I started this newsletter mostly to force myself to keep up with all the new AI marketing news. Things are moving fast! I figured other people might want to learn about it too, so here we are. If there are topics or companies you’d like me to cover, please send them over. I’m a team of one person, so I’ll do what I can. If you want to connect, you can find me running the fractional CMO arm of Foxtown Marketing on most days.

Welcome to today's edition of AI Marketing Geek, your daily dose of the latest AI developments, tools, trends, and actionable insights shaping marketing in 2026. As AI shifts from experimental hype to pragmatic, ROI-driven reality, we're seeing agentic AI take center stage. Autonomous agents are handling media buying, personalization, and commerce, which is wild to watch.

The biggest shift in paid search in years arrived quietly in April, buried under a wave of routine Google Ads updates. For the first time, sponsored retailer listings are now appearing inside AI Mode conversations, not beside them.

Two new ad format expansions went live in April. The first is a shopping ad format that surfaces sponsored retailer listings below organic product recommendations inside AI Mode conversations. When a user asks a conversational shopping query, AI Mode already provides organic suggestions. Now, labeled "Sponsored" placements appear alongside those results, positioning retailers at the exact moment a user is weighing options. This is fundamentally different from traditional Shopping ads because the conversational context has already deeply qualified the user's intent. The second expansion brings similar formats to travel queries, giving travel advertisers contextual placement inside the same conversational experience.

The intent qualification point is worth dwelling on. A user who has just typed a multi-sentence question into AI Mode about which running shoes are best for flat feet and a specific budget has already done the research that traditionally happens across ten different websites. By the time a sponsored listing appears, you are not trying to attract attention. You are trying to close a decision.

Google also introduced a monetization experience called Direct Offers, which allows brands to share a tailored offer with a shopper who is ready to buy without changing what they offer everyone else. Google is expanding these to include special offers that go beyond price, like loyalty benefits and product bundles.

For advertisers, the immediate practical question is eligibility. Existing text and shopping ads from Search, Shopping, and Performance Max campaigns are eligible to show within AI Overviews and AI Mode. AI-powered targeting solutions like broad match and keywordless targeting through AI Max are required to match relevant ads to conversational queries. Smart bidding is also recommended alongside high-quality creative on your website.

There is a product feed hygiene implication here too. Products with multiple angles, lifestyle context, and clean backgrounds are outperforming single-image listings significantly in visual and AI-driven shopping. Advertisers still running product-on-white photos are leaving money on the table. The ad inventory is there now. Whether your campaigns are set up to access it depends on decisions you may have made months ago.

The largest restructuring in WPP's history is moving from announcement to execution, and the CFO's language about where the savings come from removed any ambiguity about what that means for headcount.

WPP has signalled further reductions to its workforce as it embarks on a multi-year restructuring designed to simplify operations and embed artificial intelligence more deeply into its services. The group said it would reorganise into a single integrated company structured around four divisions: WPP Creative, WPP Media, WPP Production, and WPP Enterprise Solutions. The plan targets £500 million in gross annual cost savings by 2028. Speaking during the fourth quarter earnings call, Chief Financial Officer Joanne Wilson said the savings would inevitably involve headcount reductions. "In a business where most of our cost savings are people, that will mean a reduction of certain heads."

The financial backdrop explains the urgency. WPP reported a 3.6% fall in comparable revenue to 13.6 billion pounds in 2025, while profit before tax dropped 26% to 1.1 billion pounds. The company, which spends nearly 8 billion pounds annually on staff costs, has seen its market value shrink to about 3 billion pounds compared with roughly 25 billion pounds nine years ago. Its share price has fallen by almost two-thirds over the past year.

The restructuring merges WPP's creative networks under one roof. Under the restructuring, WPP's creative networks, including Ogilvy, VML, and AKQA, will be combined under the WPP Creative umbrella. CEO Cindy Rose described the move as "a bold plan for a simpler, more integrated WPP that's fit for the future," transitioning from a holding company structure to a single company.

WPP is not alone in this. Omnicom has launched its own audit of The Trade Desk, its merger with IPG is targeting $1.5 billion in savings, and Publicis has been trimming steadily. The entire holding company model is being repriced around what AI can now do at the production and planning layers. The strategic question for agency leaders is not whether to restructure but how to define what remains distinctly human in their value proposition. The answer the market is gravitating toward is judgment, taste, and client strategy. The execution layer is being ceded to automation.

Google's AI Mode shopping ads are live now. Here is how to verify your campaigns are positioned to access this inventory.

Step one is checking your targeting settings. AI Mode ad placements require broad match keywords or keywordless targeting through AI Max. If your Search campaigns are running exclusively on exact match or phrase match keywords, they will not be eligible for AI Mode placements. Log in to Google Ads, pull up your Search campaigns, and check the match types on your keyword lists. Any campaign you want appearing in conversational AI contexts needs at least some broad match coverage.

Step two is auditing your Performance Max campaigns. PMax is already eligible for AI Mode placements by default. The question is whether your product feeds and creative assets are strong enough to compete. Pull your Asset Group reporting and look at your asset ratings. Any creative element rated "Low" is limiting your reach. Photo assets especially matter right now: products with multiple angles, lifestyle context, and clean backgrounds are significantly outperforming single-image listings in AI-driven shopping surfaces.

Step three is making sure Customer Match is set up if you have a loyalty program. Google expanded loyalty program features to 14 countries and AI surfaces in late March, allowing member pricing annotations and member shipping benefits to surface inside AI Mode and Gemini. However, as of April 1, Customer Match uploads must go through the Data Manager API. The older upload routes through the Google Ads API are now blocked. If your loyalty program integration was built on the legacy API, it needs to be migrated or your loyalty pricing will not show correctly in AI surfaces.

2026 is the year AI moves from "cool demos" to real and measurable business use cases. Expect more agentic tools, voice-powered targeting, and a focus on privacy-first data.

Stay ahead of the game by treating your AI reputation like your website. It would behoove you to make your brand easy for agents to understand and cite.

What AI experiment are you running this week? Reply and let me know. I'll feature top stories in future editions! (Everybody loves a good story)

Stay sharp,
Jon
@mistersterling
Chief AI Marketing Geek