THRIVE: eCom News - 17 July 2026
This week: AI mentions drive real downstream traffic & on the 18th of August Google's changes to target-based bid strategies kick in
Happy Friday!
Here's what you need to know this week across organic and paid that matters for your ecom store:
01 · LLM ads mention your competitors
What it means for you: A recent webinar we attended shared that 17% of GPT ads also mention a direct competitor. GPT ads won’t just be expensive; they will also be highly competitive.
02 · Gemini drives 140% increase in downstream traffic
What it means for you: AI mentions drive real downstream traffic. After an AI assistant mentions a brand, users visit that brand’s website at 1.5–2.5x their forecasted baseline rate over the following 7 days. eCommerce is one of the highest-impact industries. Measuring referral traffic is important, but measuring in isolation completely misses the impact LLM platforms have on your brand (we discuss this topic in our next Substack deep dive).
03 · Changes to target-based bid strategies
What it means for you: If your Google Ads bidding is being passively managed, you could see a major drop in performance from the 17th of August. Action: If your actual CPA is lower (or ROAS higher) than your target today, update your tCPA/tROAS before 17 August, or Google will optimise back towards the less efficient configured target.
To read more:
https://www.tryprofound.com/blog/the-ai-mention-effect#over-7-days-ai-mentions-drive-up-to-1.5-2.5x-brand-site-visits
https://support.google.com/google-ads/answer/17061251?hl=en
Bonus reading: if you are thinking of scaling content with AI, read this first: https://www.searchenginejournal.com/scaled-ai-content-often-fails-googles-crawl-economics-explain-why/581325/
From NOVOS
Want more? Here are recent reads of our clients:
Your Invite to The Ivy Victoria ✨
Following our Paid Media webinar this week, we’d love to invite you to join us at The Ivy Victoria for a morning with Benoit, our Paid Media Director, as we continue the conversation around scaling eCommerce performance in 2026.
🗓️: Thursday 6th September
🕗: 8:00am - 10:30am
📍: The Ivy Victoria
🎟️: Free - enjoy breakfast on us!
Interested in joining us? Places are limited.
More Details & Request Your Invite →
