Welcome to this week’s PPC Pulse. Updates focus on Merchant Center access for agencies, bidding strategy, and how PPC marketers are adapting to industry changes.
Google expanded access to Merchant Center for Agencies, moving the product from pilot into general availability in the United States and Canada. At the same time, a recent Ads Decoded discussion clarified several assumptions advertisers often make about Smart Bidding and campaign “cold starts.” Outside of Google, the newly released State of PPC 2026 report provides a useful snapshot of how marketers are actually using AI and automation inside their PPC workflows.
Here’s what happened this week and why it matters for advertisers.
Merchant Center For Agencies Now Available In The US And Canada
Google’s Merchant Center for Agencies is now generally available in the United States and Canada.
The product first appeared in initial pilot form toward the end of 2024 with select agencies. Then, a broader rollout to select partners in October 2025. With this update, Google is expanding access to agencies that manage ecommerce advertisers across multiple Merchant Center accounts.
Merchant Center for Agencies provides a centralized workspace where agencies can manage multiple Merchant Center accounts in one place.
According to Google documentation, the platform includes tools designed to monitor account health, detect product issues earlier, and identify optimization opportunities across a portfolio of client accounts.
Key capabilities include:
- A single dashboard for monitoring multiple Merchant Center accounts.
- Diagnostics that surface item-level and account-level issues.
- Visibility into optimization opportunities like promotions, shipping configuration, and product availability.
- Oversight tools that allow agencies to track account health across clients.
The goal is to reduce the time agencies spend switching between Merchant Center accounts and improve visibility into issues that may affect product listings and Shopping campaign performance.
While it’s now available in the United States and Canada, you still have to contact Google to get the Merchant Center for Agencies account created.
Why This Matters For Advertisers
Merchant Center issues can often show up as performance problems rather than obvious technical errors.
If products are disapproved, feeds contain errors, or shipping settings are misconfigured, those issues can quickly limit product visibility across Google surfaces. Advertisers may see reduced impressions or traffic without immediately realizing the root cause sits inside Merchant Center rather than their campaigns.
For agencies managing multiple e-commerce clients, monitoring those signals across all accounts can take time and bandwidth away from campaign strategy.
A centralized interface does not eliminate the need for feed management or troubleshooting, but it can make it easier to detect problems earlier and prioritize fixes before they affect campaign performance.
It also reinforces how closely product data quality is tied to Shopping and Performance Max outcomes. Stronger feeds and cleaner product data generally translate into stronger campaign signals.
What PPC Professionals Are Saying
When sharing the update on LinkedIn, Google Ads Liaison Ginny Marvin described Merchant Center for Agencies as a faster way to manage multiple Merchant Center accounts and monitor product-level issues across a portfolio of clients.
Lots of praise from the PPC community showed up in the comments, including Menachem Ani, founder & CEO of JXT group, who said, “Excited for this!” while Sarah Stemen echoed the sentiment with “Great update!! Thanks so much.”
Along with excitement, the post fielded a few questions, including:
- Emmanuel Flossie, founder of FeedArmy, who asked: “If you have this account, do you add clients like normal? By asking to be linked?”
- Duane Brown, CEO & head of strategy at Take Some Risk Inc., asked: “Are we able to request access to a client’s GMC account, or do we still need to go through support?
Google Pushes Back On Smart Bidding “Cold Start” Assumptions
In the latest Ads Decoded podcast episode that launched this week, Google addressed several common Smart Bidding questions.
The episode was hosted by Ginny Marvin with guests Kristina Park and Carlo Buchmann, both Google Ads Product Managers.
One of the key topics was how advertisers should approach bidding strategies when launching new campaigns.
For years, a common practice among advertisers has been starting campaigns with manual bidding or Maximize Clicks, gathering data, and then switching to Smart Bidding later.
Google’s guidance challenges that approach.
According to the product team, advertisers can generally begin with the bidding strategy they ultimately want to optimize toward, such as Maximize Conversions or target CPA.
Google explained that Smart Bidding systems do not rely solely on data from a single campaign. The system can learn from signals across the broader account, allowing it to adjust more quickly even when a new campaign launches.
The discussion also covered several other bidding-related topics, including:
- Smart Bidding Exploration, a feature designed to help campaigns discover new queries outside existing bidding patterns.
- The importance of accurate conversion signals and value inputs.
- Evaluating campaign performance while accounting for conversion delay.
