
Growing Ecommerce · 2026-06-16 · 28 min
Google's new AI-powered Shopping ads can now decide which of your products wins the click - and it's optimizing for the user, not for your margin, your brand, or your strategy. This Gemini-built format writes its own product descriptions and may re-rank which product gets shown, beyond your bid. Mike Ryan and Chris dig into what that means for retailers who suddenly have less control over what gets pushed. Plus: ChatGPT is finally bringing Product Listing Ads (PLAs) to its results - a solid first step, or a Bing-style copycat play? The real story: "more relevant to the user" is not the same as "best for the retailer." As automated channels get more aggressive at matching products to searches, advertisers risk quietly losing control of which products actually get sold.