Google began automatically upgrading eligible Search campaigns to AI Max on September 1, and the rollout is scheduled to finish by the end of this month. Per Search Engine Land, any campaign using Automatically Created Assets or the campaign-level broad match setting is in scope, and the migration happens whether the account owner opened the notification email or not.
The framing from Google is that migrated campaigns get “equivalent” AI Max settings meant to mirror existing configurations. The reality is more expansive. ACA campaigns move to AI Max with search term matching and text customization enabled by default, according to earlier Search Engine Land coverage. Campaigns running campaign-level broad match arrive with search term matching turned on. Brand inclusions and exclusions carry over, Google says.
Translated out of Ads-console vocabulary: after migration, Google’s AI decides which additional queries trigger your ad, rewrites the copy those queries see, and, for ACA campaigns, routes clicks to whichever landing page the system judges most relevant. Three of the primary levers a small-business owner has over paid customer acquisition are quietly reassigned to an optimizer whose objective function isn’t visible in the interface.
Rolling back isn’t really on the table. Google blocked the creation of new legacy Broad Match and ACA configurations across the Google Ads interface, Ads Editor, and API on August 3, so the old configurations can’t be recreated once the upgrade lands. Adweek notes AI Max is now out of beta globally. Google’s pitch is a 7% average lift in conversions or conversion value at similar CPA or ROAS for non-retail advertisers using the full feature set — search term matching, text customization, and final URL expansion. That’s the number in the deck. It’s also an average, which is another way of saying some advertisers are on the wrong end of it.
Dynamic Search Ads users have more runway. Search Engine Land’s timeline piece has Google displaying in-account notices this month encouraging voluntary DSA upgrades, reminder notifications going out January 15, 2027, and automatic DSA migration running February 1 through 28, 2027. To soften the landing, Google is also rolling out multi-campaign A/B testing and Performance Planner updates in September that support brand and location controls inside AI Max experiments.
For owner-operators, the useful work before September 30 is unglamorous: confirm AI Max status on every eligible campaign, pull the search terms report and read it, add negative keywords aggressively, verify brand exclusions actually carried over, and check whether final URL expansion is quietly redirecting paid clicks away from the pages you built to convert them.
The through-line here isn’t a single product decision. It’s the steady conversion of Google Search advertising from a keyword-and-copy discipline into an optimizer that runs on your budget by default and lets you audit it after the fact.
Sources
- https://searchengineland.com/google-to-auto-upgrade-some-search-campaigns-to-ai-max-484428
- https://searchengineland.com/google-sets-ai-max-migration-timeline-for-search-campaigns-485006
- https://searchengineland.com/google-retire-dynamic-search-ads-ai-max-474262
- https://searchengineland.com/google-adds-new-ai-max-testing-and-planning-tools-485566
- https://www.adweek.com/media/google-is-migrating-dynamic-search-ads-to-ai-max/