Google Ads
AI Max in Your Google Ads Account: What Changes Automatically and What to Do About It
Starting September 1, Google is automatically switching some Search campaigns to AI Max, with no consent requested. AI Max is a settings layer, not a new campaign type, so campaign IDs and history stay intact. You can still turn off each feature individually. Check URL expansion, negatives, and brand settings before migration reaches your account.
Migration calendar
The short version
- AI Max is not a new campaign type - it is a settings layer inside an existing Search campaign. Campaign IDs and history are preserved.
- In September, campaigns with campaign-level broad match or old automatically created assets are switched automatically.
- You cannot cancel the switch, but you can turn off each feature individually. The most important one: Final URL expansion.
- The biggest risk is not budget but landing pages and brand queries that start mixing with generic ones.
- Thirty minutes of prep (negative keywords, brand exclusions, conversion quality) pays for itself within the first week.
1. What is happening in accounts this month
On August 3, Google closed the option to create new campaigns with campaign-level broad match and legacy automatically created assets - in the interface, in Google Ads Editor, and through the API. That was the quiet signal. The loud one came on September 1: all month long, these campaigns are being switched to AI Max automatically, in waves.
The switch happens in place. The campaign is not recreated; your existing settings are replaced with their AI Max equivalents. Brand inclusions and exclusions, if you had them, are carried over too. In practice, that means you will not need to rebuild reports, Looker Studio dashboards, or data warehouse feeds - campaign identifiers stay the same.
Dynamic Search Ads (DSA) got a reprieve: their migration has been pushed to February 2027. In September, accounts are only starting to show prompts to upgrade voluntarily, reminders arrive in mid-January, and in February, along with the forced migration, the ability to create new DSA ad groups disappears.
2. What AI Max is, and what it is not
The most common misunderstanding we hear from clients: "so we need to build new campaigns." You do not. AI Max is not a campaign type like Performance Max or Demand Gen. It is an optimization layer you turn on inside an existing Search campaign - one block in the settings with a few switches.
The difference matters for three reasons. First, learning history and conversion data are not interrupted. Second, you do not have to rebuild your reporting structure. Third - and this is often forgotten - accountability stays in the same place: if a campaign is spending money in the wrong places, the "new product" is not to blame, the unmanaged limits are.
The overall direction is simple. You used to tell Google which words to look for. Now you tell it what you sell and to whom, and the algorithm picks the words, the ad copy, and the landing page. Your job moves from maintaining a keyword list to managing limits, signals, and data quality.
What to know about the numbers. In its announcement, Google reports about 7% more conversions or conversion value at a similar cost per acquisition (CPA) or return on ad spend (ROAS) when all three AI Max features are used, compared with search term matching alone. That is the vendor's own figure, measured on a sample that did not include retail advertisers. In independent tests the picture is far more mixed: some accounts improved, a sizable share stayed where they were or got worse. Treat it as a direction, not a forecast for your account.
3. Does this affect your account
The set of affected campaigns is finite and countable right now - no new campaigns of this kind can be created since August. That means you can check in a few minutes.
In the interface
Go to Campaigns → Settings and look in each Search campaign to see whether campaign-level broad match is turned on. Review the ad assets separately: if you see assets nobody on your team wrote, they were created automatically.
In Google Ads Editor
The fastest method for larger accounts: download the account, add the broad match setting column in the campaigns view, and sort. You will see the full list in a minute.
Via the API or a query
If you have dozens of campaigns, a query is more convenient. After migration, reports gain a new segment showing how a search term was matched to an ad - it is exactly what lets you separate keyword-driven traffic from AI Max-driven traffic:
SELECT campaign.name, segments.search_term_match_source, metrics.clicks, metrics.cost_micros, metrics.conversions FROM search_term_view WHERE segments.date DURING LAST_30_DAYS ORDER BY metrics.cost_micros DESC
Field names depend on the API version, so check the documentation before you run it. If you pipe data into a warehouse, also pay attention to the expanded landing page view: Final URL expansion changes the URL that is actually used, which quietly breaks joins on URL.
