Google's AI Max auto upgrade: which Search campaigns moved and what to check

Which Search campaigns Google upgrades to AI Max, and when

The AI Max auto upgrade is Google's move of Search campaigns off three older settings and onto AI Max, a suite of targeting and creative features that Google's AI Max setup guide calls an optimization layer inside a Search campaign, not a new campaign type. Two of the three settings move in September 2026, and the third waits until February 2027:

• Campaign-level broad match, the setting that converted every keyword in a campaign to broad match, moves between September 1 and September 30, 2026.
• Automatically created assets, which Google now calls text customization, move in the same window.
• Dynamic Search Ads move between February 1 and February 28, 2027, after Google postponed them from September.

Google's migration notes of August 12, 2026 say the September job rolls out progressively through the month and migrates each campaign in place, to equivalent AI Max settings. Google's announcement on The Keyword expects every eligible campaign to be done by the end of September and says each account gets a notification before its campaigns move.

The old settings cannot be recreated. Since August 3, 2026, Google has blocked creating new campaign-level broad match settings or legacy automatically created assets in the Google Ads interface, in Google Ads Editor and in every version of the Google Ads API.

What AI Max turns on for each upgraded campaign

An upgraded campaign gets AI Max settings chosen to mirror what it had before, and Google lists the defaults per legacy setting in its developer notes. AI Max has three core features. Search term matching widens the searches an ad can show on, using broad match and what Google calls keywordless technology. Text customization writes extra headlines and descriptions from your ads, landing pages and assets. Final URL expansion sends a click to whichever page on your site Google predicts will perform best, according to Google's guide to how AI Max works.

Sources: the September rows are from Google's August 12, 2026 developer post, and the Dynamic Search Ads row is from The Keyword post, updated June 11, 2026.

Final URL expansion stays off after both September upgrades. That matters because it is the feature that can override a pinned headline and send traffic to pages you did not choose, so a migrated campaign keeps its landing pages unless someone turns it on.

Google puts numbers on what it expects. Its AI Max overview says advertisers who turn AI Max on typically see 14% more conversions or conversion value at a similar cost per acquisition or return on ad spend, from Google's internal 2025 data for advertisers outside retail. The Keyword post says using all three features, rather than search term matching alone, brings 7% more conversions or conversion value on average at a similar cost per acquisition or return on ad spend. Both are Google's own averages, not a forecast for any one account.

The AI Max upgrade timeline, date by date

The AI Max upgrade timeline changed once, in June 2026, when Google postponed Dynamic Search Ads, and Google records each step across four posts. This table puts them in one order.

What happened to Dynamic Search Ads

Dynamic Search Ads are not part of the September 2026 upgrade. Google moved their automatic upgrade to February 2027 in a developer post on June 11, 2026, saying advertisers needed more time, and it let advertisers create new Dynamic Search Ads campaigns again from June 15. Google's August 12 post adds that active Dynamic Search Ads campaigns keep serving as normal until then.

Google's two developer posts disagree on two details, and both are worth knowing before planning around them:

• When creation ends. The June 11 post says the ability to create Dynamic Search Ads is removed in January 2027. The August 12 post says the ability to create new Dynamic Search Ads ad groups is removed during the February 2027 migration.
• What they become. The June 11 post says remaining campaigns move to Performance Max or AI-powered Search campaigns. The August 12 post and The Keyword say they become standard Search ad groups with AI Max turned on.

The August post is the newer of the two, so it is the one to plan on, and moving before January 2027 avoids both questions. Google's setup guide describes the voluntary upgrade as an Upgrade button in the Dynamic Search Ads settings panel. Targets that AI Max does not support become read-only, and old rules can be removed but not added or edited afterwards.

What changes in Google Ads language targeting

Google Ads language targeting for Search campaigns stops using the campaign-level language setting from late September 2026, and Search ads match on the language the ads are written in instead. Google says on its language targeting help page that advertisers need to take no action. Google also says it prioritizes ads that match the language of the search term, and it judges which languages a person understands from the search itself and from that person's language settings and preferences.

The change reaches Performance Max too, but only on Google Search. A Performance Max campaign's language setting no longer applies to its ads on the Search Network and still applies on its other channels.

One setup is affected more than others. An account that split campaigns by language setting alone, with ads written in the same language, loses that split, and Google says its AI-based ad group prioritization then picks the most relevant ad language among the eligible campaigns. For API users, Google's developer post of August 13, 2026 says existing language criteria are still returned but no longer used, and adding or updating one on a Search campaign fails with a ContextError.OPERATION_NOT_PERMITTED_FOR_CONTEXT error.

