As platforms like Google and Meta lean into less transparent, autonomous automation, a paradox has emerged. AI and automation are handling more channel-specific optimizations, but the operational burden on AdOps teams is increasing as they struggle to maintain strategic control across channels. To understand how this shift is impacting the advertising industry as a whole, we analyzed two distinct datasets for underlying Google Ads and Meta Ads trends.
The first data set comes from a survey of 170+ agency and in-house advertisers. The second data set is real-world performance data from Fluency’s Digital Advertising Operating System (DAOS) across 2024 and 2025, illuminating what advertisers can expect in 2026.
This article uses these two datasets to explore the evolving landscape of Google Ads and Meta Ads, including the operational changes that advertisers can make to maintain strategic control at scale.
Google PMax vs. Search comparison: Performance Max is no longer an experimental ad type in 2026
Our latest survey data shows a clear rise in spend on Performance Max (PMax), Google’s automated, feed-driven ad type.
The percentage of surveyed advertisers stating they use PMax jumped from 60% in 2024 to 71% in 2025. That’s an 18% increase in the number of advertisers self-reporting that they use PMax, and a clear indication that PMax is becoming a core component of advertising strategies.
Rather than relying on specific user intent, PMax casts a wide net across Google’s entire ad ecosystem—YouTube, Gmail, Display, etc.—to find audiences. However, this discovery-based model often bypasses the tactical guardrails set by advertisers in traditional search campaigns, making some advertisers feel like they have to give up strategic nuances when using PMax.
Trend: 18% increase in advertisers saying they use Google PMax ads
| 2024 | 60% of advertisers |
|---|---|
|
2025
|
71% of advertisers |
| Trend | 18% increase |
PMax control at scale: hard-coding strategic intent into Performance Max campaigns
Our aggregate Fluency client data supports PMax’s rise, too. In 2025, PMax delivered over 51 billion impressions for Fluency clients, underscoring PMax’s massive potential for reach.
This growth also speaks to advertisers’ ability to control for performance and strategic requirements through Fluency Blueprints, which enable advertisers to define critical campaign parameters that remain consistent across thousands of accounts.
When using Blueprints to run your PMax campaigns, you maintain strategic control over:
- Strategic intent: You can define specific Search Themes and Interests/Detailed Demographics to guide Google’s PMax algorithm.
- Operational guardrails: You can hard-code specific Locations, Languages, and Ad Schedules for your PMax campaigns to ensure budget is spent strategically.
- Brand consistency: Pairing PMax’s breadth with an automation-powered “single source of truth” helps you scale specific CTAs, Promotions, and Structured Snippets across your entire portfolio without risking messaging drift.
As a result, advertisers can get the best of both worlds. Using automation to set up and manage PMax campaigns ensures that PMax’s high-volume discovery benefits align with each client’s high-level strategy. Win, win.
Trend: 19% increase in PMax spend across the Fluency DAOS
| 2024 | 16.7% of total spend |
|---|---|
|
2025
|
19.9% of total spend |
| Trend | 19% increase in total client spend going to PMax |
Google PMax vs. Google Search: total impressions for all Fluency clients (2025)
| Performance Max (PMax) | 51.1 billion impressions |
|---|---|
|
Google Search
|
7.8 billion impressions |
Balancing broad PMax reach with high-intent accuracy: the role of Google Shopping ads in 2026
One of the biggest challenges with PMax is that many strategists feel like they’re flying blind because they can’t see why (or how) Google chooses winning PMax ads. To balance out PMax’s broad reach, high-performing advertisers are leaning into feed-driven strategies.
Using a data feed as your "single source of truth” means you can anchor your ads to real-time variables like inventory levels, localized pricing, or specific promotions. This ensures that every impression is grounded in high-intent accuracy.
This shift toward precision may be behind the 25% spike in surveyed advertisers using Google Shopping Ads, a dedicated, feed-managed campaign type. This gives them a best-of-both-worlds approach: using PMax for top-of-funnel discovery while leveraging feed-driven automation for bottom-of-funnel efficiency.
| 2024 | 32% of advertisers |
|---|---|
|
2025
|
40% of advertisers |
| Trend | 25% increase in advertisers saying they use Google Shopping Ads |
Operational agility in action: Fluency clients improve CVR by 40% with reduced spend
As we just learned, PMax is making up a larger portion of agency media spend. New data suggests that advertisers are also becoming more selective in the types of ads they use for different strategies.
