Broad Match Campaigns Migration to AI Max

By Lee Moran, Founder of Veritas Digital

On the 12th of August 2026, the Google Ads Developer Blog confirmed the dates between 1 September and 30 September 2026, Google Ads is automatically upgrading Search campaigns that use campaign level broad match or standalone automatically created assets to AI Max. The migration rolls out gradually across the September, so if it has not reached your account yet, it’s very likely to do so before the end of month.

There is no opt out either – Google blocked the creation of new legacy setups on the 3rd of August across the UI, Google Ads Editor and every version of the API.

I’ll be straight up with our position on this – we already moved every account we manage onto AI Max well before this deadline. Doing it on our own timeframe meant we picked the settings, and we were able to test the features before and after testing them, rather than leaving it down to a forced migration. Leaving it to a forced migration, makes it harder to work out what works and also means some advertisers may not even be checking their accounts enough to know it’s happened.

Below is a what’s going to happen, what the defaults are, and how to check whether it has already started to take place in your accounts.

What is being migrated, and what is not

Two legacy features are in this first phase:

• Campaign level broad match (not really that legacy really)
• Standalone automatically created assets, also shortened to ACA

Dynamic Search Ads are not in this phase. They are excluded from the September migration and make the switch in February 2027, which we wrote about when the DSA migration was delayed. You will start seeing in-account banners this month pushing you to upgrade your DSAs early, but they keep serving as normal until next year.

Date	What happens
3rd of August 2026	Creating new campaign level broad match or legacy ACA setups is blocked in the UI, Google Ads Editor and all API versions
1st to 30th of September 2026	Automatic migration of campaign level broad match and ACA campaigns to AI Max
September 2026	In-account banners begin warning advertisers that are still running Dynamic Search Ads
15th January 2027	Official reminder notification sent to accounts still using DSAs
1st to 28th February 2027	DSA automatic migration begins and the ability to create new DSA ad groups is permanently removed
Around September 2027	Older API versions will sunset and the legacy entities are removed forever

What many articles have missed out – not all campaigns get the same settings

This is the bit worth reading closely. Google is not applying one AI Max configuration to every campaign. What you end up with depends on which legacy features you were using on your accounts.

Three AI Max settings that matter here:

• Search term matching. Uses broad match and what Google calls keywordless technology to match your ads to queries beyond the keywords in your ad group.
• Text customisation. Generates headlines and descriptions using your landing pages, your existing ads and your keywords.
• Final URL expansion. Sends traffic to a different page on your site than the one you originally set, when Google thinks it is more relevant.

Here is how the two migration paths differ:

Setting	Campaign level broad match	Standalone ACA
Search term matching	On	On
Text customisation	Off	On
Final URL expansion	Off	Off
Brand inclusions and exclusions	Carried over in place	Not applicable

The final URL expansion default is genuinely good news. That is the setting most likely to send a user to a page you did not choose, and Google has left it switched off for everyone, so the nuclear fallout from going from one landing page to potentially hundreds of landing pages, will not be the case. A note worth knowing, final URL expansion can’t be switch on at all unless text customisation is also switched on.

On the topic of text customisation, which relates to the ACA side, you could say that the default just keeps you where you were, because standalone ACA already let Google add assets to your ads, which is fair to say, but it’s not quite the same. Text customisation is the newer version of that feature, and it writes copy from your landing pages and existing ads using gen AI. If you have compliance wording, regulated claims, or a client who cares about exact phrasing of text, that is now switched on inside a campaign that potentially nobody reviews.

However, you can put guardrails in place in advance – Text guidelines let you exclude specific words and phrases and set rules on tone of voice, and AI Brief gives you a natural language layer on top of that to steer what AI Max does before it reaches your campaigns. Most advertisers haven’t set that up yet, because until this month there was no real reason to do so.

What search term matching being switched on means

Both migration paths turn on search term matching and that’s the biggest shift, so it’s important to focus on what it does and doesn’t do.

Two things to know before the numbers are analysed.

The reporting is messy

Adalysis found that AI Max often does not find new search terms at all. It frequently shows for the same queries your exact and phrase keywords were already covering and then takes the credit for them. Search Engine Land reported similar problems with match type control: brand terms matching non-brand queries, non-brand terms matching competitors, and advertisers having to add misspellings back as exact match to protect valuable traffic.