What to check in a campaign after the AI Max upgrade

A campaign that moved to AI Max keeps running. Six checks cover what changed, and each is quick:

1. Find which campaigns moved. Google's setup guide says AI Max settings can be filtered or added as columns in the campaign list. Over the API, the Campaign resource has two read-only timestamps, aca_migration_date_time and broad_match_migration_date_time, one for each kind of migration. Google's sample query joins them with AND, which lists only campaigns that carry both dates, and the query language grammar allows only AND between conditions. To list every migrated campaign, run the query twice, once for each field.
2. Read the search terms report. Searches that AI Max added show a new match type, "AI Max", with a source column that says whether broad match or keywordless matching found them, according to Google's AI Max reporting notes. That is where new queries, good or bad, first show up.
3. Re-add exact match copies where priority mattered. The broad match setting let a broad keyword that exactly matched a search take priority like an exact match keyword. After the move to AI Max, broad keywords lose that priority. Google's fix is to add exact match copies of the keywords you want prioritized; converting broad to exact also works but drops the keywords' history.
4. Check the bidding. Google's AI Max FAQ says search term matching does not work with manual cost-per-click bidding, and recommends a conversion or conversion value based bid strategy for AI Max's full capabilities. A migrated campaign that bids manually keeps its text customization but not the wider matching. Former broad match campaigns already used conversion-based Smart Bidding, which the setting required.
5. Look at the budget. Google says AI Max will not be effective in a campaign that is limited by budget, and Google Ads shows an alert when one is.
6. Before turning on final URL expansion, test the tracking template. Google warns that a template without a compatible {lpurl} tag can send expanded clicks to a 404 page, and that pinned headlines are not respected when final URL expansion picks a different page.

How to compare results before and after the switch

A fair before-and-after comparison of an AI Max upgrade uses two windows of equal length, leaves out the days around the switch, and waits until late conversions have been counted. Google's one-click AI Max experiment splits one campaign between AI Max off and AI Max on, and it cannot be created for a campaign that has text customization on, targets the Display Network, is part of a portfolio bid strategy, uses a shared budget or bidding exploration, or already runs another experiment. A campaign Google already upgraded runs AI Max, and every former automatically created assets campaign has text customization on, so for these campaigns the practical test is a comparison of dates.

Conversion lag is the main trap. Google's conversion delay guide says conversions can be reported up to 90 days after the click, depending on the conversion window, so recent days look worse than they will end up: spend is complete and conversions are not. Google's advice for a complete report is a date range that ended at least 30 days ago, or longer if the conversion window is longer.

A worked example, for a campaign Google moved on Monday, September 14, 2026:

Compare the same measures on both sides: impressions, clicks, cost, conversions, conversion value, and the cost per conversion or return on ad spend that follow from them. The after window falls later in the year than the before window, so seasonal demand can move the numbers on its own. One way to separate the two is to run the same windows on campaigns that did not move, such as Dynamic Search Ads campaigns or ones on exact and phrase match without the old settings, and read the difference between the two changes. The 28-day windows and the week left out are this article's method, not Google's; a longer conversion window needs a later read.

Should you upgrade Dynamic Search Ads before Google does

Upgrading Dynamic Search Ads before February 2027 gives an advertiser control over when the change lands, and Google recommends it. The voluntary upgrade, per Google's June 11 developer post, carries historical reporting across and maps the old targets to their AI Max equivalents. Doing it by hand also lets a team pick the week the change lands, rather than taking whichever day in February Google reaches the account.

Waiting has one advantage. The automatic upgrade turns on all three AI Max features and keeps the old URL controls, so an advertiser who wants exactly that loses nothing by letting Google do it. An advertiser who wants a different setup, such as final URL expansion off or new ads written first, can set it up on their own schedule instead of correcting it after the February migration. Google's one-click AI Max experiment is available for a Dynamic Search Ads campaign only if it meets the conditions above, and a custom experiment that copies the campaign is the other route.

Where overads fits

overads cannot switch AI Max on or off, change a campaign's settings or read which campaigns Google moved. overads Ads manager reads Meta, Google and Snapchat ad accounts read-only. It proposes changes, and a person applies them in each platform's own ads manager. Its Google sync reads campaigns, ad groups and ads with daily impressions, clicks, cost, conversions and conversion value. It does not read AI Max settings, the migration timestamps, search terms or match types, so the checks above happen in Google Ads.

What overads adds is the cross-platform view. Meta and Google sync every campaign, ad set and ad, and every sync, which runs every three hours, re-reads a window of recent days rather than only the newest one, so conversions Google credits to an earlier click are picked up on a later sync. Snapchat sends spend totals only. On paid plans, the MCP tool list_daily_metrics returns per-day totals for each connected account, which is enough to line up the before and after windows at account level across platforms, but not campaign by campaign.

One limit favours Google's own reports for this job. overads stores Google's conversion count as a whole number for each campaign, ad group and ad per day, so the fractional conversions that data-driven attribution produces are rounded, which blurs small campaigns. For reading AI Max itself, Google Ads' search terms report and Experiments page are the right tools.