September 26, 2026 · Daily Radar
"Does one tap really make a difference?" you might be thinking. That's what I thought too when I first read Google's Demand Gen announcement this month. The headline is ambitious, but the content looks small at first glance: in image ads on Shorts and Gmail, the path to the product page went from two taps to one.
But in mobile advertising, every screen in between is a drop-off point. On the first tap the ad expands, the user looks, and gives up. Remove that in-between screen and traffic goes up, that much is certain. Will the quality of that traffic stay the same? That's where I'm not so sure.
Quick answer: On September 24, 2026, Google announced three new features for Demand Gen: one-tap access to the product page on Shorts (9:16 full-screen images) and Gmail, an AI agent that answers product questions alongside YouTube ads (beta), and retailer/point-of-sale pins on Google Maps. It matters most to e-commerce brands running image ads in Demand Gen. The first thing to do is check whether your campaign has a 9:16 full-screen image, and note your current bounce rate before the change settles in.
The "September Demand Gen Drop" post published on the Google Ads & Commerce blog on September 24 covers three features. [A]
1. One-tap experience. If you've uploaded a 9:16 image ad that fills the whole screen (full-bleed) on YouTube Shorts, users go straight to the landing page with a single tap. Same logic on Gmail: the first tap on the image ad above the Promotions and Social tabs no longer expands the ad; it takes people to the site. According to an analysis Common Thread Collective published the same day, no new setup is needed on the Shorts and Gmail side; it kicks in for existing campaigns. [C]
2. Business Agent for YouTube ads. On ads with a connected product feed, viewers can ask product questions without leaving the video, and an AI agent answers. Google describes this as a beta opened through an application form. Common Thread writes that, for now, it's open to advertisers in the US with a connected product feed. [C]
3. Affiliate Location Extensions on Google Maps. Brands that don't have their own stores but sell through retailers can show their points of sale on Maps with prominent pins. The announcement doesn't say which markets it's available in.
A note: Google doesn't state any market restriction for one-tap in the announcement. When and how it will show up in accounts in Turkey isn't stated in the official source, and I'm not going to guess.
There's one number in the announcement: advertisers who added Gmail to their Demand Gen campaigns saw their image creatives get on average 40% more conversions at the same return on investment. The source is "Google Internal Data, Global, Gmail Ads, February 2026." [A]
I'm not taking that number at face value. There are two reasons.
First, the company measuring it is the one selling it. This is Google's own data about its own ad inventory. I'm not saying it's wrong; I'm saying there's no independent verification. Common Thread raises the same caveat: it's an average, not a guaranteed result for every account. [C]
Second, the figure is from February 2026. In other words, it belongs to the period before the one-tap change. No published number yet shows what one-tap itself delivers.
So why does it still matter? Because Demand Gen is the product where Google brings YouTube, Shorts, Gmail and Discover together in a single campaign, and in recent months Google has been adding new packages to this campaign type at regular intervals (there were "Demand Gen Drop" posts in April and August too). The direction is clear: Google is trying to turn its image and video inventory from "impression space" into a direct point of sale. Business Agent continues that. It's almost the same idea as ChatGPT's Sponsored Agents pilot, which we wrote about a few days ago: the brand's agent talks to the person who clicks the ad.
When two big platforms head to the same place in the same month, it's not a coincidence.
I also have a contrarian take. One-tap also sends accidental taps, especially while scrolling Shorts, straight to the site. The in-between screen used to act as a kind of filter. With that filter gone, click counts may rise while time on page and conversion rate drop. I think for the first two weeks, rather than celebrating the rise in clicks, you need to watch the bounce rate.
| Before one-tap | After one-tap | |
|---|---|---|
| Shorts image ad | Tap → ad details → second tap → site | Tap on a 9:16 full-screen image → site |
| Gmail image ad | Tap → ad expands → second tap → site | Tap → site |
| The in-between screen's filter | Undecided users were filtered out on the in-between screen | No filter, every tap lands on the site |
| What to measure | Expansion and click-through rate | Bounce rate, session duration, conversion rate |
| Setup | — | 9:16 full-screen image required for Shorts; no extra setting on Gmail |
If your account's foundation isn't solid, the new Demand Gen features won't change anything either; I covered the setup, from the first campaign to measurement, in the how to advertise on Google guide.
Open your Demand Gen campaign in Google Ads and check whether the asset list includes a 9:16 full-screen image. If it does, write down the last 14 days' bounce rate and conversion rate by channel; you'll look at the same numbers in two weeks. If it doesn't, adapting one of your existing product images to 9:16 is enough for now. You don't need to buy anything.
| News | Why people are talking about it | Who it concerns |
|---|---|---|
| Google's September 2026 spam update began on September 24 and will take two weeks | The year's fourth spam update; previous 2026 updates finished in two days, and according to John Mueller the duration was kept long on purpose [C] | Sites that sit close to Google's spam policies and saw a sudden drop this week · SEO Management |
| Chartbeat: Google Search traffic to publishers fell 40.2% in a year, Discover 34.3% | Data from July 2025–July 2026; the previous year's drop was 21.9% [B] | All brands that get traffic from content, especially news- and blog-heavy sites · GEO Agency |
| Target ROAS can no longer be edited while promotion mode is on | Spotted on September 25; only the ROAS tolerance can be changed instead [C] | E-commerce accounts that adjust tROAS during campaign periods · Google Ads |
| Unverified phone numbers in Google Business Profile posts may be rejected | The policy text was updated; email and social media accounts are covered too [A] | Local businesses that put a different phone number in their posts · SEO Management |
| Instagram live streams can be boosted as partnership ads starting September 29 | Meta announced it on September 15; it already existed on Facebook [A] | Brands working with creators who go live · Influencer Marketing |
| Bing is testing renaming "Copilot" in its search tabs to "AI Mode" | The naming is moving closer to Google's; an AI mode is now a standard tab [C] | Brands tracking their visibility on Bing and Copilot · ChatGPT SEO / GEO |
No. According to Google and Common Thread, it kicks in for existing Demand Gen campaigns. On the Shorts side, the only requirement is that you've uploaded a 9:16 image asset that fills the whole screen.
Unknown. The figure is Google's global average, dates from February 2026, and was measured before the one-tap change. Don't decide until you've tracked Gmail as a separate channel in your own account and looked at two to four weeks of data.
For now, it looks like no. Google announced it as an application-based beta, and independent sources write that it's limited to advertisers in the US with a connected product feed. No date has been announced for Turkey.
If you'd like to read together where your account is heading on Demand Gen, Performance Max or AI Max, take a look at our Google Ads page. The AI Max automatic switch from earlier this month is part of the same picture. If you don't know where to start, let's begin with a free analysis.
October 5, 2026: starting October 12, Google Ads will automatically add the coupons and discounts on your website to Search and Performance Max ads with a location asset. Who is affected and how to turn the setting off.
October 14, 2026: Google Ads now lets you rank channels as High or Low priority and cap the low-priority channel's share of budget; in Search campaigns with Display turned on, the old spend distribution goes away in February 2027.
October 13, 2026: Google's Merchant Center help page now says a low-quality product image doesn't drop the product from ads and free listings; the 500 × 500 rule starts on January 31, 2027.
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