Feed-driven strategies are one way to balance out PMax’s broad reach. Feed-driven ad types give advertisers greater precision as consumers move closer to the bottom of the funnel on their buying journey. One area where we saw this play out in 2025 was regarding Google Shopping Ads.
Even though collective spend on Shopping Ads across the Fluency platform decreased by 20% from 2024 to 2025, the average conversion rate for Google Shopping Ads improved by 40% (from 10.9% in 2024 to 15.3% in 2025).
While it’s easy to let algorithm-driven campaign types cast a wide net, this trend suggests that the most successful advertising teams are keeping a firm hand on the steering wheel. They’re using automation to stay nimble, doubling down on what works and pulling back where it doesn't—and if they do it in Fluency, it only takes a few clicks.
Trend: 40% YoY increase in avg. conversion rate for Google Shopping Ads across Fluency OS
| 2024 | 10.9% Google Shopping conversion rate (average) |
|---|---|
|
2025
|
15.3% Google Shopping conversion rate (average) |
| Trend | 40% increase in average Google Shopping conversion rate for all Fluency clients |
2026 Google Ads trend: Fluency advertisers accelerate Demand Gen spend by 192%
The most compelling proof of this shift isn't in Search or Social—it’s in Demand Gen (formerly Discovery), Google’s audience-based feed channel. Our client data from 2025 suggests that advertisers are aggressively diversifying into automated, audience-led feeds like Demand Gen.
Demand Gen was the fastest-growing ad segment within the Google ecosystem for Fluency users between 2024 and 2025. Across our platform, Demand Gen spend jumped 192% year-over-year, from $6.5M to $19.2M.
This doesn't mean advertisers (or Fluency clients) are abandoning keywords. Traditional search remains the bedrock of most ad budgets, with our aggregate client spend exceeding $1 billion on Google Search in both 2024 and 2025.
Still, the data suggests that advertisers continue to diversify their mix, pursuing visual, feed-based environments (like YouTube Shorts, Gmail, and other Demand Gen ad types) focused on demand creation instead of capturing high intent keywords.
Shifting from capturing demand to creating is a huge operational hurdle for most advertising teams. Managing visual, feed-based channels at scale is notoriously labor-intensive…unless you have the right infrastructure.
A Digital Advertising Operating System (DAOS) eases operational pinch-points by giving teams a way to pivot strategies without doubling their workload. The DAOS framework acts as a force multiplier for AdOps teams through:
- Uniform campaign builds and orchestration: A DAOS’s automation and AI capabilities neutralize the technical complexity of different ad types, even across multiple channels. Standardizing processes helps teams build, launch, and manage complex Demand Gen campaigns with the same minimal effort required for lower-effort ad types, like traditional Search.
- Operational agility at enterprise scale: our largest enterprise advertisers are jumping into audience-powered channels without increasing headcount. Automation and AI handle the complex creative and audience nuances of feed-based ads, freeing teams to build new tests and strategies. Best of all, automation handles these operational tasks in a fraction of the time with zero errors.
- Data-powered budget reallocation: Fluency’s automated budgeting tools can move spend to top-performing channels, accounts, or campaigns in real time based on key events or performance thresholds. This prevents experimental initiatives from draining spend and takes the stress off teams managing hundreds of multichannel campaigns.
192% year-over-year growth in Demand Gen ad spend between 2024 and 2025 for all Fluency clients (the fastest-scaling ad segment across our DAOS).
2026 Meta Ads trend: Meta Collection ads vs. static image ads
Similar to the trends we’re seeing for Google Ads, our surveyed advertisers are also pursuing more complex, feed-driven strategies on Meta.
According to our survey, the number of advertisers using Meta’s Single Image ads fell by over 8%, and those using static Carousel Ads fell by 7% from 2024 to 2025. At the same time, 39% of surveyed advertisers now use Meta Collection Ads (a feed-based Meta ad type), up nearly 15% year-over-year (YoY).
This shift away from Meta’s static ad formats and toward automated, data-rich advertising strategies suggests that advertisers are leaning into scalable technological solutions rather than an individual strategist’s unique talent. Automation-driven systems, like Fluency, can handle the heavy lifting of creating or managing localized creative variations.
Trend: ~15% increase in surveyed advertisers using feed-based Meta Ads
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