From 1 September 2026, Google Ads will automatically upgrade Search campaigns that use automatically created assets or the campaign-wide Broad Match setting to AI Max – with no real opt-out other than switching off the affected features beforehand. The announcement arrived on 5 August 2026 by email directly to the accounts concerned, without an accompanying blog post.
For many advertisers this comes as a surprise, because in June 2026 this very timeline was postponed for Dynamic Search Ads – yet the impression that the entire migration has been deferred is mistaken. Below we set out what actually happens on 1 September, who it affects and what you can still do now.
1. What happens in Google Ads on 1 September 2026
On 5 August 2026, Google Ads confirmed by email to the advertisers concerned: Search campaigns using automatically created assets (ACA) or the Broad Match setting at campaign level will be automatically upgraded to AI Max for Search campaigns from 1 September 2026. The message was signed simply by the “Google Ads Team” – without naming anyone responsible.
The step was originally announced on 15 April 2026 by Brandon Ervin, Director of Product Management at Google Ads: that day AI Max officially left beta, and Google announced that Dynamic Search Ads (DSA), automatically created assets and the Broad Match setting would be upgraded automatically as a bundle in September 2026.
On 11 June 2026, Google postponed the automatic migration – but only for Dynamic Search Ads – by five months to February 2027. The reason given was feedback from advertisers who did not want to risk campaign changes in the fourth quarter. For ACA and the Broad Match setting, however, 1 September 2026 remained unchanged; the corresponding Google help pages were not updated when the DSA date moved.
In short: there are two parallel deadlines in 2026. Dynamic Search Ads have a reprieve until February 2027. Automatically created assets and the campaign-wide Broad Match setting, by contrast, will be upgraded automatically on 1 September 2026 as originally planned.
2. Who is affected: automatically created assets and Broad Match – DSA has a reprieve
The announcement email distinguishes two affected groups, each with its own default configuration after the upgrade:
- Campaigns with automatically created assets (ACA): after the upgrade they get search-term matching and text customization enabled by default.
- Campaigns with the Broad Match setting at campaign level: after the upgrade they get search-term matching only – without text customization and without final URL expansion.
Accounts that have never activated either feature are not affected by the migration – for them, nothing changes on 1 September. For everyone else, a migration window that opened in April is closing, one that many practitioners wrongly assumed had also been postponed.
The email caused a good deal of confusion in the PPC community: anyone who had never actively used the affected settings rightly wondered why the message landed in their inbox at all. The community's reading was apt: for Broad Match accounts the migration is essentially a rename and a move into a new feature area, whereas for ACA accounts it is a substantive extension by targeting-side matching that did not exist before.
3. ACA campaigns: search-term matching and text customization on by default
Automatically created assets were rolled out fully with generative AI for English-language advertisers in the US and UK in February 2024: the feature generates ad headlines and descriptions from the content of the landing page. The feature is now called text customization and, according to current documentation, strictly requires AI Max – and it is precisely this technical dependency that drives the migration on 1 September.
Text customization combines extractive techniques – such as pulling text fragments from landing page titles, meta descriptions and tags – with generative models based on the landing page content. Assets are re-checked and refreshed at least every 48 hours, so a change to the landing page is reflected in the generated copy promptly. Google-generated assets only run if they are forecast to perform better than the headlines and descriptions you have supplied, and they feed into the Ad Strength rating.
The decisive point for ACA accounts: the upgrade adds search-term matching as a default setting. Until now, automatically created assets only controlled the creative side – which ad copy is served. Search-term matching, by contrast, controls which search queries an ad is eligible for at all. So anyone who has only been using automated ad copy will, from 1 September, also inherit an automated expansion of search queries – unless it is disabled at ad group level.
4. Broad Match campaigns: search-term matching only – with consequences for keyword prioritisation
The campaign-wide Broad Match setting is narrower than the name suggests. It converts all existing phrase and exact match keywords in a Search campaign to Broad Match and forces newly added keywords to Broad Match as well. The setting is only available for campaigns using conversion-based Smart Bidding.
After the upgrade, these campaigns receive search-term matching only – without text customization and without final URL expansion, since the latter requires text customization to be active. Pinned assets in responsive search ads therefore continue to be respected after the migration, which matters in particular for regulated industries that have to keep mandatory copy in a fixed position via pinning.
The genuinely consequential change lies in keyword prioritisation. Google uses a four-tier hierarchy to decide which keyword in the account wins a given search query: exact match keywords identical to the search query come first. Phrase and Broad Match keywords, or Performance Max search themes, with an identical search query come second. AI-based relevance ranking comes third, and Ad Rank settles any remaining ties.
Campaigns with the Broad Match setting enabled are treated internally as though both a Broad Match and an exact match variant existed for every keyword. If the same keyword exists as exact match in another campaign, the keyword with the higher Ad Rank enters the auction. A reset is possible: if the setting is disabled, the original match types are restored – converted keywords initially appear with the status “removed” and have to be reactivated manually.
5. The numbers behind it: Google's 7 per cent promise versus independent tests
Google justifies the migration with performance data: campaigns using the full AI Max feature set – search-term matching, text customization and final URL expansion – deliver on average around 7% more conversions or conversion value at a similar CPA or ROAS than campaigns using search-term matching alone, according to Google. The figure is based on internal Google data from 2026 and excludes retail advertisers. At the beta launch in May 2025, Google was still promising 14% more conversions – the figure has since been revised downwards.