Why This Matters For Advertisers
Many advertisers still approach Smart Bidding cautiously, particularly in new campaigns or lower-volume accounts. I’ve personally been of that mindset as well, leaning towards a “Maximize Clicks” bid strategy for most new campaigns, especially in brand new accounts.
Google’s guidance reflects how the platform’s systems have evolved.
The system is increasingly designed around advertisers providing strong signals from the start rather than slowly transitioning toward automation.
That places greater importance on conversion tracking accuracy, value signals, and aligning campaign goals with real business outcomes.
If those signals are incomplete or inaccurate, changing bidding strategies later will not necessarily solve the underlying problem.
What PPC Professionals Are Saying
When Google Ads shared the podcast episode topic on LinkedIn, the comments and feedback from marketers were engaging, with a balance of criticism and positivity.
Felix Dueler, executive managing director at Due Media GmbH, provided real-life feedback from client accounts:
“Nice, thanks Ginny Marvin. 2 points:
1. I lately tested with a bunch of clients when changing bid strategies or setting up accounts to go directly to a CPA/ROAS based strategy. In most cases traffic started really low and needed a lot of time to learn. Instead, going for “micro” conversions and conversion max strategy worked much better on small accounts to start out with.
2. Google gives suggestions to increase CPA or lower ROAS and to increase budget. However, this often does not comply with the business goals. Would be nice to define business goals in the account and then get suggestions based on that.”
Mauricio Noguera, founder of Tap Eat Solutions, had this to say about Smart Bidding:
“Interesting view on the shift toward automated bidding. I’m curious to hear how to manage the ‘black box’ risk: with these automated systems, this brings the question about balancing algorithm autonomy with the need to prevent wasted spend, specifically when it comes to having a rigorous negative keyword management and search query oversight.
Also, how much weight should be placed on creative asset iteration compared to technical bidding adjustments in your growth strategy? In my experience, even the best bidding strategy can be bottlenecked by stale or underperforming creative.”
State Of PPC 2026 Report Reflects A Changing Industry
Outside of Google platform updates, the newly released State of PPC 2026 report launched this week, which gives a better look at how marketers are approaching the current PPC environment.
The report included responses from over 1,300 PPC professionals, making it the largest edition of the survey to date.
Several findings in the report indicate how PPC workflows are shifting because of increased automation and AI tools within the platforms themselves.
For example, the report shows that LLMs are now widely used across common PPC tasks:
- 59% of respondents use AI to help write ad copy, up from 42% previously.
- 39% use AI for keyword research, up from 27%.
- 39% use AI for email drafting.
- 35% use AI to summarize meetings, a sharp increase from just 9% previously.
- 34% use AI to write or edit scripts used in PPC workflows.
The report also highlights a newer behavior emerging from marketers.
About 22% of PPC professionals say they are now using AI-powered tools to build their own internal workflows, lightweight apps, or automations without writing traditional code, a trend the report refers to as “vibe coding.”
Why This Matters For Advertisers
One takeaway from the report is that AI adoption is increasing, but its role inside PPC remains mostly supportive rather than fully autonomous.
Marketers appear comfortable using AI for writing, research, analysis, and workflow support. But the same tools are used less frequently for areas like budget management or core campaign optimization.
According to the report, the biggest barrier is not access to AI tools but confidence in the accuracy and reliability of the outputs, which still require human oversight before being used in campaigns.
What PPC Professionals Are Saying
Wijnand Meijer, co-founder and CEO of TrueClicks, shared the launch of the report on LinkedIn.
A lot of thanks and praise came in the comments, including acknowledgment from Ashwin Balakrishnan that “A lot of effort went into this, much needed reference point for a lot of people!”
Brooke Weller, AI search consultant at LinkedIn, called the report “liquid gold.”
Theme Of The Week: Platforms Are Still Solving Operational Friction
This week’s updates may seem unrelated at first, but they all touch different parts of the operational side of PPC.
Merchant Center for Agencies focuses on simplifying account management across ecommerce clients.
Google’s bidding guidance continues to clarify how advertisers should approach Smart Bidding, especially in new campaigns.
And the State of PPC report reflects how practitioners are adapting to the growing complexity of managing campaigns across platforms and tools.
All these updates show where both platforms and marketers are spending their time right now: improving workflows, refining automation inputs, and continuous adaptation to a more complex PPC environment.
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Featured Image: Gorodenkoff/Shutterstock; Paulo Bobita/Search Engine Journal