4. The three features and their risks
AI Max is not a single switch. It is three separate things, each affecting a different part of your campaign and carrying a different risk profile. Turning them all on at once is the most popular way to lose track of what actually changed your results.
| Feature | What it takes over | Main risk | Control you have |
|---|---|---|---|
| Search term matching | Decides which queries fit your ad without relying on the keyword list alone | Traffic expands into adjacent topics that do not buy | Negative keywords, account-level negative lists, brand exclusions |
| Text customization | Generates and rewrites headlines and descriptions based on the query and landing page | Wording you cannot legally or brand-wise say | Messaging guidelines, banned words, asset pinning |
| Final URL expansion | Chooses which page each click is sent to | Traffic lands on the blog, careers, or an old promotion page | URL rules, page exclusions, turning the feature off |
The practical recommendation after several dozen migrated accounts: leave search term matching on, turn on text customization only with clear messaging guidelines, and turn off Final URL expansion first - at least until you have the data to confirm there are no pages on your site that paid traffic should not reach. That feature produces the biggest swing in benefit, in both directions.
Not sure which of your campaigns have already switched?
We review the account, show you the affected campaigns, the places where money leaks, and the specific settings worth changing this week.
Book a free review5. Pre-migration checklist (about 30 minutes)
This list is ordered by impact, not convenience. If you only have a quarter of an hour, do the first three items.
- Clean up account-level negative keywords Once the algorithm picks the matches, your negative list stops being a detail and becomes the main boundary. Review the last 90 days of search terms and add everything related to job searches, studying, free solutions, competitor mistakes, and "how to do it yourself" to an account-level list.
- Define brand inclusions and exclusions If you do not want the campaign to start collecting queries for your own brand and decorating itself with conversions it did not earn, that has to be stated in the settings. The same exclusions protect you from competitor brands, where advertising is often unprofitable or simply not allowed.
- Check that your conversion data is real The algorithm optimizes for what you feed it. If one conversion is counted twice and phone calls are not tracked, AI Max will simply take you to the wrong place faster. Make sure there is a single primary conversion action, enhanced conversions are on, and consent management is not blocking data - since June 15 this is controlled by a single parameter, so it is worth reviewing your conversion tracking and Consent Mode settings.
- Review where your website leads List the pages paid traffic must not reach: the blog, careers, expired promotions, thank-you pages, PDF files. If you leave URL expansion on, those are exactly the pages that become candidates.
- Capture a baseline Save the last 28 days of metrics: spend, conversions, CPA or ROAS, conversion value by product group, and the search term distribution. After migration you will not be able to reconstruct what the data looked like before.
- Set messaging guidelines If text customization is on, write down what can and cannot be said: guarantees, prices, deadlines, regulated phrases. Pin the headlines that are a legal or brand requirement.
- Review automated rules and scripts Scripts written around old objects may quietly stop working after migration or throw errors. The same goes for tools that connect through an older API version.
6. What to monitor in the first four weeks
The first days after the switch almost always look worse than they are. The system is relearning, so CPA jumps and conversion volume drops. The first critical mistake is reacting on day three. The second critical mistake is never reacting at all.
| When | What to check | When to step in |
|---|---|---|
| Days 1-3 | Whether ads are serving, the campaign has not stopped, and no assets were disapproved | Only in case of a technical error |
| Week 1 | Search terms by match source; where the new traffic went | Add negatives if you see clearly irrelevant topics |
| Week 2 | Landing page report: whether traffic is going to unexpected pages | Introduce URL rules or turn off URL expansion |
| Weeks 3-4 | CPA or ROAS, and conversion quality in your sales system, not just in the account | Adjust targets, limits, or return to the previous configuration |
A separate note for B2B and service businesses: after the switch, the number of conversions often rises while their quality falls. If you have not connected Google Ads to your sales system and are not sending back which inquiries turned into customers, the algorithm will optimize for the number of form submissions - and deliver exactly that.
