On August 5, a short email went out from the Google Ads Team to a lot of advertisers. No blog post, no announcement, no named executive. Just a quiet notice that on September 1, certain Search campaigns would be automatically converted to something called AI Max.
If you got that email, skimmed it, and closed it because it sounded like routine Google housekeeping, this guide is for you. Because buried in that plain wording is a real change to how your ads work, a hard deadline about two weeks away, and a fact that surprises most people: there is no opt-out button. You have exactly two choices, and if you make neither, Google makes the choice for you on September 1.
The frustrating part is that many advertisers affected by this never deliberately turned on the settings that trigger it. They are common defaults. So a lot of business owners are about to have their Search campaigns changed without ever having made a decision that led there.
Let me walk through the whole thing in plain language: what AI Max actually is, who is affected (check this first, it might not be you), what specifically changes for each type of campaign, the two real choices you have, and how to check your account in about five minutes. No jargon left unexplained.
First, what is AI Max, in plain English?
AI Max is not a new campaign type, even though the name makes it sound like one. That naming has confused a lot of people, so let me be clear.
AI Max is a bundle of AI features that sits on top of your existing Search campaigns. Think of it as a package of automation switches. When you “upgrade to AI Max,” you are not rebuilding your campaign. You are turning on a set of AI-driven behaviours inside the campaign you already have.
There are three main switches in the bundle, and it matters that you understand them, because the whole of this change is about which ones get flipped on for you automatically.
Switch 1: Search term matching (also called keywordless matching). Normally, you tell Google which search terms you want to show up for, using keywords. This switch lets Google’s AI decide which searches your ad is eligible for, well beyond your keyword list, based on what it thinks is relevant. More reach, less control over exactly which searches trigger your ad.
Switch 2: Text customization. This lets Google’s AI write and adjust your ad text, including generating new headlines and descriptions, and rewriting to match what someone searched. Your ad copy becomes partly AI-generated rather than exactly what you wrote.
Switch 3: Final URL expansion. This lets Google send people to a different page on your website than the one you specified, if the AI thinks another page matches their search better. It can override which landing page a searcher lands on.
Keep those three switches in mind, because the entire September 1 change comes down to which switches get turned on automatically, for which campaigns. That is the whole story, and once you see it that way, the rest is simple.
Who is actually affected? Check this before anything else
This does not hit every account. It targets two specific things, and if neither is in your campaigns, you can stop reading and get on with your day.
You are affected if your Search campaigns use either of these:
1. Automatically Created Assets (ACA). This is a setting where you let Google automatically generate extra headlines and descriptions for your ads, based on your website and existing ads. Many advertisers switched this on years ago, or it was on by default, and forgot about it. It is extremely common.
2. The campaign-level broad match setting. This is a setting that applies “broad match” across an entire campaign, meaning your ads can show for a wide range of loosely related searches rather than tightly matched ones. Again, common, and often turned on by an agency or during setup and never revisited.
Here is why this catches people off guard: both of these are things a lot of accounts have on without the owner actively knowing. They are not exotic settings. They are defaults and conveniences that got switched on at some point. So the honest first step is not to assume you are safe. It is to check, which we will do in a moment.
One thing worth knowing about scale: Google says hundreds of thousands of advertisers globally are already using AI Max, and this migration is how it reaches the rest. This is not a small niche rollout. It is Google moving a very large population of ordinary accounts onto AI Max at once.
Note also what is not in this September 1 group. Dynamic Search Ads, another older campaign type, were given a longer runway. Google will start merely encouraging DSA upgrades in September and only send reminder notices in January 2027, per the migration timeline Search Engine Land documented. So if you run DSA, you have more time. The hard September 1 deadline is specifically for automatically created assets and the campaign-level broad match setting.
What actually changes on September 1, depending on which cohort you are in
Here is the granular part that most coverage glosses over, and it genuinely matters, because the two triggering settings do not get the same treatment. Google is applying different defaults to each group, trying to mirror your current setup as closely as possible.
