Paid Media News & Opinion #151

Google introduces Brand inclusion controls for standard Shopping

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> What’s happening

Google Ads has rolled out brand inclusion controls for Standard Shopping campaigns, a feature that allows advertisers to explicitly manage which brands appear in their Shopping ads. Advertisers can now add or remove brand lists directly in the ad group targeting section across both Performance Max and Standard Shopping, giving retailers more precise control without relying on workarounds.

These controls let advertisers:

• Select specific brands to include in a Shopping campaign

• Exclude brands they don’t want to advertise

• Preview changes and manage them directly within the Google Ads interface

• Protect budgets and ensure Shopping ads align with inventory strategies

> Why we care

Advertisers have wanted more control over brand targeting in Shopping campaigns for some time. Standard Shopping advertisers have lacked the controls for brand targeting, meaning they often rely on:

• Complex campaign structures

• Negative keyword usage

• Third-party scripts

• Inventory segmentation workarounds

Brand inclusions eliminates these inefficiencies. The ability to include or exclude specific brands directly in Shopping campaigns helps advertisers:

• Reduce wasted spend on low-priority brands

• Protect budgets for brands with strict profitability requirements

• Improve ROAS by focusing spend on top-performing brand lines

• Avoid serving ads for competing or irrelevant brands

For multi-brand retailers, especially in categories like apparel, electronics, or home goods, brand-level control has been a major missing piece. Retailers increasingly want more granular controls, even as Google leans toward automation-heavy tools like Performance Max and AI Max. Brand inclusion controls is a step toward balancing automation with advertiser choice.

PMax expands to Waze and adds Channel Performance insights

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> What’s happening

Google have rolled out 2 key updates to Performance Max (PMax): more inventory on maps with Waze, for US users, and more visibility in Channel Performance with search partners.

For Ads on Waze, Performance Max for store goals campaigns, which aim to drive users to physical locations, will help promote businesses under the ‘Promoted Places in Navigation’ pin on users’ maps. This will be rolled out beyond the US in 2026.

For channel performance, search partners will now be split out from search, with data separate to the other channels. This includes both the visualisation format and the tabular distribution format, allowing advertisers to assess search partners independently.

> Why we care

Both updates are positive for advertisers, with more inventory helping reach and more visibility helping accounts be more efficient. Ads on map-based products, already running on Google Maps, have proven effective for many advertisers who are looking to drive in-person visits. Waze has around 4M users in the US, not insignificant and mainly concentrated in larger cities like New York, but is largely unpopular in other markets.

PMax’s channel performance update offers another level of transparency, though no further control, for advertisers. This has been an ongoing theme this year, which has been welcomed. We recommend taking a look at channel performance if you haven’t already; it’s a fantastic tool with lots of insights of how users flow from impression to conversion across channels.

Reddit launches new WooCommerce integration for advertisers

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> What’s happening

Reddit has introduced a WooCommerce integration that lets advertisers sync their product catalogues directly into Reddit Ads. The integration supports dynamic product ads, real-time inventory & pricing updates, and improved conversion tracking through the Reddit Pixel and Conversions API. The aim is to make Reddit a more accessible and performance-driven option for e-commerce brands.

> Why we care

This update lowers the barrier to entry of testing Reddit within a paid media mix by removing manual feed management and improving signal quality. With cleaner catalogue data, automatic inventory syncing, and improved tracking, advertisers can expect more reliable optimisation and, ultimately, a clearer view of Reddit’s effectiveness as a performance channel.

What else we've been talking about:

• ChatGPT ads are coming – and they won’t look like Google Ads

• Google launches AI-powered advisors

• Microsoft makes Clarity mandatory for publishers

• Strengthen media measurement and ROI clarity with incrementality testing improvements – Google Ads

• Google Ads Editor 2.11 gets campaign-level negatives and smarter automation

• Google expands image search ads with mobile carousel format

• Google adds asset-level reporting to display campaigns

• Why B2B brands are shifting from keywords to Performance Max

• Google Ads pushes ‘Investment Strategy’ planning for budget-limited campaigns