2025 marked a pivotal year for pay-per-click advertising. Search results evolved with AI-powered overviews, and ad platforms leaned heavily into automation. From smarter bidding to measurement challenges, PPC in 2025 became more dynamic and more strategic. This recap looks back at the most important changes that shaped PPC in 2025.
Key Google Ads Developments That Shaped 2025
In 2025, Google Ads took a big step toward helping brands connect more meaningfully with people. With a wave of new AI-powered updates, marketers now have smarter ways to perform better than ever. Let’s have the recap of these updates.
AI Max for Search campaign utilises AI to enhance search term matching and optimise ad assets. This means your ads align more naturally with what people are searching for, perform more effectively, and still give you strong control over branding and targeting.
Some features in AI Max allow for greater control and smarter optimisation. One-click experiments help to test AI Max with ease, and test guidelines help to create even more brand-safe creative. Advertisers are advised to look for this feature in both AI Max and Performance Max.
Smart Bidding Exploration allows you to use flexible ROAS targets that help uncover new traffic opportunities. Campaigns powered by Smart Bidding Exploration typically see 18% more converting search query categories and a 19% increase in conversions.
Target CPC bidding for Demand Gen is an automated strategy that adjusts your bids automatically to help you drive the maximum number of clicks while staying within your desired efficiency. It works much like Target CPA bidding, but instead of optimising for the cost of conversions, it focuses on keeping the cost per click at your target level.
Auto-generated video ads powered by Google AI help you reach a wider audience on YouTube. They use the assets you already have to create high-quality videos, so you can run effective video ads without the hassle, time, or cost of traditional production.
Performance Max for store goals helps businesses reach nearby customers with the right information to drive in-store visits. You provide store locations, budget, and assets, and Google’s AI optimises bids, placements, and creatives to maximise store visits, sales, and local actions across Google’s networks.
Target ROAS bidding enables profitable growth by bringing in high-value iOS users. With recent advancements in Google’s AI-powered campaign models, this bidding strategy is now live for iOS App campaigns.
Asset Studio, now powered by Nano Banana Pro, brings everything you need for creative production right into Google Ads. Its Generative AI tools help you move seamlessly from idea to execution—so you can build, review, and share high-performing creatives with ease.
For more new features and updates, you can check Google Highlights for 2025
Updates Through Karooya’s Lens
AI Max changes how Search campaigns work by simplifying management and uncovering intent through automation. You need fewer keywords in different match types. Ad text customisation can raise your CTR, but your conversion rate may see some deterioration.
One of the PPCChat discussions highlighted the points below:
- Advertisers are approaching AI Max with caution—many feel it behaves similarly to broad match expansion, which has led to mixed first impressions so far.
- There’s still some uncertainty about how much additional value AI Max actually delivers beyond the automation tools advertisers already rely on.
- Many PPC professionals remain interested yet hesitant, since early testing hasn’t revealed a clear distinction from broad match.
Bidding exploration gives bidding more flexibility. You could get more traffic at lower ROAS or higher CPA, but you need to be aware of the tradeoffs.
Most Important Amazon Ads Updates
Amazon Ads’ annual conference, Amazon Ads Unboxed, introduced products and solutions designed to drive business results. New AI-powered solutions help to deliver greater performance and value for brands. A few features are:
- Bringing the Ads Console and Amazon DSP together into one unified media buying platform—so advertisers of any size can plan, run, and manage full-funnel campaigns from a single global hub.
- Ads Agent Tool helps advertisers to boost productivity drastically
- Creative Agent is an agentic AI tool within Creative Studio that works alongside advertisers, amplifying human creativity and opening up endless possibilities for ad creation.
Amazon Advertising has launched Brand+ and Performance+ within its AI-powered Amazon DSP marketing suite. Built for both brand awareness and performance goals, these solutions use real-time insights and AI-driven optimisation to help brands reach the right audiences and achieve better results.
Updates Through Karooya’s Lens
Karooya supports the idea of using automation intelligently- combining experts’ insight with machine efficiency.
“Brand+ and Performance+” features might be beneficial for PPCers as they reduce campaign complexity and help advertisers reach goals more efficiently.
How Microsoft Advertising Evolved in 2025?
Here are the key product updates and features launched by Microsoft Advertising in 2025, including new tools, reporting upgrades, and AI-driven capabilities rolled out throughout the year.
Ads Studio is now live and generally available in Microsoft Advertising Editor, alongside the Microsoft Advertising web platform. Powered by generative AI insights, Marketers can now create and manage higher-performing ads more easily. The experience is built to enhance asset optimisation and drive stronger campaign results.
In November 2025, Microsoft Advertising introduced Asset-level editorial review & Conversion Delay. Asset-level editorial review evaluates each headline, description and image independently. This way, ads will continue to serve as long as they meet the minimum requirement of approved assets. This means that even if some assets are disapproved, the ad can still run.
By integrating delay metrics directly into campaigns and portfolio grids, advertisers can now see how long it takes for conversions to occur after a click. This helps better understand conversion timelines for optimisation decisions.
Updates Through Karooya’s Lens
“Conversion delay” is one of the noteworthy updates in 2025. Treat conversion delay as a reporting/optimisation factor, not a bug. A few points to focus on:
- Do not make a rapid optimisation decision
- Evaluate performance over the full attribution window
- Use consistent data insights rather than incomplete metrics
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