If your campaign uses Automatically Created Assets
Your campaign gets upgraded with two switches turned on: search term matching and text customization. Final URL expansion stays off.
This is the bigger change of the two, and here is the subtle reason why. Automatically Created Assets only ever governed your creative, the headlines and descriptions. It never touched which searches you showed up for. But after the upgrade, because search term matching gets switched on too, your campaign inherits automated query expansion it never had before. In plain terms: a campaign where you only ever let Google help write your ads will now also let Google decide which searches trigger them. That is a meaningfully wider change than it sounds, and it is the one to watch if you are in this group.
If your campaign uses the campaign-level broad match setting
Your campaign gets upgraded with only one switch turned on: search term matching. Text customization and final URL expansion both stay off.
This is closer to a relabelling. Broad match already meant Google was matching you to a wide range of searches, so moving to search term matching is a smaller conceptual jump. Your ad copy stays yours (text customization is off), and your landing pages stay as you set them (final URL expansion is off, and it technically cannot switch on unless text customization is active anyway).
One reassuring detail for regulated businesses: if you run responsive search ads with pinned assets, meaning specific headlines or disclaimers locked into fixed positions for compliance reasons, those pins are still respected after the upgrade. If you are in insurance, finance, healthcare, or anywhere you hold required legal language in a fixed spot, the upgrade does not rip your pins out. Worth confirming after the fact, but the stated behaviour preserves them.
The “no opt-out” everyone keeps mentioning, explained honestly
You will see “there is no opt-out” repeated everywhere about this change, and it is technically true but slightly misleading if left there. Let me explain what it actually means, because it changes what you should do.
There is no button that says “leave my campaign exactly as it is.” That option is gone. What Google means is that you cannot keep automatically created assets or the campaign-level broad match setting in their current, old form after September 1. Those legacy settings are being retired, full stop. In fact, Google already blocked the creation of any new legacy versions of these settings on August 3, across the interface, the Editor, and the API. So the old way is already closed to new campaigns; September 1 is when existing ones get moved.
But that does not mean you are powerless. You have two genuine choices, and picking one deliberately is far better than letting the deadline pick for you.
Choice 1: Upgrade to AI Max yourself, now, on your terms. If you move to AI Max manually before September 1, you control the configuration. You decide which of the three switches are on, you set up the guardrails (more on those below), and you can use Google’s one-click experiment tool to test the impact against your current setup before committing. This is the “get ahead of it” option, and for most advertisers who are going to end up on AI Max anyway, doing it deliberately beats having it done to you.
Choice 2: Turn off the legacy features entirely, before September 1. If you do not want AI Max at all, you can avoid the automatic upgrade by switching off the triggering settings yourself. Turn off automatically created assets, or turn off the campaign-level broad match setting, in the affected campaigns before the deadline. No trigger, no auto-upgrade. Google’s own email confirms this is a valid path: turn the legacy features off, or turn AI Max on manually. Those are the two.
The one thing you should not do is nothing. If you reach September 1 without acting, Google decides your configuration for you, using the defaults described above. For the automatically created assets group in particular, that means quietly gaining automated query expansion you never chose. Doing nothing is itself a decision, just not one you made.
How to check your account in about five minutes
Enough theory. Here is how to find out whether this affects you and what to do. You do not need to be an expert.
Step 1: Find out if you use automatically created assets.
- In Google Ads, go into a Search campaign.
- Look in the campaign settings, under the assets or “automatically created assets” area (in newer layouts it can sit under the AI Max or asset settings).
- If it is toggled on, this campaign is in the upgrade group.
Step 2: Find out if you use the campaign-level broad match setting.
- In the same campaign settings, look for a “broad match” or “keyword matching” setting applied at the campaign level (distinct from individual keywords set to broad match).
- If the campaign-level setting is on, this campaign is in the upgrade group.
Step 3: Check every Search campaign, not just one.
- These settings are per campaign. You might have some campaigns affected and others not. Go through each Search campaign so you know your full exposure.
Step 4: Look for the in-account banner.
