Summary: AI Max, Google’s suite of AI-powered targeting and creative features for Search campaigns, reached general availability in April 2026 and is now being enforced through a firm, dated migration schedule with no opt-out for eligible campaigns. Campaign-level broad match and legacy automatically created assets were auto-upgraded to AI Max during September 2026; Dynamic Search Ads follow between 1–28 February 2027, after which new DSA ad groups can no longer be created. This article explains what AI Max actually does, the confirmed migration timeline, the genuine risks for brand and lead-generation campaigns, and how to adopt it without repeating the early mistakes many advertisers made with Performance Max.
What AI Max actually is
AI Max is not a new campaign type — it’s a feature suite layered inside your existing Search campaigns, sitting alongside your current bidding strategy, budget, location targeting and conversion goals. It bundles three main capabilities:
- Search term matching (keywordless targeting): the system uses your landing pages and ad group assets, similarly to Dynamic Search Ads, to find relevant queries beyond your existing keyword list, while your traditional keywords continue working with their normal match types alongside it.
- Text customisation: AI-generated headlines and descriptions based on your landing page, existing ads and keywords, designed to sharpen calls-to-action and selling points in real time.
- Final URL expansion: Google can route traffic to a different, more relevant page on your site than the URL you originally set, based on what it predicts will convert better.
Google’s most recently published figure puts the uplift at an average of 7% more conversions or conversion value at a similar CPA or ROAS when the full feature suite — search term matching, text customisation and final URL expansion together — is used, compared with search term matching alone. Earlier figures cited during the beta period ran as high as 7–14%; treat the lower, most recent number as the more reliable benchmark for planning purposes, and expect actual results to vary by account.
Why it’s becoming unavoidable
AI Max came out of beta and reached general availability in April 2026, and Google has since set out a firm, published timeline for retiring the legacy features around it — this is no longer a soft direction of travel, it’s a dated schedule with no opt-out for eligible campaigns:
- 3 August 2026: Google stopped allowing new Campaign-level Broad Match settings or legacy Automatically Created Assets (ACA) to be created at all, across the Ads UI, Ads Editor and API.
- 1–30 September 2026: Automatic migration of existing Campaign-level Broad Match and ACA campaigns to AI Max, rolled out gradually through the month. Google says campaigns migrate in place using equivalent AI Max settings, and that existing brand inclusions and exclusions carry over automatically.
- September 2026: In-account notices begin encouraging advertisers to voluntarily upgrade Dynamic Search Ads campaigns ahead of their scheduled migration.
- 15 January 2027: Reminder notifications go out to advertisers still running legacy DSA campaigns.
- 1–28 February 2027: Automatic migration of DSA campaigns begins, and the ability to create new DSA ad groups is permanently removed.
The feature mapping isn’t identical for every migrated campaign: ACA campaigns are upgraded with both Search Term Matching and Text Customization enabled, while campaign-level broad match campaigns receive Search Term Matching only, reflecting what each legacy setting was already doing.
Beyond the migration schedule, AI Max ad placements are increasingly the only route into Google’s AI Overviews and AI Mode, surfaces that now carry a meaningful share of high-intent commercial search traffic. Advertisers who opt out entirely are, in effect, opting out of those placements too.
The genuine risks, not just the upside
AI Max applies broader algorithmic exploration to Search campaigns, letting Google’s systems expand targeting beyond the intent boundaries defined by your keyword list — further than Dynamic Search Ads ever did. That’s a real opportunity for ecommerce advertisers with strong revenue tracking and reliable first-party data. For lead-generation advertisers without robust offline conversion data, the risk is considerably higher: AI systems optimise based on the conversion signals they’re given, and a stale or shallow signal (a raw form-fill treated the same as a qualified sales lead, for instance) gets scaled just as enthusiastically as a strong one. Industry commentary has repeatedly flagged this as the same mistake many advertisers made in Performance Max’s early rollout — trusting the automation before feeding it the business-quality signals it needs to make good decisions.
