Q2 2026 was an unusually busy quarter for online advertising. Meta switched its campaigns to a mode where the creative itself picks the audience. Google gave advertisers the control they had wanted for years, while Instagram and TikTok rearranged the rules for how content gets shown. If you run a business and spend part of your budget on online ads, you don’t have to follow every piece of industry news. This round-up covers the changes from the past three months that genuinely affect small and medium-sized businesses, with a tip on how to act on each one.
Contents
Meta Ads: creative now does the job targeting used to do
At Meta, the most important change is a shift in overall direction. Its ad delivery system, developed under the name Andromeda, increasingly treats the ad itself as a pointer to who should see it. A video of someone talking about a problem your customers have will find people like them on its own. Manually setting interests is taking a back seat, and Meta Ads campaigns running on Advantage+ have become the default way of working with the platform.
There’s good news for smaller online shops: Meta has almost halved the number of conversions an Advantage+ sales campaign needs before it has enough to learn from. A format that used to need dozens of purchases a week is now open to businesses with lower sales volumes.
There’s more. You can now describe your target audience in a plain sentence, and the system will turn that description into targeting signals by itself. You can add AI-generated music to your videos, matched to the mood of the footage. Click counting has changed too: Meta now separates genuine visits to your website from likes, saves and shares, so your reports will give you a much more reliable picture of what an ad actually delivers.
What does this mean for you? Less time in the settings panel and more time on your ad creative. One banner won’t carry a campaign, because the algorithm needs several different ads to test.
Google Ads: the automation gets reined in
For months, Google has been developing AI Max, a mode in which AI extends Search campaigns beyond the keywords you’ve entered. In Q2 it was rolled out to more campaign types, including Shopping. A year after launch, it’s now a standard part of what Google offers advertisers.
More interesting is what Performance Max campaigns have gained: negative keywords and reports showing which channels the budget ends up in. Advertisers have been asking for both since the format launched. In practice, it’s now easier to check that a Google Ads campaign is spending money where you want it to and to cut out searches that have nothing to do with what you offer.
At the same time, ads are starting to appear in AI-generated answers in search. It’s early days, but the direction is clear: some clicks are moving from the classic list of results to conversations with the search engine.
The practical takeaway: if someone runs Performance Max for you, ask them to go through the new channel reports and the exclusion list. It’s the first chance in a long time to look under the bonnet of the automation.
Instagram and TikTok: video first
Instagram is testing a layout in which Reels replace the classic feed as the first thing you see when you open the app. The direction has been the same for months: the platform is becoming more like TikTok, and the organic reach of static posts keeps shrinking. If your business only posts graphics, you’re dropping out of sight much faster than your follower count would suggest.
TikTok, meanwhile, is changing how it tests content. New posts go to your followers first and only reach a wider audience once they’ve been well received. The platform also favours original audio over trending sounds. For businesses, that’s a reason to stop chasing every trend and build a recognisable style of their own.
Running business profiles today is mostly about short-form video. If your team doesn’t have the capacity, you can outsource social media management. Even then, it’s worth understanding why Reels come out on top: the platforms themselves are fighting over short video.
Advertising in Europe: an extra line on the invoice
From mid-2026, Meta is adding fees of up to a few per cent to ads shown in some European countries, including France, Italy, Spain, Austria and the UK. The reason is digital services taxes, which the platform is passing on to advertisers. Poland isn’t on the list, so campaigns aimed at the Polish market are unaffected. If you sell into those countries, though, recalculate your budgets, because the same campaigns will cost slightly more.
Where should you start?
- Check your conversion tracking. All of Meta’s and Google’s automation relies on data about what happens after the click. Without accurate tracking, the new features are optimising blind.
- Review your creative. Now that the ad picks its own audience, one banner for the whole quarter won’t do. You need several different assets, ideally video.
- Look inside Performance Max. The new reports and exclusions finally let you see where the budget goes and cut whatever isn’t delivering results.
- Find out whether the new fees apply to you. Selling to France, Italy or the UK? Build a surcharge of a few per cent into your budget planning.
Summary
The common thread this quarter: the platforms are cutting back on manual steering and, in return, giving you more control over measurement, creative and reporting. You don’t have to roll everything out at once. It’s enough to review your settings every so often and make sure the automation is actually working from your data. We’ll put together the next round-up once Q3 has closed.