7. How to measure the impact honestly
The simplest comparison, "this month versus last month," almost always lies. September is not August; seasonality, competition, and budget change along with the settings. There are three cleaner methods.
A one-click experiment. The cleanest option: the campaign splits its budget between the original and an AI Max variant, and you compare results over the same time window. You need enough data - about 30 conversions per week on both sides - for the result to mean anything at all.
Comparison with unaffected campaigns. If some of your campaigns did not migrate, they become a control group. Look not at absolute numbers but at the difference in change: if everything fell equally, AI Max is not to blame - the market is.
Segmenting by match source. The new segment lets you see how many conversions came specifically from AI Max-generated queries. If they are pricier and worse, the answer is clear without any experiment.
What not to do: do not compare week to week during the learning phase, do not change the budget and the strategy at the same time, and do not judge the result by one good day.
8. Seven mistakes we see most often
- Everything is turned on at once. Three features, a changed budget, and a new strategy on the same day - and you will never know what worked.
- Negative keywords kept at the ad group level. When the algorithm picks the matches, limits must be set at the account level, otherwise they are simply bypassed.
- Brand traffic left unmanaged. The campaign starts "winning" customers who were already searching for your name, and you pay for what you would have gotten anyway.
- URL expansion left on for a site with a large blog. Paid traffic flows to articles that sell nothing.
- Optimizing for micro-conversions. Page views or taps on a phone number as the primary goal are the fastest way to get plenty of cheap, worthless actions.
- Reacting too early. The first two weeks are learning; decisions made on day three usually cost more than the problem.
- Nobody records what was changed. Without a change log, a month later you cannot answer why everything shifted in mid-September.
9. Frequently asked questions
Is AI Max a new campaign type?
No. It is a settings layer inside an existing Search campaign. Campaign IDs, names, and historical data are preserved, so there is no need to rebuild reporting systems or data models.
Can I opt out of the automatic switch?
You cannot stop the upgrade itself, but after it you can turn off each feature individually in the campaign settings. It is important to understand that returning to the old campaign-level broad match is no longer possible, because that setting has not been offered since August 3.
When will Dynamic Search Ads migrate?
DSA migration has been pushed to February 2027. In September, accounts only show prompts to upgrade voluntarily, and reminders come in mid-January 2027. In February, along with the migration, the ability to create new DSA ad groups disappears.
How much will results actually change?
Google reports about 7% more conversions or conversion value at a similar CPA or ROAS when all three features are used. Independent tests show a much more varied picture - a sizable share of accounts see no improvement or notice a decline. For your own account, you will only get the answer from an experiment.
What should I do if results dropped after migration?
Give the learning phase two weeks. Then check in order: the search term match source, the negative keyword list, brand inclusions, and the landing page report. Turn off Final URL expansion last - it is most often the source of the problem, but only after simpler explanations have been ruled out.
Is AI Max suitable for a small budget?
The fewer conversions per month, the slower the algorithm learns and the more expensive each of its mistakes becomes. Up to roughly 15-20 conversions per month, it is worth keeping only search term matching and postponing text customization and URL expansion until your data volume grows.
Want someone to review this for you?
In a Google Ads audit, we check the impact of the migration and the accuracy of your conversion tracking, and show how much budget is going to queries that never turn into customers. You get the report in writing, with no obligation to continue.
Get an auditSources
- Google Ads & Commerce blog - on upgrading DSA to AI Max
- Google - new AI Max control features
- Google Ads Help Center - how AI Max works in Search campaigns
- Search Engine Land - migration timeline
Google Ads strategist who has run search and shopping campaigns in the Lithuanian and Baltic markets since 2016. This article draws on Google documentation and on migration observations in real client accounts. It is updated when timelines change - last reviewed on September 5, 2026.