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Prevent account takeovers with Device Bound Session Credentials (DBSC), now generally available in the Chrome browser for Windows

Previously available in beta, Device Bound Session Credentials (DBSC) in the Chrome browser on Windows is now generally available and enabled by default for Google Workspace users.

DBSC strengthens account security after users are logged in and helps bind a session cookie — small files used by websites to remember user information — to the device a user authenticated from. Even if malware was present on the user’s device, DBSC reduces the risk of session theft and makes it meaningfully more difficult for malicious actors to exploit stolen session cookies.

With this change to general availability, Workspace admins no longer need to take action to enable DBSC in the Admin console. Organizations can also bolster protections with more granular account attributes when using DBSC together with context-aware access (CAA). To monitor DBSC binding events, admins can view the audit logs available in the security investigation tool.

An example of the audit log and log details for a DBSC event in the admin console

Getting started

  • Admins: This feature is ON by default for all Google Workspace customers, and there is no administrator control to disable it.
  • End users: There is no end user setting for this feature.

Rollout pace

Availability

  • Available to all Google Workspace customers, Workspace Individual subscribers, and users with personal Google accounts

Resources

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The “What” and “Why” on Meridian: Ads DevCast E6

Measuring the true impact of your marketing spend is complex, especially when you look across channels and mediums. In Episode 6 of Google’s Ads DevCast, "The 'What' and 'Why' on Meridian," we sit down with Product Manager Katie Munro and Developer Relations Engineer Jeff Li to explore Meridian, Google's open-source Marketing Mix Modeling (MMM) framework, and how it helps advertisers make data-backed strategic budget decisions.

Watch the full episode

Hear the full episode

Here is a summary of the talking points from our discussion on what Meridian is, how the math works, and the newly announced surfaces to help you implement it.

What is Meridian?

Meridian is Google's open-source Marketing Mix Modeling (MMM) framework. It provides a holistic, privacy-safe view of marketing ROI by analyzing aggregated historical data across all channels (digital, TV, print) alongside non-advertising factors (seasonality, economic conditions). It helps you determine the incremental lift of your marketing (sales caused by ads) versus baseline sales (sales that would have happened anyway).

The Core Math: Hill Curves & Adstock

Meridian uses statistical models to capture the real-world behavior of advertising:

  • Hill Curves: Models diminishing returns, showing where you have room to increase spend (headroom) and where you have saturated a channel.
  • Adstock: Models the lagged effect and decay of advertising over time, capturing the delay between seeing an ad and making a purchase.

The Measurement Trifecta

Meridian completes the modern measurement framework:

  • Attribution (GA4): For day-to-day tactical campaign tweaks.
  • Incrementality Experiments (Meridian GeoX): To test specific hypotheses in the real world.
  • MMM (Meridian): For macro-level, strategic budget planning.

New Meridian Releases from GML 2026

We discuss three major additions designed to make MMM more accessible and accurate:

  • Meridian in GA360: A turnkey, integrated MMM solution within Google Analytics 360 that uses existing behavioral data to provide cross-channel ROI insights without requiring a data science background.
  • Meridian Studio: A Google Cloud-based enterprise platform to build and scale models, featuring native agentic AI to automate data quality checks, suggest model health improvements, and assist in scenario planning.
  • Meridian GeoX: An open-source geo-based incrementality solution that acts as a calibration engine, allowing you to run geographic experiments and feed "ground truth" causation data back into your Meridian model.

Next Steps:

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Chrome for Android Update

   Hi, everyone! We've just released Chrome 148 (148.0.7778.215) for Android. It'll become available on Google Play over the next few days. 

This release includes stability and performance improvements. You can see a full list of the changes in the Git log. If you find a new issue, please let us know by filing a bug.


Android releases contain the same security fixes as their corresponding Desktop releases (Windows: 148.0.7778.216/217, Mac: 148.0.7778.215/216, Linux:  148.0.7778.215) unless otherwise noted.

Harry Souders
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Ask Gemini in Google Meet is becoming more easily accessible on web

In September 2025, we launched Ask Gemini in Meet, which brings the power of Gemini into your organization’s meetings. Today, we’re excited to announce that we’re making the feature more easily accessible by moving the Ask Gemini prompt box into the bottom left-hand corner of the Google Meet web interface:


Previously, Ask Gemini in Meet was available only by hovering over the icon in the top right corner. This change makes it much easier to discover and use this feature in Google Meet calls. Other than the entrypoint change, there are no changes to the Ask Gemini in Meet functionality itself.