So if you compare AI Max totals against your old keyword totals and see growth, some of it is relabelled traffic rather than new traffic. That’s a reclassification, not a performance change..

It does nothing at all on manual CPC

Google is explicit about this in its own help documentation. Search term matching will not work with manual CPC bidding, because AI Max relies on signals from a conversion-based strategy. A migrated campaign still on manual bidding gets the label without the function. If you have any of those, you really need to switch from manual CPC to a conversion based strategy.

My honest position on it

I see no issues with this migration – the defaults are more careful than they could be, brand lists carry across fine, and leaving final URL expansion off avoids the total disaster for some brands. We personally moved early because we wanted control of the timing, and to test feature in advance.

That said, the results in the wider industry have not matched the marketing – Google’s own launch figures claimed a 14% lift in conversions, and 27% for advertisers who kept their exact and phrase keywords. A LinkedIn poll run by an individual called Adriaan Dekker found only 16% of PPC professionals reporting good performance from AI Max, with 84% reporting neutral or negative results. That shows that numbers on the ground do differ to what Google is marketing.

The more interesting question is what comes next – Campaign level broad match is going this month, and Dynamic Search Ads go in February. If both of those land without much noise, it is not a big leap to expect phrase and exact match to be pulled into the same framework at some point too. I am not predicting a date, and Google has said nothing about it, but really the direction of travel has been consistent for years now, and every step has been a consolidation into one AI driven bundle of settings. The same pattern has shown up elsewhere: the channel controls Google is testing in Performance Max are a preference rather than an off switch. It is worth holding in the back of your mind when you plan account structure for 2027 that how you control AI Max has to be at the heart of that structure.

How to check if your campaigns have been migrated already

In the interface/UI

Below are the ways to spot if AI Max has been upgraded in your campaigns:

• Campaign settings – AI Max sits in the settings panel of each Search campaign – not a quick straight forward way to see if all campaigns have migrated but you’ll get 100% confirmation this way.
• The “Added by” column at asset level – Assets written by text customisation are labelled “Google AI”. That tells you text customisation is live, which is the setting that matters most if you were running standalone ACA. You cannot remove them in bulk from the interface though, which can be frustrating if many assets have been created not quite to the brand tone that is needed.
• Your search terms report – If search term matching is on, you will start seeing terms your keywords do not cover which will come up as AI Max as the match type.

None of these will give you a clear list of campaigns that migrated and the dates that this happened – for this, you’ll need the API.

Via the API

If you really want to know the date which the migration happened, then you’ll need to go via the API. Google has added two fields that record the exact migration timestamp per campaign. The query Google published is below:

SELECT

  campaign.id,

  campaign.name,

  campaign.aca_migration_date_time,

  campaign.broad_match_migration_date_time

FROM campaign

WHERE campaign.aca_migration_date_time > '1970-01-01 00:00:00'

  AND campaign.broad_match_migration_date_time > '1970-01-01 00:00:00'

One warning on that query as it is written. The AND means you only get back campaigns where both migrations ran. Most campaigns will have been migrated for one reason or the other, not both. If you want everything that moved, swap the AND for an OR.

For separating the traffic afterwards, use the standard search term view and segment by search_term_match_source. That splits AI Max expansion out from your keyword traffic. There is also a dedicated view called ai_max_search_term_ad_combination_view, which shows the search term alongside the headline that was used and the landing page it sent to. This one is very good for auditing relevance, though Google warns against using it to reconcile spend, because it is built for ad combination testing rather than financial reporting and likely it will be slightly vs the UI.

What about change history?

Change history covers roughly two years in the interface and does log changes made by automated rules, Google Ads Editor, the API and Google’s own systems. Google’s system changes show under a label rather than an email address, so the migration may very well appear there.

However, I would not rely on this though – the API version of change history, the change_event resource, only returns around the last 30 days and caps the rows it gives you. That just about works for a September migration if you query at the start of October. For the DSA phase next February you would get one month and then it is gone for good. The migration date fields sit on the campaign itself and does not expire.

There is also a caveat here – auto applied recommendations keep their own separate log that never usually feeds into the main change history. And the simplest argument is that Google built two dedicated timestamp fields for this migration, so finding it altogether in the main change history may not be possible.