- Google is showing a pop-up banner inside the Google Ads interface for affected accounts, offering the voluntary upgrade. If you see it, that confirms you are in the group, and it is also the fastest route to upgrading deliberately if that is your choice.
Step 5: Decide, per campaign.
- For each affected campaign, pick Choice 1 (upgrade deliberately, with guardrails) or Choice 2 (switch off the legacy setting to avoid it). Write down which you chose and why, so future-you knows what happened when performance shifts in September.
If you are not sure what you are looking at, that uncertainty is itself worth acting on. A campaign you cannot confidently assess is one worth having a specialist glance at before the deadline rather than after.
If you do let it upgrade, set up the guardrails
Suppose you decide AI Max is fine, or even good, for a campaign. Whether you upgrade deliberately or let it happen, do not leave it running raw. Over the past year Google has added several controls to AI Max specifically in response to advertiser complaints about losing control, and they are worth switching on.
Brand controls. AI Max has a three-option setting governing how it treats searches containing brand names, including your own brand and competitors’. Because search term matching widens which queries you show for, this is important: without it, you can end up paying to show against brand searches you did not intend, or letting the AI wander into competitor terms. Set this deliberately.
Text guidelines and term exclusions. If text customization is on (which it is by default for the automatically created assets group), you can give the AI rules: words and claims it must never use, and natural-language guidance about your brand voice. For any business with compliance language, banned claims, or a specific tone, set these before the AI starts writing copy on your behalf.
The AI Brief. This is a newer, Gemini-powered control where you describe your business, your message, and your audience in plain language, and that context feeds the AI’s decisions. It is the closest thing to sitting the automation down and telling it what you actually sell and to whom. Fill it in properly rather than leaving the AI to guess.
Watch the two new reporting columns. Google added “expanded matches” and “expanded landing pages” reporting so you can see exactly which extra searches the AI matched you to and which pages it sent people to. After the upgrade, check these regularly. They are how you catch the AI matching you to searches you do not want, which is the single most common complaint about keywordless matching.
Turning AI Max on without configuring any of this is not really using AI Max. It is surrendering to it. The controls exist. Use them.
Should you welcome this or resist it? An honest read
Google’s pitch is straightforward: it says AI Max delivers, on average, 7% more conversions or conversion value at a similar cost when you use the full feature suite, compared to using search term matching alone. That is a real figure, and it is worth taking seriously. It is also, importantly, a Google figure, measured by Google, and framed as the full suite versus one part of the suite rather than against not using AI Max at all.
Independent testing has been more mixed. When we wrote our full breakdown of AI Max for Shopping, we found the same pattern that runs through most independent analysis: the tools can genuinely help, but they help some accounts and quietly hurt others, and a lot of the apparent gains come from the campaign taking credit for conversions it would have won anyway. The effect is real, modest, and highly variable by account.
So the honest position is not “AI Max is great” or “AI Max is bad.” It is this: AI Max rewards accounts with clean foundations and punishes messy ones. If your conversion tracking is accurate, your feed and landing pages are solid, and your brand controls are set, letting the AI widen your reach can genuinely find profitable searches you were missing. If your tracking is measuring the wrong thing, wider matching just means spending more money chasing a broken signal faster. We have written before about how a single misconfigured conversion action distorted one of our own benchmarks by five times, and AI Max amplifies exactly that kind of underlying problem rather than fixing it.
Which gives you a genuinely useful way to decide. Before September 1, the question is not really “do I want AI Max?” It is “is my account clean enough to hand more control to automation?” If yes, upgrade deliberately with guardrails and you will probably do well. If you are not sure your tracking is trustworthy, that is the thing to fix first, and it is a good reason to switch the legacy features off and buy yourself time rather than let the upgrade run on a shaky foundation.
Where this sits in a much bigger pattern
If this feels like part of a trend, it is. Google spent 2026 steadily consolidating manual campaign types into fewer, more automated ones. Standalone Display campaigns folded into Demand Gen. Local Services Ads are moving into Performance Max. Budget-limited bidding behaviour changed on August 17. And now automatically created assets and broad match fold into AI Max. The direction never varies: fewer manual levers, more automation, less asking permission.