As a reminder, you use Ask Gemini in Meet to:

  • Get a quick brief on the goals and topics for the meeting you’re in
  • List key takeaways, decisions, and action items mentioned in the meeting
  • Catch up on what you missed if you joined late (as long as Take Notes for Me was enabled)

Getting started

Rollout pace

Availability

  • Business: Business Standard and Plus
  • Enterprise: Enterprise Standard and Plus

Resources

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Easily identify data irregularities with anomaly detection in Connected Sheets

You can now easily identify critical irregularities and outliers in your time-series data when using Connected Sheets to analyze BigQuery data sets from Google Sheets. Anomaly detection in Connected Sheets allows users to distinguish between expected trends and true outliers without requiring manual model training or complex SQL knowledge.

Powered by BigQuery ML and TimesFM, this capability delivers "zero-shot" analysis, meaning you can uncover actionable AI insights immediately—no need to configure or wait for a model to be trained on your data. Anomaly detection also builds upon our recently introduced forecasting feature to provide a more comprehensive suite of predictive tools right where you already work.

Key features include:

  • Easy, SQL-free configuration: A user-friendly side panel guides you through configuring your anomaly detection analysis without writing a single line of SQL.
  • Clear, built-in formatting: Results are cleanly rendered with new columns for is_anomaly (a boolean indicator) and lower_bound/upper_bound intervals to help you quickly sort, filter, and interpret the findings. 
  • Customizable thresholds: Take control of your analysis by setting a specific time period, anomaly probability threshold (defaulting to 0.95), and filtering input data
  • Automated refresh ability: Just like other Connected Sheets objects, your anomaly detection extracts can be scheduled to refresh automatically, ensuring your insights are always current.

Getting started

  • Admins: There is no admin control for this feature.
  • End users: Access to anomaly detection in Connected Sheets requires permissions to a BigQuery project with billing enabled.

Rollout pace

Availability

  • Available to all Google Workspace customers and users with personal Google accounts

Resources

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The latest updates to Google Pay

Google Pay is evolving for "agentic commerce" by introducing the Universal Commerce Protocol and a new MCP server that allows AI agents to manage integrations and analyze trends. New Android updates introduce dynamic callbacks for seamless express checkouts and extend payment support into social media apps via WebViews. Additionally, the platform is launching cross-device biometric authentication and new transaction signals to help merchants reduce friction and optimize processing costs.
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Display & Video 360 API will start supporting Demand Gen resources on June 10, 2026

Today we’re announcing the upcoming rollout of Demand Gen resource support to all Display & Video 360 API users starting on June 10, 2026. This feature will be rolled out to Display & Video 360 partners over two weeks. By June 24, the feature will be available to all partners.

Ahead of June 10, verify that your API integration can handle the additional Demand Gen line items and ad groups that will be included in list responses once the feature is rolled out to your partner.

What’s changing?

Originally launched in closed beta on April 14, 2026, Demand Gen resource support includes management and retrieval capabilities for Demand Gen resources and their targeting.

Demand Gen resources include the following:

  • LineItem resources with a lineItemType field value of LINE_ITEM_TYPE_DEMAND_GEN.
  • AdGroup resources with an adGroupFormat field value of AD_GROUP_FORMAT_DEMAND_GEN.
  • AdGroupAd resources using any of the following fields: demandGenVideoAd, demandGenImageAd, demandGenCarouselAd, demandGenProductAd. Demand Gen AdGroupAd resources are retrievable using Display & Video 360 API currently, but these fields will not be included in the retrieved object until full support is rolled out to your partner.

After these features are rolled out to your partner, the API will support get, create, delete, and patch requests for these resources. In addition, these resources will be included in advertisers.lineItems.list and advertisers.adGroups.list responses, alongside the line items and ad groups that are already supported.

What actions do I need to take?

If you are currently retrieving LineItem and AdGroup resources using advertisers.lineItems.list and advertisers.adGroups.list, update your integration by June 10, 2026 to support the Demand Gen resources that will be included in responses once the features are rolled out to your partner.

The other features included in this rollout add support for Demand Gen resources that are explicitly identified when using new or existing methods. These changes only impact requests that would have previously returned an error, so no changes should be needed beforehand to ensure the stability of your integration.

Once the features are rolled out to all partners after June 24, 2026, you can start explicitly retrieving, creating, and updating Demand Gen resources. See our existing guide for step-by-step instructions on how to begin serving Demand Gen ads using the Display & Video 360 API.

We will make another announcement once this rollout begins. If you have any questions or want to discuss this post, please reach out to us on our “Google Advertising and Measurement Community” Discord server.

- Trevor Mulchay, Display & Video 360 API Team

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