Monday Briefing: Google Just Blinked on Performance Max

Good morning, it's James here. Alphabet posted a $119.8 billion quarter on Wednesday and the coverage went where coverage always goes, to the capex line and the Cloud number. The move that will actually change your Q4 was two checkboxes in a campaign settings menu. Let's get into it.

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The Lead: Google Just Blinked on Performance Max

For four years the answer to "can I see where my Performance Max budget is going" was no. Last week it quietly became yes.

What happened: Google is testing two new options that let media buyers exclude third-party search partner inventory and the Google Display Network from Performance Max campaigns (Digiday, July 24). Both are checkboxes, and both are enabled by default, so you are opted into that inventory until someone on your team unchecks it. Sam Clarke, managing director and head of search at Crossmedia, told Digiday it is "fairly significant," adding that "when PMax first came out, one of the biggest pain points was perceived lack of control versus standard campaigns." David Dweck, president at Go Fish Digital, was blunter about what is being handed back, calling both "sources of remnant inventory that Google's forced advertisers to opt into with PMax."

Why CMOs should care: The original PMax bargain was that you surrendered inventory control and got automation in return. Search partners and the display network are the part of that bargain nobody would have signed for on its own. They are where the cheap, unaccountable impressions live, and for four years they sat in the same budget as your highest-intent search traffic.

The take: Read the concession against the earnings. Two days before that Digiday story, Alphabet reported quarterly revenue of $119.8 billion, up 24% year over year, with YouTube ads at $11.06 billion (9to5Google, July 22). Search and other revenue rose 17% to $63.27 billion, per the same Digiday report. A company growing its core ad business at 17% does not need to force-feed remnant display to make the quarter. Google gave ground from strength, not pressure, which is exactly when you should take it. Ask your search team to get into the test, then re-baseline PMax with both channels off before Q4 budgets lock. If your cost per acquisition improves with the display network excluded, you have been paying a tax you were never shown.

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What I'm Watching: The Creator Premium Is Now a Number

The World Cup gave us the cleanest head-to-head yet between paying for fame and paying for distribution. Distribution won.

Across TikTok, Reddit, and Instagram, creator-led posts during the tournament pulled a median 929,000 views against 573,000 for celebrity posts, and a median value of $62,000 against $56,000, per social listening platform Nectar (Digiday, July 23). Ten of the top 15 posts by earned media value were creator-led. Nectar CEO Misbah Uraizee described celebrities as "a powerful moment" inside a distribution layer that creators actually own, adding that celebrity "reach is not always as reliable."

That last phrase is the one to bring to your next budget meeting. Celebrity talent is priced on certainty and delivers variance. Most brand budgets still have this backwards, with the talent line locked twelve months out and the creator line treated as flexible spend that gets cut first when the quarter tightens. If your 2027 sponsorship plan rests on a single face, ask what happens to your reach if that person has a quiet month.

Musical Chairs: GM Hands Two Brands to One Outsider

GM hired Nissan CMO Allyson Witherspoon to run marketing for both Buick and GMC, ending a search open since Suzanne Guzzo left in May (Brand Innovators, July 20). Witherspoon spent 12.5 years at Nissan and Infiniti and says she is joining to "steer both brands into the next era."

The structure matters more than the name. Buick and GMC have long shared design oversight while keeping separate marketing leadership, and now they do not. This is also the third external marketing hire in nine months under GM chief marketing officer Lin-Hua Wu, after David Mogensen came in from BMW, Google, and Uber to take Cadillac in April (Yahoo Finance, July 21). Wu added the CMO title to her communications role in November, coming up through Google, Dropbox, Block, and a Stanford law degree rather than automotive or agency marketing. Her predecessor Norm de Greve, who had an actual marketing career, was moved into a newly created chief growth officer role reporting to her and was gone six months later.

A marketing organization rebuilt entirely from outside hires, reporting to a leader whose background is communications and law, either produces the sharpest brand work Detroit has seen in a decade or it produces three consultants' decks and a reorg. There is not much middle, and Buick and GMC will show you which one by the time the 2027 model year launches.

The Reading List

• The upfront market is nearly done: Roughly 75% to 80% of upfront dollars are committed, total spend is slightly down again, and the Super Bowl settled at $7.75 to $8 million per 30 seconds against Disney's $10 million ask. If you passed on the game because of the ask, the ask was negotiable. (Digiday)

• Everything Mark Ritson thinks marketers get wrong about AI: His line on the data-skills gap is the keeper, that data is "exponentially bigger, but our skills and capabilities, if anything, are going backwards." He also notes UK marketing roles have halved in five years. Read it before you approve another tool. (The Drum)

• Google drops the $50,000 spend requirement for Lead Form assets: The lifetime-spend gate is gone, leaving advertiser reputation and verification as the only stated path. Smaller B2B accounts just got a native lead format they were locked out of. (Search Engine Land)

• Consumers are warming up to streaming ads: In Hub Entertainment Research's April survey of 3,000 US consumers, 69% would watch ads to save money, up 11 points from 2021, and 55% are positive about AI used to improve ad timing. A counterweight to the assumption that all AI in advertising reads as hostile. (Marketing Dive)

• Inside the rise of creator-brand equity deals: Creators are taking ownership stakes instead of one-off fees, with platforms like Bulletpitch pairing founders with creator investors. The logical next step after this week's creator numbers. (Ad Age)

One More Thing

The three stories this week rhyme. Performance Max was a black box until someone at Google decided it did not have to be. Celebrity talent was worth the premium until someone counted the views. Car marketing came from car people until GM stopped hiring them. Each of those held for years, not because it was tested, but because nobody made anyone test it.

Every marketing organization runs on a stack of settings somebody chose once and nobody revisited. So skip the news chase this week and write down the five assumptions your plan depends on, then mark which ones you have actually checked since you inherited them. That list is usually shorter than anyone expects.

See you next Monday. Stay sharp out there.

- James