🔍 Google Ads Shift, Gen AI Breaks Analytics, Meta Talent Drain
Good morning. It’s Tuesday, May 27. Today we are covering:
Google Ads Lowers Customer Lists Requirement For Target Network On Search Campaigns
Generative Engines Are Breaking Web Analytics and Hurting Their Future
Meta's Llama AI team has been bleeding talent. See where all the top researchers have gone.
Tech's Trump Whisperer, Tim Cook, Goes Quiet as His Influence Fades
'Microsoft is the AI ringleader': tech rivals flock to software giant's stage
Let’s dive in
Google Ads Lowers Customer Lists Requirement For Target Network On Search Campaigns
By Barry Schwartz via Search Engine Roundtable
Google Ads has reduced the customer list size requirement for the Search Network from 1,000 to 100 active users in a 30-day period, aligning it with the Display Network and YouTube requirements for customer lists.
The update, implemented between June and November 2024, was discovered after a LinkedIn post by Navah Hopkins, who noted that the platform interface still incorrectly suggested a 1,000-user minimum.
This change significantly lowers the barrier for audience targeting, making it easier for brands to use smaller, consented user segments, and is seen as leveling the playing field with Meta’s targeting capabilities.
𝕏: Google Ads has lowered its customer list requirement from 1,000 to 100 for targeting on the Search Network in the past year https://seroundtable.com/google-ads-100-customer-lists-39472.html via @BorisBeceric and Navah Hopkins - Barry Schwartz (@rustybrick)
Generative Engines Are Breaking Web Analytics and Hurting Their Future
By Patrick Stox via Ahrefs
Generative engines like ChatGPT, Google Gemini, and Perplexity are breaking web analytics by stripping or inconsistently sending referrer data, resulting in traffic being misclassified as “Direct” or “Unknown” in tools like Google Analytics and Ahrefs.
This lack of referral visibility undermines the social contract between content creators and AI systems, where attribution and traffic should flow back to websites in exchange for data access and crawling.
Some platforms (e.g., Mistral, Claude, Perplexity Web) pass referrers correctly, but many (e.g., ChatGPT Paid, Copilot for Windows, Grok, DeepSeek) do not—hurting trust, transparency, and future adoption unless corrected.
𝕏: Many of these sites aren’t being tracked properly in analytics. It’s their fault, not yours. But it does impact your analytics and reporting, as well as their future. - Patrick Stox (@patrickstox)
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Meta's Llama AI team has been bleeding talent. See where all the top researchers have gone.
By Pranav Dixit via Business Insider
Meta’s Llama team has seen a mass exodus, with only 3 of the 14 authors behind the landmark 2023 paper still at the company; most others have joined or founded rivals like Mistral, Anthropic, Cohere, and DeepMind.
Internal turmoil and leadership changes—including the departure of FAIR head Joelle Pineau and delays to the flagship Behemoth model—underscore Meta’s struggle to retain talent and momentum in open-source AI.
Once a leader in open-weight models, Meta has lost ground to faster-moving players like DeepSeek, Qwen, and OpenAI, with critics citing its lack of a dedicated reasoning model and the tepid reception of Llama 4.
𝕏: Of the 14 authors credited on the landmark 2023 paper that introduced Llama to the world, 11 are no longer at Meta. Here’s what they are up to now. - ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ (@PranavDixit)
Tech's Trump Whisperer, Tim Cook, Goes Quiet as His Influence Fades
By Tripp Mickle via The New York Times
Tim Cook declined to join President Trump’s Middle East trip, prompting public jabs from Trump and a new 25% tariff threat on iPhones made outside the U.S., reversing a prior exemption Cook had secured.
Once seen as a White House favorite, Cook is now facing growing scrutiny over Apple’s overseas manufacturing, especially in India, with Trump pressuring for iPhone production to return to the U.S..
Amid this tension, Apple is under pressure on multiple fronts: a damaging App Store court ruling, disappointing product launches like the Vision Pro, internal AI delays, and growing doubts about Cook’s waning influence in Washington.
'Microsoft is the AI ringleader': tech rivals flock to software giant's stage
By Rafe Uddin via Financial Times
Microsoft solidified its position at the center of the AI ecosystem during its Build conference, unveiling new tools including a powerful coding agent and a multi-agent management platform, while highlighting deep integrations with partners like OpenAI, Nvidia, and xAI.
Key tech leaders—Sam Altman, Elon Musk, and Jensen Huang—appeared virtually to endorse Microsoft’s Azure ecosystem, which now supports models from OpenAI, Anthropic, Mistral, and others, as the company emphasizes "openness and choice" in AI model access.
CEO Satya Nadella positioned Microsoft as the orchestrator of a major industry platform shift, with investors backing its AI trajectory—its stock has outperformed peers in 2025—as it pivots toward selling AI-powered enterprise applications rather than competing solely on foundational model development.
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