Google Ads product updates · 1 September 2026
AI Max upgrades started on 1 September; DSA waits until February
Google started converting Search campaigns to AI Max on 1 September. Two settings trigger it — automatically created assets, and the campaign-level broad match setting — and campaigns using either are upgraded without anyone touching them. Google emailed affected accounts on 5 August.
There is no way to sit still. The options are to turn the legacy features off or to turn AI Max on yourself; PPC Land reports that “there is no third option that preserves automatically created assets or the campaign-level broad match setting in their current form”.
Dynamic Search Ads were in the original September batch and are not any more. Google has moved the DSA sunset and auto-upgrade to February 2027, so a DSA campaign is untouched until then and arrives with its “legacy URL controls preserved”. A campaign with automatically created assets switched on has already gone.
What changes in the reports
The search terms report gains AI Max as a match type, plus a source column separating broad-match expansion from keywordless matching. The keywords report shows AI Max summary rows, and the landing pages report adds a “selected by” column. That is the first place to look on an upgraded account — it is the only way to see which traffic came from expansion rather than from the keywords we chose.
Turning it back off is not clean
Switching the broad match setting off does restore keyword match types. But keywords that were converted while it was enabled come back under a removed status and have to be reinstated by hand. On an account with a long, deliberately built keyword list, that is not a one-click undo.
Google's case for the change is an average “7% more conversions or conversion value at a similar CPA/ROAS” for accounts running the full AI Max suite, measured against accounts running part of it. It is Google's own figure with no sector breakdown, so nothing in it speaks to healthcare traffic specifically.
The controls Google names as carrying over are brand controls, location controls and text guidelines. Those are worth reading campaign by campaign rather than assuming the defaults landed sensibly: an upgraded campaign that was leaning on the broad match setting plus a long negative list is where the exposure sits.
One caveat on timing — the Google Ads help-centre announcement log still had nothing on either date as of 2 September, so the blog post and the trade press are ahead of the official change log.
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