Google Marketing Live ran on 20 May 2026 — the day after I/O — and this is the event where the advertising announcements landed. If you run an online shop and use Google Ads or Shopping, some of what was announced is already affecting your campaigns. Here’s a plain-English breakdown and, more usefully, what you can actually do about it.

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Your ads are already in AI Mode — whether you know it or not

This is the one most advertisers haven’t clocked yet. AI Mode — Google’s conversational search interface — already has over a billion monthly users. And your existing campaigns are already serving ads into it, if Google considers them relevant to the query. You didn’t opt in. It just started happening.

The problem right now is visibility. AI Mode placements are folded into your standard Google Ads reporting — there’s no clean breakout showing you what’s serving where, what’s converting, and what the cost difference is. Google has said dedicated reporting is coming. It isn’t here yet.

What this means practically: your campaign numbers may look slightly different — impression volumes shifting, CTR changing — and part of the reason is that the surface your ads are appearing on has quietly changed underneath you. It’s worth asking your ads manager to flag this specifically if you haven’t already had that conversation.

Universal Cart: Google moves into the transaction

This is the structural shift that matters most for e-commerce long-term. Google announced Universal Cart — a checkout layer that works across Search, Gemini, YouTube, Gmail, and Google Shopping. The idea is that a customer can find your product and complete the purchase without ever visiting your website.

That’s a significant change to the relationship between Google and your shop. Google has been a traffic source for years — it sends people to you, you convert them. Universal Cart starts to change that. Google becomes the transaction layer, and your website becomes the fulfilment backend.

I want to be honest about the timeline here: this is rolling out gradually and is not yet the dominant purchase path for most UK small businesses. But the direction is clear, and the infrastructure is being built now. The businesses that will be well-positioned when this becomes mainstream are the ones with complete, accurate, well-structured Google Merchant Centre feeds — because that’s the data Google uses to power the whole thing. A bare-minimum feed won’t exist in this layer. A complete one will.

New ad formats worth knowing about

Google announced four new AI-powered ad formats at Marketing Live. Two are particularly relevant for e-commerce:

AI-powered Shopping ads with auto-generated match explanations. Google’s AI now generates a short explanation alongside a Shopping ad showing why it matched the user’s query. The implication for your feed: the richer your product data, the more relevant and convincing that explanation can be. Thin titles and minimal descriptions won’t give the AI much to work with.

Conversational Discovery ads. These are ads that appear within conversational AI search sessions — so when someone is in a back-and-forth exchange with AI Mode, your products can surface mid-conversation if they’re contextually relevant. Again, this is feed-driven. Google is matching product attributes to conversational intent, not just keywords.

The other two formats — Highlighted Answers inside AI recommendation lists, and Business Agent for Leads — are more relevant for lead generation than product e-commerce, so I won’t go into them in depth here.

Performance Max is getting Gemini creative

If you’re running Performance Max campaigns, Gemini is being integrated into the asset generation process. Google is rolling out Gemini-generated long headlines, with sitelinks coming soon. There’s also a new multimodal video creation tool in Asset Studio — with a few prompts, you can build YouTube ad assets that scale across Google’s platforms.

The honest take on this: AI-generated creative within PMax is only as good as the inputs you give it. Your brand guidelines, your product photography, your copy style — these need to be in the asset library in good shape before Gemini starts generating variations from them. If your asset library is thin or off-brand, AI generation will amplify that, not fix it.

If you haven’t done an asset library review recently, now is the right time — before the Gemini integration rolls out fully.

You can now see how your brand appears in AI answers

This one is genuinely useful and has been a gap for a while. Google announced it will now share data on how your brand is mentioned in AI-generated responses — so you can see whether your brand is appearing in AI Overviews and AI Mode results related to your products and category.

This matters because organic brand presence in AI answers and paid performance are increasingly connected. If your brand is being mentioned and cited in AI results, your paid campaigns benefit from that recognition. If you’re invisible in AI answers, you’re paying to overcome that gap every time.

Keep an eye on where this reporting lands in Google Ads and Merchant Centre — it should start appearing over the coming weeks.

What e-commerce businesses should do right now

There’s a lot here and it’s easy to feel like you need to do everything at once. You don’t. These are the three things that will have the most impact in the next 90 days:

1. Audit your Google Merchant Centre feed. This is the single most important thing. Every announcement from Marketing Live — Universal Cart, AI Mode Shopping ads, Conversational Discovery ads, AI match explanations — is powered by your GMC feed data. If your feed has thin titles, minimal descriptions, missing attributes, or out-of-date pricing, you are already at a disadvantage and it will compound. A well-structured feed is no longer just good practice for Shopping ads. It is the entry requirement for this whole new layer.

2. Review your Performance Max asset library. Before Gemini creative integration rolls out fully, make sure your asset library contains strong, on-brand headlines, descriptions, and images. Give the AI good inputs and it will produce useful variations. Give it weak inputs and it will produce weak ads at scale.

3. Ask about AI Mode in your reporting. If you have an ads manager — whether that’s us or someone else — ask specifically: where are my ads appearing in AI Mode, and can we see that data separately? It won’t be cleanly available yet, but flagging it now means you’ll be watching for it when the reporting lands. Campaigns that looked stable last quarter may look different now, and you deserve to know why.

If you’d like a feed audit or a review of how your campaigns are set up ahead of these changes, get in touch — it’s one of the most concrete things we can do right now to make sure you’re positioned well.

Frequently asked questions

What did Google announce for e-commerce at Marketing Live 2026?

The headline announcements were Universal Cart (checkout across Search, YouTube, Gmail and Gemini), ads already serving inside AI Mode, four new AI-powered ad formats, Gemini creative integration for Performance Max, and new reporting on how your brand appears in AI-generated answers.

What is Google Universal Cart and how does it affect my shop?

Universal Cart is Google’s checkout layer working across its entire ecosystem — Search, Gemini, YouTube, Gmail, Shopping. Customers can complete a purchase without visiting your website. It’s powered entirely by your Google Merchant Centre feed data. If your feed is complete and well-structured, your products exist in this layer. If it’s minimal, they don’t.

Are my existing Google Ads already showing in AI Mode?

Yes — existing campaigns are already serving into AI Mode where Google considers them relevant. You didn’t opt in separately. The problem right now is that AI Mode placements appear in your reporting without clean separation from standard search, making it hard to isolate performance. Google has said dedicated reporting is coming.

What should I do first in response to these changes?

Audit your Google Merchant Centre feed. Every major announcement from Marketing Live is powered by that data. A complete, attribute-rich feed is now the entry requirement for AI Mode Shopping ads, Universal Cart, Conversational Discovery ads, and AI match explanations. It’s the highest-impact action you can take right now.