PPC Platform Updates, Week of April 7–14, 2026

At least twenty-three updates hit our PPC Platform updates dashboard this week, and honestly most of them won't move the needle on your accounts. But a handful of them genuinely might, and one of them is the kind of thing you really don't want to discover for the first time when something is already broken. So let me walk you through what actually matters, starting with the urgent stuff and working down.

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🚨 Important Updates (Act on These)

Google Ads MCC Hacked? Here's What to Do Immediately — Search Engine Land

This one landed today and I'd read it before you do anything else this week. Search Engine Land put together a genuinely useful breakdown of how MCC-level account compromises unfold, what attackers typically change once they're inside (think billing, admin access, campaign settings), and how teams can recover and clean up the damage. It's not a "this could happen to you someday" kind of article; it's a "here's the playbook if it happens Monday morning" kind of article.

Here's how this could impact your account: If your MCC gets compromised, you're not just losing one campaign... you're potentially losing access to every account underneath it, and an attacker with billing access can do a lot of expensive damage in a short window. It's worth taking twenty minutes this week to audit who has admin access to your MCC, remove anyone who shouldn't be there, and make sure two-factor authentication is enabled across the board. Boring stuff, I know, but the kind of boring stuff that saves you a very bad week someday.

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Merchant API Is Coming to Google Ads Scripts Starting April 22, 2026 — Google Ads Developer Blog

There's a hard deadline embedded in this one that I think is easy to overlook if you're skimming. The Content API for Shopping sunsets on August 18, 2026, and the Merchant API is the replacement. For most advertisers that's a "good to know" item, but for anyone running Google Ads scripts that interact with product data, the scripts editor starts rolling out Merchant API support on April 22, meaning the migration window is open right now. The dashboard flags this as having only one industry article covering it, which seems low given the stakes.

Here's how this could impact your account: If you're running scripts that pull from or push to the Content API for Shopping, those scripts will stop working after August 18th. That might feel far away, but migrations like this have a way of sneaking up on you, especially when they touch automated workflows you've set and mostly forgotten. I'd recommend flagging this for whoever manages your scripts or technical integrations and starting the migration conversation now rather than in July.

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⚠️ May Impact (Worth Understanding Soon)

Google Ads Simplifies Enhanced Conversions Into a Single Switch — Search Engine Land

Google is consolidating enhanced conversions into a single toggle with multi-source data capture, which in theory means more accurate conversion tracking with less setup complexity. From what I can tell, this is genuinely a quality-of-life improvement, though I'd want to verify that the simplification doesn't quietly change how data is being captured before celebrating too loudly.

Here's how this could impact your account: Conversion tracking is the foundation everything else in your account rests on, so any change here is worth paying close attention to even when it's framed as a simplification. If your enhanced conversions are currently configured in a particular way, check whether the new single-switch setup has changed anything about how your data is being collected. My concerns could be unwarranted here, but my default response is that anytime Google reduces settings complexity it's worth double-checking that the defaults align with what you actually want.

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Google Ads Adds "Results" Tab to Show Impact of Recommendations — Search Engine Land

Google Ads recommendations have always felt a little like someone telling you to trust them without showing their work. This new "Results" tab is, at least in concept, a step toward accountability, giving advertisers a way to see the actual performance impact of recommendations they've applied rather than relying on Google's optimism score as a proxy for value.

Here's how this could impact your account: I think this is more useful for client reporting and internal auditing than it is for day-to-day decision-making, but it's still worth exploring. If you've been applying recommendations somewhat on faith, this gives you a way to start building an evidence-based record of what's actually working. And if you've been skeptical of recommendations, now you have a tool to demonstrate that skepticism with data rather than just intuition.

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📋 Low Coverage (Things the Industry Is Mostly Sleeping On)

Merchant API Lands in Google Ads Scripts Ahead of Content API Sunset — Search Engine Land

Only one industry article on this. For something with a hard sunset date affecting automated workflows, that feels like a gap.

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Why Product Feeds Need an Organic Strategy for AI Search — Search Engine Land

This one has zero industry coverage and I think that's a mistake. The argument is straightforward: most product feeds are built to serve paid media, but as AI-driven search surfaces become a bigger part of how products get discovered, feeds that don't account for organic search behavior are leaving visibility on the table across both Shopping and AI surfaces.

Here's how this could impact your account: If you manage Shopping or Merchant Center campaigns, this is worth a read, because the way Google surfaces products in AI-driven results is increasingly intertwined with how your feed is structured and what signals it sends. It's not entirely clear yet how much of this is actionable versus aspirational, but it seems to me like this is the kind of thing that will matter more, not less, over time.

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Google Ads Drops Display and Video Planning from Performance Planner — Search Engine Land

Low coverage, which surprises me a little. Google quietly removed Display and Video planning from Performance Planner, continuing a broader trend toward conversion-focused planning tools and away from impression-based ones.

Here's how this could impact your account: If your team uses Performance Planner for Display or Video budget forecasting, that workflow is gone. You'll need to find another way to build those scenarios, whether that's manual modeling or pulling from another tool entirely. It's not the end of the world, but it's the kind of thing that's annoying to discover right before a planning meeting.

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One More Worth Knowing

Microsoft Advertising Publisher Roundup: Q1 2026 — Microsoft Advertising Blog

This is more of a "stay informed" item than an action item, covering usability improvements, deals updates, and ad quality changes from Q1. If you run Microsoft campaigns, it's worth a skim to see if anything in the roundup affects your setup.

That's the week. The MCC security piece and the Merchant API migration are the two I'd genuinely prioritize before anything else. The rest can wait until you have a quieter moment, though I'd put the product feed piece on your reading list before it becomes conventional wisdom and you're catching up rather than leading.

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