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“You can’t use that vendor Tim. Their click-through agreement is totally one-sided, and they can change the terms just by updating their website.”
One of the great things about leading teams at big companies like Experian or Ticketmaster is that you always have teams of folks supporting you in your decisions. One of the challenging things is that you always have teams of folks questioning your decisions.
Lawyers at procurement teams hate click-through agreements. As the “clicker” you are agreeing to allow the vendor to change the terms of the agreement at their will. Now that I work on the other side of the fence, without the leverage of a Fortune 50 company, I see even more how small and mid-size businesses have no choice but to depend on platforms they don’t control.
On July 1, Google quietly updated its Ads Terms of Service, and we all have to take it as it is. Here is what changed, what the deadline is, and what happens if you miss it.
This Week’s Finds
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Story 1
Google’s July 1 Ads TOS update — three changes that matter
ALM Corp ↗
Google’s July 1 Ads TOS update contains three changes that matter to anyone running paid campaigns. First, any brand voice, copy, or creative inputs you enter into Google’s tools (including Gemini) can now be used by Google to improve campaigns platform-wide. Second, if Google’s AI generates an ad that violates policy or makes a misleading claim, the advertiser bears full liability, not Google. Third, Google switched its dispute resolution process from ICDR to the American Arbitration Association, and you have until July 31, 2026 to opt out and preserve your access to batch arbitration for similar claims. The opt-out form is at ads.google.com/nav/arbitration.
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Story 2
Google AI Max mandatory for all DSA campaigns in September 2026
Digital Applied ↗
Google AI Max for Search reached general availability in April 2026, and starting in September 2026, all Dynamic Search Ads campaigns will be automatically migrated to AI Max with no opt-out. Independent agency tests paint a different picture than Google’s headline 7% conversion lift: only 22% of migrated campaigns hit original targets in one study. In a B2B lead-gen case, clicks tripled while conversions dropped 38% and cost per lead rose from $493 to $850. The campaigns that worked had one thing in common: brand controls and text guidelines were configured before migration, not left to Google defaults.
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Story 3
ChatGPT ads expanded to seven new markets with conversion tracking
Bram Van der Hallen via LinkedIn ↗
OpenAI expanded its advertising platform to the UK, Japan, South Korea, Brazil, and Mexico in June 2026, and added features that turn it into a more serious ad channel: budget type switching, CPC conversion from CPM campaigns, custom max CPM bids, and conversion tracking via UTM parameters. With 800 million weekly users and no minimum spend requirement, ChatGPT ads are no longer just an experiment. The CPM rates are still lower than Google’s and Meta’s because the inventory is newer, and users engage with it as a research tool before they open a search bar.
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Story 4
54% of small businesses use AI marketing tools; SMB AI ROI is 2.3x vs enterprise 3.4x
BizIQ ↗
A new statistics roundup from BizIQ shows 54% of small businesses already using AI marketing tools, with the typical small business running five different AI tools daily. SMBs report a 2.3x return on AI tool spend, lower than the enterprise average of 3.4x, but meaningful for teams where every hour and dollar counts. For context, AI now saves the average marketer 6.1 hours per week. The gap between SMB and enterprise AI ROI is not a technology gap. It is a configuration and consistency gap.
22%
of migrated campaigns hit their original targets after switching to Google AI Max, according to independent agency testing. Google’s headline benchmark compares AI Max against itself, not against the DSA campaigns it replaces.
The biggest shift across all three of these stories is not technology. It is who holds the risk.
For years, AI in advertising was pitched as a tool that made campaigns better and took work off your plate. That framing was not wrong. It was incomplete. The part that didn’t get much attention was what happened when the AI made a mistake. As of July 1, Google has answered that question in writing: you do.
This changes things specifically for agency owners. If you are managing campaigns for clients and entering their brand voice, creative briefs, or product language into Google’s tools, you are feeding a platform that now explicitly uses those inputs to train its systems. Your client’s proprietary language belongs to them. Your clients may not know this. If they don’t, and a problem surfaces later, that conversation is harder to have than the one you can have now.
The concrete action items are straightforward:
- Go to ads.google.com/nav/arbitration today. You have until July 31 to preserve your access to the arbitration process Google is moving away from. This takes five minutes. Enterprise advertisers have legal teams that file these forms automatically. You have to do it yourself.
- Export 90-day baseline reports for every DSA campaign before you touch anything. Reporting continuity is not guaranteed after migration, and you want a clean before-and-after record. Do this before the September auto-upgrade window.
- Migrate at least one DSA campaign to AI Max voluntarily, now, with brand controls configured. The agencies that struggled were the ones that got auto-upgraded in September with whatever defaults were running. The agencies that did well set the parameters first.
- Add UTM parameters to every ChatGPT ad destination URL today. Conversion tracking is now available and this is what separates a test you can learn from and a test you can’t.
ChatGPT ads deserve attention even for people not ready to spend money yet. The 800 million weekly users on that platform are in exploration mode, asking questions, comparing options, thinking through a problem. For course creators, agency owners, and service businesses where the buying journey starts with a question, that is a useful place to be present while CPMs are still low.
IMG’s Take
The platforms are not your partners. They are infrastructure. And like any infrastructure, they adjust the terms over time in ways that favor the operator.
Google’s July 1 update is the logical end of a trend that has been building for years. Google automates more of your campaign: creative generation, targeting, keyword expansion. Google keeps the efficiency gains in its headline numbers and assigns the risk to you when the automation makes an error. The new TOS makes that arrangement explicit in a way the old one did not.
IMG works with course creators, agency owners, and service-based entrepreneurs who are, by definition, small relative to the platforms they depend on. The way to stay small and still compete is not to fight the platform terms. It is to know them, act on the ones with deadlines, configure your tools before the platform configures them for you, and keep the parts of your marketing that the platforms cannot control, your email list, your relationships, your direct audience, healthy and growing.
The 2.3x ROI that small businesses are getting from AI tools is real. The gap between that and the enterprise 3.4x is not a budget problem. It is a setup problem. Enterprises configure their tools, set their parameters, and monitor the outputs. Solopreneurs often let the defaults run. The platforms are now telling you explicitly what the defaults do. The question is whether you read it.
Have you filed the Google arbitration opt-out yet? What is your DSA migration plan for September? Share what you’re seeing in the IMG community — real data from independent operators is more useful than any platform benchmark.
Join the IMG Community →
— Tim Nichols & The IMG Team
Sources cited in this edition
- ALM Corp — Google Ads Terms of Service Updated July 2026: ALM Corp
- Digital Applied — Google AI Max GA and DSA Sunset: Agency Playbook 2026: Digital Applied
- Bram Van der Hallen via LinkedIn — June 2026 Updates: ChatGPT Advertising: LinkedIn
- BizIQ — AI in Marketing Statistics 2026: BizIQ