Independent analyses paint a considerably more mixed picture:
- August 2025: an analysis of around 30,000 search terms in client accounts found that 99% of AI Max impressions led to not a single conversion (Ezra Sackett, Director of Paid Search at Monks).
- August 2025: AI Max expanded aggressively into placements in the Search Partner Network – where, according to Intelligency Group, ROAS was 37% lower than on classic Google Search.
- November 2025: an analysis of more than 250 retail campaigns found ROAS around 35% lower with AI Max than with classic match types.
- August 2026: the analytics platform smec examined 383 million EMEA e-commerce impressions: the share of AI Max expansion in what were actually exact hits rose from zero to almost 29% since January 2025 – meaning exact match is losing roughly one in four impressions to AI Max.
Schematic representation of selected metrics from Google's own figures and independent studies 2025/2026. As at: August 2026.
Google is not responding to the criticism by retreating, but by adding more controls – more on that in section 7. In December 2025, Google also clarified that search-term matching is based on inferred intent rather than the exact wording of the search query – which explains part of the reporting discrepancies advertisers have observed.
6. Checklist before 1 September 2026
Important: there is no way to keep automatically created assets or the Broad Match setting in their current form after 1 September. Anyone who does nothing will have the configuration dictated by Google – with the default settings described in sections 3 and 4.
7. Using the controls available in AI Max
Since the beta launch in May 2025, Google has gradually added steering functions to AI Max – not least in response to the criticism described in section 5:
- Branded search controls (since May 2026): three options governing whether and how AI Max serves on search queries containing brand names.
- AI Brief (since 30 April 2026): a Gemini-powered control in natural language – context about your business, message and audience feeds directly into the AI's decisions.
- Text guidelines: term exclusions plus tone and concept requirements for generated ad copy, with a cap of 25 excluded terms or phrases.
- Text disclaimers: enforce mandatory compliance copy in ads that use final URL expansion.
Reporting is moving on as well: the search terms report gains AI Max as a match type of its own, plus a source column distinguishing Broad Match expansion from keywordless matching, and a combined view of search term, ad headlines and URLs. The keyword report shows new AI Max summary rows, and the landing page report a “selected by” column.
8. What this means for SME advertising budgets
The September migration is not an isolated event but part of a clear distribution strategy: at Google Marketing Live on 20 May 2026, Google confirmed that access to new AI search ad formats – such as conversational discovery ads and highlighted answers – requires AI Max for Search campaigns or Performance Max with text customization. Classic Search configurations simply do not reach these new formats.
The trend is not limited to Google: in July 2026, Microsoft discontinued its own Predictive Matching in favour of a comparable AI Max product that bundles search-term matching, asset personalisation and URL routing into a single automation layer. For SME advertisers this means that falling back on classic search engine marketing will become harder on both major platforms over the medium term.
For smaller budgets in particular, a controlled rather than a passive migration therefore pays off: anyone introducing AI Max deliberately now, with clear brand protection, budget and tracking safeguards, avoids the wastage shown by the independent studies cited in section 5 – while positioning themselves for access to future AI ad formats. For more on how Search campaigns as a whole are being changed by AI, see our article on AI Max for Search campaigns 2026 and our overview of the Performance Max updates 2026.
Would you like your Google Ads account reviewed before 1 September? Arrange a free initial consultation with our team.
9. Conclusion: upgrade in a controlled way instead of being caught out
1 September 2026 is not an exception but the next step in Google's strategy of moving Search campaigns consistently onto AI automation. Automatically created assets and the Broad Match setting are disappearing as standalone features and being absorbed entirely into AI Max – with tangible consequences for targeting-side matching and keyword prioritisation.
Anyone who ignores the migration will have Google's default configuration imposed on them. Anyone who shapes it actively instead – with audited budgets, working tracking templates and active brand protection – keeps control over a tool that, according to independent studies, performs far less consistently than Google's own figures suggest.
Our assessment: the deadline itself is not negotiable, but the configuration that follows very much is. SME accounts that decide actively now rather than upgrading passively secure a genuine advantage – in budget efficiency as much as in access to future AI search formats.
10. FAQ: the key questions about the AI Max update
What happens in Google Ads on 1 September 2026?
Google Ads automatically upgrades Search campaigns using automatically created assets (ACA) or the Broad Match setting at campaign level to AI Max. The announcement was sent on 5 August 2026 by email to the advertisers concerned. Dynamic Search Ads (DSA) themselves are exempt – their automatic migration was already postponed to February 2027 on 11 June 2026.
Can I prevent the automatic migration to AI Max?
Yes. To avoid the automatic migration you must, before 1 September 2026, either manually disable automatically created assets or the Broad Match setting in the affected campaigns, or move to AI Max actively yourself. According to Google, there is no third option that keeps the old settings unchanged.
What exactly changes for my campaigns?
After the migration, campaigns with automatically created assets get search-term matching and text customization enabled by default. Campaigns with the Broad Match setting get search-term matching only, without automatic text customization or final URL expansion. In addition, keyword prioritisation changes for Broad Match campaigns: existing keywords are treated internally as a combination of Broad Match and exact match.
Is AI Max worthwhile for small and medium advertising budgets?
Google states around 7% more conversions on average at a similar CPA for the full AI Max feature set. Independent analyses paint a more mixed picture: an analysis of more than 250 retail campaigns found ROAS around 35% lower than with classic match types, and a study of around 30,000 search terms found no conversion for 99% of AI Max impressions. For SME budgets this means introducing AI Max in a controlled way and with close monitoring, rather than letting it run blind.