The takeaway for anyone running their own ads is consistent across all of it. The controls you keep are worth more than ever, because they are increasingly the only things separating your account from every other account running the same automation. Accurate conversion tracking, a clean product feed or solid landing pages, tight brand controls, and honest measurement against real business outcomes. Those are what decide whether automation works for you or simply spends your money faster. The platform automates the delivery. It does not automate whether you gave it the right goal to chase.
Your two-week checklist
This week:
- Check every Search campaign for automatically created assets and the campaign-level broad match setting. Note which campaigns are affected.
- Look for the in-account upgrade banner, which confirms you are in the group.
- Decide, per campaign: upgrade deliberately, or switch the legacy feature off.
If you are upgrading deliberately:
- Do it before September 1 so you control the configuration, not Google.
- Set your brand controls before search term matching widens your reach.
- Set text guidelines and term exclusions if text customization will be on.
- Fill in the AI Brief with real information about your business.
- Use the one-click experiment to test AI Max against your current setup first.
If you are opting out by switching features off:
- Turn off automatically created assets and/or the campaign-level broad match setting before September 1.
- Confirm the change saved and the campaign no longer shows as pending upgrade.
After September 1, whatever you chose:
Give performance a couple of weeks to settle before judging, but do not ignore obvious waste in the meantime.
Watch the “expanded matches” and “expanded landing pages” reports for searches and pages you did not intend.
For regulated ads, confirm your pinned assets are still in place.
Frequently asked questions
What is happening to my Google Ads on September 1, 2026? Google is automatically upgrading Search campaigns that use Automatically Created Assets or the campaign-level broad match setting to AI Max, its bundle of AI features. The upgrade turns on certain automation switches depending on which setting your campaign used. Google notified affected advertisers by email on August 5, 2026.
Is there a way to opt out of the AI Max upgrade? There is no button to keep your campaign exactly as it is, because the legacy settings are being retired. But you have two real choices: upgrade to AI Max yourself before September 1 so you control the configuration, or switch off the triggering features (automatically created assets or the campaign-level broad match setting) before the deadline to avoid the upgrade entirely. Doing nothing lets Google choose your configuration.
How do I know if my campaigns are affected? Check each Search campaign’s settings for two things: whether Automatically Created Assets is turned on, and whether the campaign-level broad match setting is on. If either is active, that campaign is in the upgrade group. An in-account banner also appears for affected accounts.
What actually changes after the upgrade? It depends which setting you had. Campaigns with Automatically Created Assets get search term matching and text customization turned on, which means Google’s AI both widens which searches you appear for and helps write your ad copy. Campaigns with the broad match setting get only search term matching, so your ad copy and landing pages stay as you set them. Final URL expansion stays off for both.
Will AI Max change my ad copy? Only if text customization is turned on, which happens by default for the Automatically Created Assets group, not the broad match group. If you have compliance language pinned into fixed positions in responsive search ads, those pins are still respected after the upgrade.
Does this affect Dynamic Search Ads too? Not on this September 1 deadline. Dynamic Search Ads were given a longer runway, with encouragement to upgrade starting in September and reminders in January 2027. The hard September 1 change is specifically for Automatically Created Assets and the campaign-level broad match setting.
Should I upgrade to AI Max or turn the features off? It depends on how clean your account is. If your conversion tracking is accurate and your landing pages are solid, upgrading deliberately with brand controls and guardrails set can find profitable new searches. If you are not confident your tracking measures real business outcomes, it is safer to switch the legacy features off, buy yourself time, and fix the foundation first, because wider automated matching amplifies existing problems rather than fixing them.
What are the most important settings to configure if I do upgrade? Brand controls (to govern how you show against brand and competitor searches), text guidelines and term exclusions (to control AI-written copy), and the AI Brief (to give the automation real context about your business). Then watch the “expanded matches” and “expanded landing pages” reports to catch unwanted searches and pages.
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