February 2026 Google & AI advertising updates: what brands need to know.
February 2026
Digital advertising keeps shifting, and the latest updates from Google and OpenAI give us a pretty clear look at where the puck is headed. We are seeing changes that put AI front and center in how consumers find brands... often long before they even think to type a standard search query.
But look, if you try to react to every single update that rolls out of Silicon Valley, you are going to drive yourself crazy.
The trick is figuring out which of these actually matter right now, which ones to just keep an eye on, and how they actually impact your hard earned cashola.
Ads in OpenAI and ChatGPT are actually happening.
OpenAI is starting to test ads inside ChatGPT for logged-in users on their free tiers. They will show up at the bottom of responses if they are relevant to a sponsored product or service. OpenAI swears up and down that these ads will not influence the organic answers. We will see how long that lasts.
So what should you do right now?
Absolutely NOTHING. There is currently no way to self-enroll, and we have ZERO details on targeting or reporting.
But this is a massive signal. Discovery is moving way beyond the standard search engine results page. Getting sponsored visibility inside an AI tool might eventually become the best way to reach high-intent users while they are still just researching.
Google lowers the floor on audience sizes.
This one is actually a big deal. Google just dropped the minimum audience size requirements across Search, Display, and YouTube. You can now activate segments with as few as 100 users. That is a huge drop from the old 1,000 user threshold for remarketing and customer match lists.
Why should you care? Because it fundamentally changes the economics of your first-party data. You no longer need a massive list of past purchasers to start seeing a return. Think about it like lowering your golf handicap...you get to play the precision game much sooner. If you only need 100 users instead of 1,000, you can start targeting folks who abandoned a high-ticket cart way faster. You can launch hyper-niche remarketing campaigns even if your site traffic is not breaking records, and test highly targeted segments without waiting around for months for the list to build up to a four-figure size.
Demand gen gets more toys.
Google is still pouring money into Demand Gen, making it a massive part of a full-funnel strategy.
A couple of new things caught my eye here. First, Shoppable CTV. People can now browse and buy your products directly while watching YouTube on their connected TVs. Second, a Brand Search Attribution Beta. This is a measurement tool that shows exactly how your Demand Gen campaigns are driving branded search volume (though you have to beg a Google rep to turn this on for you right now).
These updates prove Demand Gen is growing up. It is not just about cheap awareness anymore. It is about capturing attention in immersive environments and driving real, incremental conversions before people even hit your search campaigns.
YouTube creator partnerships get easier.
Google also rolled out a new Creator Search and Management Hub. Historically, trying to scale creator partnerships on YouTube has been like trying to wire a smart-home switch without turning off the breaker... painful and slightly risky.
Now, it is much easier to find creators in your specific niche and test out authentic video content. You essentially get to borrow some of their hard-earned trust with their communities. This opens the door for a video-first approach that actually prioritizes human connection over standard display banners.
What should your brand do now?
At Green Line Digital, our focus is using marketing technology to better manage and activate paid media. We founded this agency in 2016 because we realized even the best brands struggle to keep up with the lightning-fast rate of change in today's marketing tech stack. Across all these February updates, it is obvious that advertising is getting more flexible and heavily focused on the upper funnel.
So get your tracking house in order so you are ready when these AI channels fully open the floodgates. Leverage that first-party data with the new lower thresholds to grab some early wins.
Are you going to sit around and wait to see what happens, or are you going to test these new formats before your competitors even realize they exist?