Insights · Topic
Growth & Retail Media
Retail media and performance marketing across Amazon, Walmart Connect, Target Plus, Google, and Meta — measured against real margin, not vanity metrics, and optimized on a weekly loop that compounds.
Google Ads Now Lets You Cap Display and Search Partners. Set It Before February or Google Sets It for You.
Google announced channel prioritization and budget allocation controls on October 14, rolling out from October 15. In February 2027 it removes the Display Expansion spend setup in Search campaigns and migrates you automatically. Here is the spend math, what to audit this week, and the settings that protect your ROAS.
Read → GrowthMeta's New Ad Terms Hit October 30. Audit Your AI Creative and Your Site Before You Keep Spending.
Meta has reportedly updated its Commercial and Self-Serve Ad Terms effective October 30, with changes said to cover AI-edited creative, delivery tests and website crawling. Continued use is reported to count as acceptance. Meta's pages could not be read directly, so verify in Ads Manager. Here is the pre-BFCM checklist.
Read → GrowthMeta Now Blocks Ads That Link to TikTok in the U.S. Audit Every Live Ad and Draft This Week.
Starting October 8, Meta stopped running ads from ByteDance and, per Bloomberg and Reuters reporting, ads from other advertisers that send people to TikTok or other ByteDance properties. Meta has not published guidance for edge cases. Here is what to audit, what to move, and the math on whether TikTok-bound traffic was ever worth buying on Meta.
Read → GrowthAmazon Is Selling Review Requests as an Ad. Here's How to Decide If It Pays Before the Late October Beta.
Amazon Ads announced Review Requests on September 29, 2026, a paid ad that asks recent buyers for a one-tap rating. The US open beta is reported for late October. Here is who qualifies, what we still do not know, and the break-even math to run first.
Read → GrowthGoogle Ads Starts Pulling Discounts Off Your Website on October 12. Decide Now Whether You Want That in Q4.
Per Google's notice to advertisers, automated promotions switch on by default October 12 for eligible Search and Performance Max campaigns. Google reads offers off your landing pages and attaches them to your ads. Here is the margin math, who is eligible, how to opt out, and a Black Friday setup that keeps you in control.
Read → GrowthTikTok Buy Direct Lets Your Brand Sell In-App Without TikTok Shop. Here Is the Test Plan Before You Call Your Rep.
On October 5 TikTok announced Buy Direct, a one-click checkout in the For You feed where your brand reportedly stays merchant of record. Access is limited and fees are unpublished. Here is what to confirm, how to size the upside, and how to run a clean holdout test.
Read → GrowthMeta's New-Customer Setting Is Now Open to All Advertisers. Audit Your Exclusion List Before You Trust It.
Meta's Customer Lifecycle Strategy lets you tell Sales campaigns to acquire new customers only. Meta announced wider availability at Advertising Week on October 6. Hands-on testing shows the exclusion list can auto-populate incomplete, and Meta itself warns CPA will likely rise. Here is the math on what to expect and the check to run before Q4 budgets scale.
Read → GrowthAmazon Blocked Meta's Shopping AI and Gave Sellers a Free One. Connect Yours Before Q4.
Amazon locked Meta's Muse out of its store on September 21 for shopping without authorization, then announced on September 23 that sellers can now run their Amazon account through Anthropic's Claude, free for a year. Same week, opposite doors. Here is what Amazon is actually protecting, the math on the free software it just handed you, and the three things to set up before Q4.
Read → GrowthGoogle Is Moving Your Search Campaigns Into AI Max Before September 30. Audit the Defaults Before Q4 Does It for You.
Through September 30, 2026, Google is automatically upgrading every Search campaign that used campaign-level broad match or automatically created assets to AI Max, with search term matching switched on. You cannot opt out of the migration. Late September also removes campaign-level language targeting from Search. Here is what flipped, the margin math on unmonitored query expansion, and the 30-minute audit to run this week.
Read → GrowthMeta Is Taking Placement Exclusions Out of Your Ad Sets. Move Them to Account Controls Before Q4.
Advertisers are seeing an in-product notice that excluding placements, platforms, devices and operating systems will no longer be available at the ad set level. The replacement Meta points to is a value rule, which discounts a bid by up to 90% but cannot turn a placement off. Account-level Placement Controls still can. Here is the budget math on why this matters and the audit to run this week.
Read → GrowthGoogle Killed Bid Suppression. Your Best Google Campaigns Were Partly an Accident, and It Ends Before Q4.
On August 17, 2026, Google changed how Smart Bidding treats campaigns marked Limited by budget. Rollout finished August 27. New auction data shows CPCs up 15.8% on budget-limited tROAS campaigns and down 13% on everything else. Google will not adjust your targets for you. Here is the contribution margin math and the per-campaign decision to make before Black Friday.
