Meta's Muse assistant can now place outbound calls to businesses in the United States on a user's behalf. The capability sits behind a paid subscription.
Affiliate links still help protect commissions as AI checkout grows, while stronger tracking and better program choices add crucial layers of protection.
Google is rolling out Gemini 4 Hydrogen in Search worldwide. Google says the model gives more helpful, visual and intuitive responses.
Google's AI Mode, running on Gemini 4 Hydrogen, handles complex queries better, surfaces more relevant links and returns richer visual responses. Google says the model also improves query fan-out.
Google confirmed a data logging bug in the Generative AI performance report in Search Console between November 9 and November 11, 2026. The bug lowered the impressions the report recorded for those three days.
IAB introduced the AI-Era Attribution Blueprint, a framework that sorts conversions into human-owned, AI-assisted and AI-executed and asks who created the intent, who made the decision and who completed the purchase. In IAB's September 2026 outlook study, 45% of ad buyers named comparing AI-driven and traditional journeys as their top measurement challenge, and 44% use branded search and direct traffic as a proxy for AI influence they cannot track.
Optimove's 2026 research found 72% of U.S. shoppers use AI tools such as ChatGPT, Claude or Gemini for shopping ideas, and a McKinsey survey of about 21,000 consumers in 11 markets found more than half now use AI to shop. In the U.S., the share of AI users who completed a purchase through an AI tool rose from 10% to 17% in a year, and 21% to 30% of users in top categories say they would let an AI buy for them.
YouGov research on information search in Germany found AI assistants are already the second most common starting point. A blinq analysis of about 70,000 AI answers found 52% of source citations went to company websites and corporate blogs, with Reddit at 15% and YouTube at 14% among cited social sources.