Brand campaigns need a separate conversation
AI Max expands targeting using keywords, landing pages and site content as signals rather than strict boundaries — meaning it can match to queries you never explicitly targeted, going further than DSA’s landing-page-based matching. Brand campaigns are often the most efficient traffic in an account precisely because they’re narrow and predictable, and introducing broader automation into that traffic source carries real risk of self-cannibalisation. In response to sustained advertiser criticism, Google has rolled out branded search controls that let advertisers set AI Max to “unbranded only,” keeping it focused on net-new traffic rather than queries your dedicated brand campaign is already winning. This control should be treated as close to mandatory for any account running a separate brand campaign — enabling AI Max without it risks paying twice for the same click.
A practical adoption approach
- Run an AI Max experiment before a full rollout. Google’s experiment tool splits traffic 50/50 between a campaign with AI Max enabled and one without, giving a direct, controlled performance comparison rather than a before/after guess.
- Enable the unbranded-only setting on any campaign that sits alongside a dedicated brand campaign, to prevent AI Max from bidding on traffic you already own.
- Review generated assets before trusting them fully. Text customisation has genuinely improved, but treating early generated headlines as a starting point to revise — rather than a finished product — remains sound practice.
- Strengthen your conversion signal first if you’re lead-gen. Before scaling AI Max, make sure conversion actions reflect actual business value (qualified leads, not just form-fills) so the automation is optimising toward the right outcome.
- Use URL exclusions and brand exclusions deliberately rather than leaving final URL expansion fully open — these controls exist precisely because “let Google decide everything” has produced mixed results elsewhere in the automation stack.
- Treat the migration dates as hard deadlines, not soft guidance. If your account still runs campaign-level broad match or legacy ACA, those campaigns are being auto-upgraded during September 2026 regardless of whether you’ve prepared — there’s no opt-out for eligible campaigns. Use the time before the upgrade to clean up negative keywords, review landing pages and set brand controls, since you can shape the migration in advance but can’t stop it. DSA campaigns have until February 2027, which is worth using in full.
What this means for search strategy at leadership level
The strategic question isn’t really “should we use AI Max” — for most Search advertisers, that decision is being made on Google’s timetable regardless. The real question is whether your account has the conversion data, brand safeguards and creative discipline in place before automation takes on more of the targeting and copywriting decisions. Accounts that go in prepared tend to see the reported performance gains; accounts that go in passively tend to repeat the same over-trust mistakes seen in Performance Max’s early years, just in a different part of the account.
FAQs
No. AI Max operates only within Search campaigns and Search text inventory. Performance Max spans multiple channels – Search, Display, YouTube, Gmail, Maps and Discover – in a single campaign. Google has said AI Max for Search achieves feature parity with the Search component of Performance Max, without expanding into the other channels.
It can, unless you actively set it not to. AI Max expands targeting beyond your keyword list using landing pages and site content as signals, which can include branded queries. Google has introduced an “unbranded only” control specifically to prevent this – it’s worth enabling on any account running a separate brand campaign.
For campaign-level broad match and legacy Automatically Created Assets, nothing to decide — Google auto-upgraded eligible campaigns to AI Max during September 2026, with no opt-out available, carrying across existing brand inclusions and exclusions automatically. Dynamic Search Ads have longer: reminder notices go out from 15 January 2027, with automatic migration running 1–28 February 2027, after which new DSA ad groups can no longer be created at all. Preparing before your scheduled date – cleaning up negatives, landing pages and brand controls – is the only way to influence how the migration lands.
It can, but it depends heavily on the quality of your conversion signals. AI Max optimises toward whatever conversion action you feed it, so if that’s a raw, unqualified form-fill rather than a genuinely qualified lead, the automation will scale the wrong outcome. Strengthening conversion tracking before enabling AI Max broadly is the safer sequence.
Use Google’s built-in AI Max experiment tool, which splits traffic 50/50 between an AI Max-enabled campaign and a matched control campaign without it. This gives a direct, statistically comparable read on impact before committing budget across the full account.
