AI Search
Learn how marketing leaders are adapting SEO, content, and measurable strategies for AI-driven search experiences.
Answer engines like ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, and Perplexity are reshaping how people discover and evaluate solutions.
Get your fresh, 2026 small business marketing plan, from SEO to PPC to AI Search.
This data‑driven guide contains essential information and actionable steps for SEOs navigating the shift toward AI as the first surface of search.
Answer engines like ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, and Perplexity are reshaping how people discover and evaluate solutions.
Answer engines like ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, and Perplexity are reshaping how people discover and evaluate solutions.
Google reinforces asset variety, updates ad scheduling pacing, and Microsoft launches self-serve negative keyword lists. Here’s what advertisers need to know.
Welcome to PPC Pulse weekly news review. This week’s focus includes asset guidance, budget pacing, and search controls across Google and Microsoft Ads.
Google reinforced the importance of asset variety as Search experiences evolve. It also confirmed updates to how budget pacing works for certain campaigns using ad scheduling. Meanwhile, Microsoft launched self-serve negative keyword lists, including open beta support for Performance Max.
Each update touches a different operational lever inside the account.
Here’s what happened this week and why it matters for advertisers.
In its latest Ads Decoded podcast episode, Ginny Marvin hosted fellow Google employees Abby Butler, Ads UI Product Manager, and Adam Bullock, Search Ads UX Lead, to talk about the design and process around Search ad experiences.
The episode discussed how Search ads are evolving on the SERP, and Butler explained that the changes in how assets can show are driven by one core goal: maximizing relevance at scale for users and advertisers.
Butler stated:
“The impetus for these changes and how assets can show is really to try to maximize relevance at scale for users and for advertisers.”
She also tied asset breadth directly to eligibility across formats and queries. This is the part many advertisers miss. It is not only about the performance of an individual headline. It is about giving the system enough inputs to assemble and qualify for more layouts.
Further in the episode, she said, “the more assets advertisers provide, the more likely they’re going to be able to various formats across various different queries.”
Then, Bullock reinforced this from the design side of the Search ad experience. His point was not just “give us more assets.” It was those assets that gave the design team flexibility to build new experiences, including formats that may not exist yet.
The episode also touched on how advertisers should think about this heading into 2026, especially as Search becomes more conversational and complex. Butler tied the need for more assets to the reality that users are moving beyond single queries:
“If we have more assets and information from advertisers, we can answer that call more accurately and efficiently.”
This episode clarified something important: Asset variety is not just a creative best practice. It is an eligibility lever.
If Google can move headlines into different placements, pair them with sitelinks/extensions, or unlock richer image formats when available, then a narrow set of repetitive assets limits where and how you can show.
It also means you should not judge asset value purely by impressions per asset.
If an asset only serves in certain contexts, that can still be the exact scenario where it matters most. The goal is flexibility across queries and formats, not “every headline gets equal delivery.”
Ginny Marvin framed the practical takeaway in a way that mirrors what many PPC pros are seeing in account work today.
She explicitly pushed advertisers not to over-index on impressions by asset, and to stay focused on overall ad performance:
“Don’t get hung up on necessarily impressions per asset, but the overall performance of your Ads themselves.”
That aligns with the broader sentiment I see consistently from practitioners: Asset variety is less about volume and more about meaningful coverage of different intent states, especially as asset placement becomes more fluid on the SERP.
Some advertisers got an email update from Google that will affect average daily budget pacing for campaigns starting March 1.
The email stated that although the monthly spending limit remains at 30.4 times your average daily budget, Google will start proactively spend its limit regardless of an existing ad schedule.
This is not a change to budgets themselves. It is a change to how spend may deploy within the time constraints advertisers set.
Ad scheduling is commonly used for businesses with call centers, store hours, or known high-converting time blocks.
If pacing becomes more demand-based within those windows, budgets may deploy faster during peak periods. For some advertisers, this could improve efficiency by prioritizing higher-intent hours.
However, it also means daily budgets could exhaust earlier in the scheduled window than expected.
