FTC Settles Over Cancellation Claims; Google Reportedly Moves Brand AI Overviews

Riverside Payments, its leasing affiliate Cascade Equipment Leasing and their operators will pay $600,000 to resolve allegations from the FTC and Washington state. A judgment of $32,083,921 is suspended because the defendants say they cannot pay it. Regulators allege the firms overstated savings, buried auto-renewal terms and a $695 termination fee, made cancellation very hard, and inflated sales agent earnings. The proposed order requires clear disclosure of material terms before collecting billing details, express informed consent for negative-option billing, and a simple way to cancel.

Search Engine Roundtable reported on November 2 that Google appears to be placing AI Overviews for many brand keywords in the right column of desktop results, where knowledge panels used to appear. A similar pattern was flagged as early as October 31, and the published examples showed US results.

Separately, according to PPC Land, a revised Google help page says Performance Max may leave navigational and brand queries to dedicated brand Search campaigns. Digiday reported buyers saying 10% to 30% of search budgets now face extra scrutiny.

Search Engine Journal reports that TikTok's Q4 2026 product preview shows Impression Share and Top 1 Impression Share for Search Ads, available at campaign, advertiser and keyword levels in Ads Manager where eligible. TikTok also says its Keyword Suggestion Tool can now recommend curated brand and category Keyword Packs, refreshed daily using signals such as search volume, CPC and competition. TikTok does not say which markets or accounts get Keyword Packs, and availability may vary by account and rollout.

An Adalysis analysis of more than 5,900 Google Ads accounts, covered by Search Engine Journal, found that in ad groups with two responsive search ads of different ratings, the higher-rated ad got more impressions 63% of the time but had the better conversion rate only 45% of the time. Higher-rated ads showed an 11.8% higher CPA overall. The study links much of the gap to pinning. Google says ad strength is not an auction input.

In a seller guide, Digistore24 says Visa's Acquirer Monitoring Program set the merchant excessive threshold at 1.5%, down from 2.2%, as of April 1, 2026, and that the ratio counts fraud reports as well as disputes. The guide notes processor response deadlines are often shorter than network windows. It suggests recognizable billing descriptors, renewal reminders, easy-to-find cancellation and refund paths, and evidence matched to each reason code.

Jon Loomer says he sees a message in Meta Ads Manager, only when creating a Leads campaign, claiming a lookalike audience could cut cost per quality lead by 11%. He notes Meta has otherwise made audience suggestions less prominent and that their effect is hard to prove. For lead quality problems, he suggests testing a lookalike built from qualified leads as a suggestion, without splitting ad sets by suggestion, to avoid auction overlap.