Week of Feb 23, 2026
14 changes logged the week of Feb 23, 2026, 2 high impact; 7 took effect. Open this week in the change history.
Google Ads
- Text guidelines beta in AI Max expanded to all advertisers globally with full language support
Text guidelines let advertisers tell AI Max which terms or concepts to avoid in AI-generated text (for example, 'don't imply our products are cheap'). The beta moved from limited access to all advertisers, languages and verticals. Source
- Google Ads support forms began requiring advertisers to authorize Google to make account changes
Arpan Banerjee noticed the support form now asks advertisers to grant explicit authorization for specialists to change the account. Ads Liaison Ginny Marvin said on Feb 25 this was not new and applies when advertisers request changes. Source
- February Demand Gen Drop published a best-practices framework and confirmed several features as GA
Google published a four-pillar Demand Gen best-practices framework and confirmed general availability of optimized targeting, lookalike audiences, new customer acquisition goals, tCPA/tROAS, Performance Planner, Excellent Ad Strength, Google tag gateway and Data Manager connections. Source
- Demand Gen campaigns to require a minimum $5 daily budget from April 1, 2026
Google announced that Demand Gen campaigns created or edited on or after April 1, 2026 must have a daily budget of at least $5 USD (or local equivalent) to get through the initial learning phase. Existing lower-budget campaigns keep serving until edited. Source
- New certification applications for online gambling aggregators paused in Indiana
From March 31, 2026, Google temporarily stopped accepting certification applications from online gambling content aggregators targeting Indiana. Source
Merchant Center
- Shopping ads political content policy required election verification in nine countries; India ban
From April 16, 2026, Shopping ads with political content targeting Argentina, Australia, Chile, Israel, Mexico, New Zealand, South Africa, the UK and the US require election advertiser verification, and certain political content in Shopping ads is prohibited in India. Source
- Shopping ended cross-border certification for UK pharmacies targeting Germany and Austria
Merchant Center discontinued the certification program that allowed UK online pharmacies to advertise in Germany and Austria, matching the Google Ads change from October 2025. Source
- Merchant Center 'Video assets' section began auto-populating with videos pulled from YouTube and other sources
Hana Kobzova noticed the video section, empty since its September rollout, is now filled with automatically imported videos. Google did not announce the change. Source
Google Ads API & Scripts
- Campaign mutates blocked for accounts with undeclared EU political ads status from April 1, 2026
From April 1, 2026, in v20 through v23 of the Google Ads API and in Google Ads scripts, any account with one or more campaigns missing the EU political advertising declaration fails all campaign-management mutate calls with MutateError.EU_POLITICAL_ADVERTISING_DECLARATION_REQUIRED until the campaigns are declared; reporting and account management calls are unaffected. Source
- Google Ads API v23.1 released with YouTube video uploads, text guidelines and EU political ads fields
v23.1 (with minors v20.2, v21.1 and v22.1 for EU political ads support) added Campaign.missing_eu_political_advertising_declaration and Customer.contains_eu_political_advertising, a YouTubeVideoUploadService, campaign text guidelines for Performance Max and Search, unique_users_two_plus through ten_plus reach metrics, and ConversionActionCategory.YOUTUBE_FOLLOW_ON_VIEWS. Source
- Google Ads API began enforcing a USD 5 minimum daily budget for Demand Gen campaigns from April 1, 2026
An unversioned change returns BUDGET_BELOW_DAILY_MINIMUM (v21+; v20 returns UNKNOWN with details.unpublished_error_code) when creating or modifying a Demand Gen campaign with a daily or flighted budget below USD 5 or local equivalent; existing lower-budget campaigns keep serving until edited. Source
Microsoft Ads
- API v13.0.27 added HTML5 assets, LinkedIn segments, app download goals and content negative keyword lists
The March 2026 release added AddHTML5s/GetHTML5sByIds/DeleteHTML5s, LinkedIn segment operations, AppDownloadGoal, AccountContentNegativeKeywordList, GetOfflineConversionReportByGoalIds, image cropping, BaseDomainSetting and Google import support for portfolio bid strategies and AI Max settings. Source
Search Console
- Bulk data export lost February 28 and March 1, 2026 for some properties
Google logged a data anomaly: due to a technical issue two days (February 28 and March 1, 2026) are missing from BigQuery bulk data exports for some properties and will not be recovered; failed exports were reported for over a week in early March. Source
- Page indexing report lost historical data prior to December 15, 2025
All properties temporarily showed no Page indexing data before December 15, 2025, with only the most recent weeks visible, a Google-side reporting bug. Source
Took effect this week
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