For advertisers managing tight caps or relying heavily on intraday performance monitoring, this update requires attention. Scheduling is no longer just about when ads can serve. It may meaningfully influence how quickly spend is allocated.
Ginny Marvin, Ads liaison for Google, provided a lengthy clarification to this update in a comment on the coverage on Marketing O’Clock’s LinkedIn post discussing the update.
Marvin confirmed that not everyone is included in this initial rollout phase. If advertisers did not receive the email notification from Google, then that account is not affected right now.
She also provided an example of how this update works for campaigns only scheduled to run on weekends:
“If the daily budget is set to $100, the monthly spend would have been 8 (on avg about 8 weekend days/month) x $100 = $800. With this change, it will be 8 days X $200 (up to 2x the daily spend limit) = $1,600 monthly spend limit.
If you want to keep to a monthly spend limit of $800, you should lower the daily budget to $50, and plan to hit the 2X daily spend routinely given the headroom you already know the campaign has.”
Ameet Khabra, founder of Hop Skip Media, added a thoughtful question back to Marvin about automated rules or scripts to pause campaigns:
“For point 2, wouldn’t budget changes like that have backend implications? Even though the system is actively trying to spend 2x, slashing the budget would force smart bidding to reduce its bids. Wouldn’t an automated rule or a script that pauses campaigns once your spend threshold is reached be a better alternative?”
In a recent LinkedIn post, Navah Hopkins, Ad liaison for Microsoft Ads, announced that self-serve negative keyword lists are now live in the platform.
With the update, advertisers can place up to 5,000 negative keywords in a single list. These lists can be applied at either the campaign or account level. This also includes open beta support for Performance Max campaigns.
However, reading further in the help article from Microsoft, it appears that you can create one list at the account level that contains up to 1,000 negative keywords.
She also mentioned that negative match types will behave the same for Performance Max campaigns as they do for traditional Search campaigns.
Negative keywords are one of the simplest ways to protect performance in Search.
With Microsoft rolling out self-serve negative keyword lists, advertisers now have more direct control across campaign types, including open beta support for Performance Max. Instead of routing exclusions through support, teams can apply and manage lists inside the interface.
From a workflow standpoint, it brings Microsoft closer to what search practitioners expect as a baseline control layer, like in Google Ads. Automation remains central to campaign execution, but advertisers retain clearer responsibility for defining where ads should not show.
Hopkin’s LinkedIn post showed support and engagement from many advertisers, including Nauman Younis Lodhi, director at Sorcim.
Nauman provided useful feedback to Microsoft Ads:
“The ‘phrase’ or ‘broad’ match negatives are useful but one small mistake can affect ad delivery. Mistakes happens when you’re scanning 1,000s of search terms. Exact by default is the safe way to build up your list. Advertisers can manually change exact match negatives into the Root Single Word negatives if required.”
Hopkins responded that she intends to take that feedback to the Microsoft team for further review.
Each of this week’s updates increases flexibility inside the ad platforms.
Google is encouraging advertisers to provide more asset breadth so the system can assemble ads across more queries and formats. It is also adjusting how budget pacing behaves within ad scheduling constraints. Microsoft is giving advertisers more direct control over negative keyword management.
The updates reinforce that performance is increasingly shaped by the quality of inputs and the clarity of guardrails advertisers set.
More Resources:
Featured Image: Deemerwha studio/Shutterstock; Paulo Bobita/Search Engine Journal
Brooke serves as the Director of Growth Marketing at Smith Micro Software, with over 10 years of paid media experience. …
Join 75,000+ Digital Leaders.
Learn how to connect search, AI, and PPC into one unstoppable strategy.
Join 75,000+ Digital Leaders.
Learn how to connect search, AI, and PPC into one unstoppable strategy.
Join 75,000+ Digital Leaders.
Learn how to connect search, AI, and PPC into one unstoppable strategy.
In a world ruled by algorithms, SEJ brings timely, relevant information for SEOs, marketers, and entrepreneurs to optimize and grow their businesses — and careers.
Copyright © 2026 Search Engine Journal. All rights reserved. Published by Alpha Brand Media.
