend money on Google Ads, on social media, perhaps on a newsletter, and you have no real idea which channel actually works.

Meridian GeoX enables you to conduct geo experiments. This means you can test what happens if you increase your budget in region A and keep everything the same in region B. Not based on estimates or models, but based on real results in real markets. This was previously only available to companies with large budgets and a dedicated data team. Google is now making it accessible to everyone.

Furthermore, Google is working on unifying data sources. The idea is simple but powerful: a single tag that feeds data into Google Ads, Search Console, and your CRM simultaneously. No more separate tracking pixels for each platform. No more discrepancies between what Analytics says and what Ads reports. Simplicity that exposes backlogs, that's a better way to describe it. Because when measuring becomes easier, it also becomes harder to hide poor results behind complexity.

This is good news for SME entrepreneurs who have their Google Ads managed by an agency. You will soon be able to more easily check whether your agency is really delivering results, or if they are hiding behind complicated reports. Transparency is the keyword here.

DSA stops definitively: AI Max is the only way forward

This is no longer a surprise, but it deserves repeating: Dynamic Search Ads will cease to exist in September 2026. Google has officially announced this, and there's no going back. In our comprehensive migration guide we will explain exactly what this means and how to prepare yourself.

AI Max is the mandatory successor. The difference? Where DSA automatically generated ads based on your website content, AI Max goes much further. It combines your landing pages, your product feed, your keywords, and your ad copy into an AI-driven system that determines what to show, to whom, and when. As an advertiser, you give up less manual control, but (in theory) get better performance in return.

The problem is that 60 to 70 percent of SMEs are not yet dealing with this. They are still running on old DSA campaigns and think September is still a long way off. But migrating to AI Max is not something you do in an afternoon. You need to review your campaign structure, optimise your landing pages for AI, and adjust your bidding strategy. That takes weeks, not hours.

What to do now: 5 actions for 20 May

You have eight days left until Google Marketing Live. That sounds like a short amount of time, but it's enough to get the basics in order. Here are five concrete things you can do this week to be prepared for what's to come.

Audit your Consent Mode setup. This is the most urgent action. On June 15th, everything changes. Ask your web developer if Google Ads agency to check if ad_storage is passed correctly. If you don't, you'll be flying blind from that date.

2. Check your Merchant Center feed. AI Mode ads use your product feed. If there are missing fields, incorrect prices, or out-of-stock products, you will not be eligible for Sponsored Stores and Direct Offers. A clean feed is no longer a nice to have, it's a requirement.

3. Initiate the DSA to AI Max migration. If you haven't already, today is the day. Not tomorrow, not next month. September is closer than you think and a good migration takes time to test and adjust.

4. Implement structured data. Schema markup on your main pages ensures that AI agents and AI Mode can interpret your content correctly. This is the foundation for everything Google is building towards agentic commerce.

5. Register for GML 2026. The event is free and entirely virtual. The keynote begins on 20 May from 17:45 Dutch time. On 21 May, there will be an EMEA session. Watch it live so you know what's changing straight away, rather than reading it in a summary two weeks later.

Frequently Asked Questions about Google Marketing Live 2026