Google has shipped two more spam updates since June. The August update ran from August 18 to August 21 with no new policies. The September update started on September 24 and, per the Google Search Status Dashboard, took 13 days and 16 hours, finishing around October 8. You can now compare rankings after the rollout against the days before September 24. It is the fourth spam update of 2026, and the checklist in this article still applies.
At Advertising Week on October 6, Meta updated its AI business assistant. Live now is memory across conversations: it remembers what you tried last quarter, your seasonality and the goals you stated. Importing brand guidelines, agentic budget changes and scheduled alerts are still in limited testing. Meta published no country list, so check Ads Manager to see whether your account has them. The 730-day audience window covered here is unchanged.
On September 23 Amazon released the Selling Partner plugin. US sellers can now check data, adjust prices, and update listings from Amazon Quick or Claude (beta), with human approval before each action and a full audit trail. It is a second official channel alongside SP-API. Managing a store through Claude via this plugin is compliant; scripted clicking in Seller Central is still a violation.
At Accelerate on September 23, Amazon launched the Selling Partner plugin, which brings Seller Assistant into Amazon Quick and, in beta for US sellers, into Claude. It reads sales, inventory, and listing data and can adjust prices and update listings, with seller approval before each action. Advertising is not supported yet. When this comparison was written Amazon had no official connector; there is now a write-capable official option.
Google pushed the DSA auto-upgrade back to February 2027, so the September timeline below no longer applies. What is getting auto-upgraded to AI Max in September 2026 is a different set: campaigns running automatically created assets (ACA), and campaigns with the campaign-level broad match setting turned on. Neither involves DSA. The migration checklist here still holds, just on a later clock.
Intercom Fin 2 launched multilingual auto-routing and automated refund approvals in May 2026. Gorgias also rolled out its AI Agent mode. This article reflects both updates.
Amazon updated its Sponsored Products AI bidding algorithm in June 2026, adding real-time bid adjustments based on conversion probability. This article reflects the update.
Helium 10 launched Seller Assistant AI in Q2 2026, adding natural-language querying for competitor data and keyword trends. This article includes the update.
Starting July 1, Zendesk is migrating AI agents to a new workspace (through September 30), changing how knowledge sources and search rules work for customers who bought the Advanced add-on before March 10, 2026 — recheck the Zendesk guardrail configs in this article against the migration timeline. Separately, Intercom has rebranded as Fin, and Salesforce announced a $3.6B acquisition on June 15; factor the post-close roadmap into vendor choice.
On June 22, Amazon Ads announced a major Responsive eCommerce Creative (REC) upgrade: in-banner video in the US, plus AI that animates static product images and generates product-in-use video; from July, conversational prompts extend to third-party display placements off Amazon. REC is now a second, fully automated path besides Creative Agent for turning one product image into a full ad set — worth testing both.
On June 22, ChatGPT Ads went live in Japan and South Korea (the first non-English markets), and UK advertisers got self-serve Ads Manager beta access the same day (UK ads had launched June 6). The US-only framing in this article is outdated: cross-border sellers can now buy in the UK, Japan, and South Korea, self-serve has no minimum spend, CPCs remain in the $3-5 range, and landing pages must allow OAI-AdsBot for ad review.
On June 30, Anthropic released Claude Sonnet 5 and made it the default model on the claude.ai free tier, giving free users the same mid-tier model as Pro — which makes routing hero-copy polishing to Claude an even better deal. Note the free quota works on a rolling 5-hour window (roughly 15-40 messages), not per day.