James Murray
October 19, 2026
Good morning, it's James here. Last week Google and Meta each changed how much say you have over where your ad money goes. Google is starting to let you rank its channels, though it is retiring an older setting in February. Meta has removed placement controls on engagement, leads, app promotion and sales campaigns. Also in the news: UK budgets are up, Lloyds pulled its own AI ads, and an Australian bank split the CMO job into three.
The Lead: Google Lets You Rank Its Channels
What happened. On Oct. 14, Google announced channel prioritization for Google Ads. Advertisers mark channels as high or low priority, and "campaigns will fully fund high-priority channels before allocating the remaining budget to lower-priority channels." The tiers work across Search, Shopping, Performance Max and Demand Gen. For low-priority channels you can set a maximum share of the daily budget, and Google says its tools "will aim to keep spend on those channels within that limit" on "a best-effort basis" (Google). The features roll out "over the next months."
One part has a date. "Starting in February 2027, for Search campaigns with the Google Display Network turned on, the current spend allocation setup will go away, and advertisers may see a shift in channel spending." To keep things as they are, Google says to set Display to low priority with a 50% allocation.
On Oct. 12, Social Media Today reported that Meta "has removed placement controls for ads that use the engagement, leads, app promotion or sales objectives." Awareness and traffic campaigns keep them "as of now," and the outlet says it is likely that "all Meta ads will lose this control" soon. Meta points advertisers to placement value rules, which raise or lower bids by placement, and to account-level placement exclusions by objective (Social Media Today).
Why CMOs should care. Performance Max has had no priority setting for Google's channels. Once this rolls out, you can rank Search above YouTube or Display and cap the channels you rank low, with the caveat that Google calls the cap best-effort. A ranking you set is also a ranking you will have to explain to finance. On Meta, for four of six objectives, you now tell the system what each placement is worth and it decides where the ads run.
The take. I would get ahead of both changes this month. Ask your paid search lead for a list of every Search campaign with Display turned on. Decide before February whether Display keeps the 50% low-priority setting that preserves today's behavior or gets a smaller cap. For Performance Max, write down which channels you would rank high and why, so the decision is made before the setting appears in your account. On Meta, ask which campaigns have lost placement controls and whether anyone has set placement value rules or exclusions. If no one has, Meta's system is choosing placements for you with no input from your team.
UK Dispatch: Budgets Hit a Two-Year High
In the IPA Bellwether report for Q3, 14.3% more UK companies raised their marketing budgets than cut them. The IPA called it "the strongest upward revision to marketing budgets in nine quarters." Main media hit a nine-year high at a net 9.8%, up from 1.5% in Q2. Sales promotions jumped to a net 13.1% from 0.9% (Marketing Week).
IPA director general Paul Bainsfair warned that "marketers should be wary of becoming hooked on short-term activation." Companies' view of industry-wide financial prospects is still negative, at a net -20.3% (Marketing Week). UK companies are raising budgets while staying gloomy about the economy. If you run a UK budget and plan to hold it flat, you are moving against most of the companies in the survey.
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The Cautionary Tale: Lloyds Pulls Its AI Horse
In June, Lloyds posted AI-generated social videos showing "a miniature AI horse being brought into the office in an employee's tote bag," drinking from a glass and knocking things out of a pen pot to sell pet insurance. Marketing Week reports that "many customers loved the videos." Lloyds stopped anyway. "We very quickly realised that we were degrading our brand by creating this," said Suresh Balaji, Lloyds' chief customer and experience officer. "We said, 'we will never do this again'" (Marketing Week).
Customers did not make the call. The brand team decided the videos clashed with a brand built on stability and trust. Lloyds runs an AI ethics committee, and Balaji's view is that "in the absence of industry-wide regulation, you have to create your own governance" (Marketing Week). Who in your company has the authority to stop an AI ad that customers like? If nobody does, assign it to someone this quarter.
Musical Chairs
Commonwealth Bank of Australia is replacing departing CMO Jo Boundy with three CMOs, all starting in November: Di Everett for brand and the Olympics, Katreena Tyson for business and institutional banking, and James Peereboom for retail banking. Pat Crowley will run an expanded in-house agency. Group executive Monique Macleod said the model "puts senior marketing leadership closer to our business and customers" (Campaign Brief). I'd watch whether other large companies copy this setup, with a marketing chief inside each business line and one owner for the brand.
Spectrum is parting with CMO Sharon Peters and chief commercial officer Adam Ray at year end, and it is eliminating the commercial role. In a staff memo, COO Nick Jeffery listed broadband scale, video assets and the mobile offer as advantages and wrote that the company had "failed to marshal those advantages into a winning strategy" (Adweek).
The Reading List
How Lowe's is building and measuring a full-funnel media network (Marketing Dive) Lowe's Media Network is partnering with Ipsos for independent incrementality measurement. "I don't want an advertiser grading their own work," says Elyse Blouin, its vice president and general manager. Ask your other retail media partners whether they offer the same.
Consumer goods giants step up ad intensity as other big spenders pull back (Marketing Dive) WARC data: tech firms including Alphabet and Meta cut their ad-to-sales ratio from 13% in 2019 to 7.4% in 2025, while top consumer goods marketers raised theirs from 11.6% in 2023 to 12.5% last year.
Mark Ritson on synthetic data for marketing planning (The Drum) Ritson argues for using AI-simulated consumers in strategy work. The Drum notes he is an investor in the company behind the platform he demonstrates, and cautions that "10,000 synthetic consumers aren't equivalent to 10,000 real people."
What the numbers say ahead of Black Friday (Marketing Dive) In AppLovin's e-commerce data from last year's holiday window, advertisers who refreshed creative almost weekly had 23% higher seven-day ROAS than those who refreshed once or twice. AppLovin sells ads and this was not a controlled test, so treat it as a prompt to check your own refresh plan before November.
One More Thing
At its brand summit on Oct. 15, Meta announced Ads Super Burst. Advertisers book a window of 3 to 24 hours to "reach your audience at TV-like scale," with category exclusivity available. Social Media Today calls it "a higher-end ad option that comes with higher costs." Meta is also running an early US test of the first ad position in Feed, one brand per day. Its explanation: "Advertisers have asked us for the first ad position in Feed for years" (Social Media Today). Both arrived in the same week Social Media Today reported Meta's placement cuts. Each is sold at a premium, and neither restores the placement choices Meta removed.
See you next Monday.
—James