What to monitor over the next 30 days

• Record the migration date for every campaign where possible. Without it you have no before and after, and in a month, you will not be able to say what changed or when.
• Pull a 30-day search term report now if you still can, then compare the query mix once the migration has finalised.
• Monitor search queries very closely. Watch out for brand queries appearing in non-brand campaigns and the other way round. Brand lists carry across, but misspellings and close variants can still show, so double check if any are missing and add those extra ones in.
• If you were running standalone ACA, review the generated headlines in the first week and set text guidelines to help mitigate any rogue Google AI assets.
• If a migrated campaign is on manual CPC, decide whether you are moving to a conversion-based strategy or accept that search term matching does nothing for you. But honestly, just move to a conversion-based strategy.
• Judge the change on campaign totals, not on keyword level numbers. The search term report will look different for reasons that have nothing to do with performance. And Google hides a lot of search terms now which makes it more difficult to work out what’s going on.
• Audit your Google Ads scripts and any third-party tools. If a third-party tool can pull a customised report from the API with the migration details, request this straight away.

Frequently asked questions

Can I opt out of the migration?

No unfortunately not. Creating new legacy setups was blocked on the 3rd of August and the automatic upgrade runs throughout September. You can change the settings after your campaigns have been migrated, but you cannot stay on the old settings.

Will my brand exclusions survive?

Yes, they will. Google has confirmed that existing brand inclusions and exclusions are preserved and moved into the new setup in place for campaign level broad match campaigns.

Will my performance drop?

Google says campaigns are migrated in place using equivalent AI Max settings to keep volatility down, so a large immediate swing would be unusual. What is more likely is that your search term report looks different and your keyword level numbers move around. But monitor everything closely, as per the list above on what to monitor.

Does this affect my Dynamic Search Ads?

Not this month. DSA campaigns are excluded from the September migration and move in February 2027. You will see banners in the interface encouraging you to upgrade voluntarily before then and we suggest you do so, so you’re not forced to migrate last minute and without control.

Should I turn text customisation off if it has come on?

Only if you have a reason to. If exact wording matters for compliance or brand, either switch it off or set text guidelines. If it does not, leave it running and measure it properly before you cast judgement.

The bottom line

The change where could be quite significant but also at the same time, the biggest levers are not necessarily set to activate. Search term matching coming on in every migrated campaign is a big change to how your ads are matched. Text customisation coming on by default for ACA campaigns is a smaller but still significant change to who writes your ad copy. Both are manageable, but only if you know they happened and monitor them closely.

The advertisers who will have a bad month are the ones who find out in October, from a report, that something shifted in September and cannot say what it was or when it landed. Even if you do nothing else this week, pull the migration dates.

We moved our accounts across early because we wanted to control the migration and mitigate issues well in advance of the forced change. For large accounts with a forced migration, there is the real risk of a bottleneck of monitoring all the changes all at once across many accounts and campaigns, which could get quite messy.

References

• Google Ads Developer Blog – Migrate Campaign-level Broad Match and Automatically Created Assets to AI Max – https://ads-developers.googleblog.com/2026/08/migrate-campaign-level-broad-match-and.html
• Search Engine Land – Google sets AI Max migration timeline for Search campaigns – https://searchengineland.com/google-sets-ai-max-migration-timeline-for-search-campaigns-485006
• Search Engine Land – AI Max undermines match-type control – https://searchengineland.com/ai-max-undermines-match-type-control-465612
• Adalysis – The hidden challenges of AI Max search term reporting – https://adalysis.com/blog/ai-max-search-term-reporting/
• Google Ads Help – How AI Max for Search campaigns works – https://support.google.com/google-ads/answer/15910187
• Google Ads Help – Set up AI Max for Search campaigns – https://support.google.com/google-ads/answer/15909989
• Google Ads Help – Frequently asked questions about AI Max for Search campaigns – https://support.google.com/google-ads/answer/15913066
• Google Ads Help – About campaign level broad match – https://support.google.com/google-ads/answer/13389795
• Google Ads Help – About automatically created assets – https://support.google.com/google-ads/answer/7175034
• Google Ads API – AI Max reporting – https://developers.google.com/google-ads/api/docs/campaigns/ai-max-for-search-campaigns/ai-max-reporting
• Google Ads Developer Blog – Dynamic Search Ads auto migration rescheduled – https://ads-developers.googleblog.com/2026/06/dynamic-search-ads-dsa-automigration.html