Read → GrowthOpenAI Put an Ads App Inside Your Shopify Admin. Install It, Cap the Test, and Refuse the Default Billing.
On September 16, 2026, OpenAI named Shopify its first ecommerce partner for ChatGPT Ads. The free app syncs your catalog, installs a server pixel, and runs campaigns without leaving the admin. The same announcement made impression billing the recommended default. Here is the math on whether this channel pencils for your AOV, and the three settings to change before you spend a dollar.
Read → GrowthWalmart Says WFS Plus Sponsored Products Is Worth 5x GMV. The Number Is Real. The Causation Is Not.
Walmart Connect published its Let's Grow! 2026 summit recap on September 7 with two first-party stats: 5x higher annual GMV for sellers running WFS and Sponsored Products together, and a 45% median lift in new-to-brand sales from adding Onsite Display. One of those numbers is useful. The other is selection bias with a footnote.
Read → GrowthShoppers Can Now See a Full Year of Your Prices. Pull Your 12-Month Low Before You Set a Single Q4 Deal.
Amazon expanded price history from 90 days to 365 on the product detail page. Over 50 million customers already use it, three times a month on average. Your Black Friday price is about to be graded against every price you charged since last Black Friday.
Read → GrowthAmazon Just Turned Product Launches Into a Push Notification. Most Sellers Will Miss the Window.
On September 1, 2026, Amazon launched Update Me When inside Alexa for Shopping. Shoppers can now subscribe to alerts for new releases in a category, not just from a brand they follow, and Amazon scans the open web to find them. Your launch date just became a publicity event.
Read → GrowthThe FTC Says Amazon Charged Your Full Bid 80 Percent of the Time. Test It on Your Own Account This Week.
The FTC and 22 state attorneys general sued Amazon on August 31 over an undisclosed advertising surcharge they say turned a second-price auction into a first-price one. Ignore the damages headline. The operator question is whether you have been bidding your maximum willingness to pay into an auction that charges it, and there is a diagnostic you can run before Prime Big Deal Days.
Read → GrowthAmazon Unhooked Your October Deal Price From Your November One. Most Sellers Will Still Discount Too Shallow.
For Q4 2026, Amazon is excluding Prime Big Deal Days promotional prices from the 30-day and 60-day lookback windows that cap Black Friday and Cyber Monday deal pricing. That removes the reason most sellers hold back in October. Here is the math, the September deadline stack, and the AWD storage gap worth two weeks of off-peak rates.
Read → GrowthAmazon's New Launch Credits Are Worth Roughly $575 an ASIN. The Click That Keeps Them Expires October 31.
The New Selection Program (2026) took effect July 30 and auto-covers sellers who were already enrolled in the old program. That coverage ends October 31, 2026. After that date, every new branded ASIN you list gets nothing unless you confirmed enrollment first. Here is what the benefits are actually worth and which part of this deserves your Q4 attention.
Read → GrowthAmazon's $200B Quarter Isn't the Story. Ad Revenue Growing Faster Than Sales Is.
Amazon posted its first $200 billion quarter, but the number sellers should budget around is different: advertising grew 26% while the store grew 20%. Amazon is monetizing visibility faster than the marketplace is growing, and that gap compounds straight into Q4. Here is what it means for your ad and margin math.
Read → GrowthAgentic Checkout Is Coming for Your Funnel. Get Your Product Data Ready Before It Does.
Google's Universal Commerce Protocol lets a shopper buy your product from inside Gemini without ever landing on your page, and Amazon and Walmart are building the same agent-led buying into their own assistants. The brands that win are the ones whose product data an AI agent can read and trust. Here is what is actually shipping and what to fix now.
Read → GrowthRetail Media in 2026: Run Amazon, Walmart, and Target Plus as One Program
Most brands run three disconnected ad accounts and call it a strategy. The brands that win treat retail media as one program measured against one number: profit.
Read → GrowthWalmart Connect: The Second Channel Most Brands Underuse
Amazon gets the attention and the ad budget. For many brands, Walmart Connect is the higher-return channel precisely because everyone else is overlooking it.
Read → GrowthShould You Hire a U.S. eCommerce Team or Build In-House?
For most brands entering the U.S., an outsourced team is faster and lower-risk at launch, with the option to bring it in-house once the model is proven. Here's how to decide.
Read →Start here
Book a Strategy Assessment
A focused, no-obligation session. In 30 minutes you'll get a straight read on your biggest eCommerce opportunity — where the growth is, what's holding it back, and whether it's worth pursuing. If it's not, we'll say so.
Book your assessmentNot ready to talk? Get the free U.S. Market Entry Checklist →