AI Max for Search campaigns is a set of automated settings that Google Ads switches on inside an ordinary Search campaign. Once enabled, it lets Google show ads on queries that the advertiser's keywords would not have matched, generate extra headlines and descriptions, and send each click to whichever page of the site it judges most relevant. Google built it for the longer, conversational and multimodal queries of AI Overviews, AI Mode and Lens, where keyword lists capture less demand.

Three components behind one switch

According to Google's launch post of May 6, 2025, written by Brian Burdick, senior director of product management for Google Ads, AI Max combines three features.

Search term matching is the core. It expands keywords through broad match and what Google calls "keywordless technology", using keywords, ads, landing pages and inferred intent. A campaign holding only exact and phrase keywords therefore behaves as though they were broad, and can enter auctions with no keyword behind them. Search term matching is on by default once AI Max is enabled, though it can be switched off for individual ad groups.

Text customization generates headlines and descriptions from landing pages, existing ads and keywords. It is the renamed version of the older "automatically created assets" setting. Generated assets are reviewed and refreshed at least every 48 hours, so a change to a landing page can reach the ad text within two days.

Final URL expansion replaces the advertiser's chosen landing page with another page on the same domain when Google predicts a better match. It requires text customization, and with it enabled, pinned headlines are not respected, a point PPC Land's implementation guide flagged for advertisers with legal copy requirements. URL inclusions and exclusions limit which pages can be chosen.

Around these sit several controls. Brand inclusions and exclusions work at campaign and ad group level. Locations of interest let an ad group target people searching about a place rather than people in it, a setting exclusive to AI Max. Text guidelines allow up to 25 term exclusions and 40 messaging restrictions per campaign, after Google took them global on February 26, 2026.

AI Max requires Smart Bidding, Google's family of automated bid strategies such as Target CPA (cost per acquisition) and Target ROAS (return on ad spend). Guidance shared from a Google webinar in October 2025 set a $50 daily budget floor, a one-to-two-week learning period and consolidation of ad groups below 30 conversions a month. The figures came via a LinkedIn post by Domenico Marcoccia, not a help page.

Where it sits in the auction and in the data

An identical exact match keyword takes priority in the auction; below that, phrase, broad and AI Max matches compete together on Ad Rank. When AI Max wins, the serving system may assemble the ad from a mix of advertiser-written and generated assets and route the click to an expanded URL.

In reporting, Google began labelling AI Max as a distinct match type in search terms reports on July 2, 2025. The ValueTrack parameter {matchtype} returns "a" for AI Max traffic, alongside b, p and e for broad, phrase and exact.

The Google Ads API exposes the bundle through a campaign-level ai_max_setting object with an enable_ai_max flag, plus an ad group setting. According to Google's API reporting documentation, the search_term_view resource can be segmented by search_term_match_source, whose values include AI_MAX_KEYWORDLESS and AI_MAX_BROAD_MATCH. A separate ai_max_search_term_ad_combination_view pairs each query with the headline and landing page served. After the September 2026 migration, the fields campaign.broad_match_migration_date_time and campaign.aca_migration_date_time record when each campaign was converted, which makes before-and-after comparisons possible.

From beta to default

AI Max was developed internally under the name SearchMax and announced on May 6, 2025, with a global beta rollout beginning later that month. Google's claim at launch was that advertisers would "typically see 14% more conversions or conversion value at a similar CPA/ROAS", rising to 27% for campaigns still mostly using exact and phrase keywords. A footnote limited both figures to non-retail campaigns in Google's internal 2025 data.

On April 15, 2026, Google declared AI Max out of beta after testing with "hundreds of thousands of advertisers", according to Brandon Ervin, director of product management for Google Ads, whose post also set out the retirement of three legacy constructs: Dynamic Search Ads (DSA), automatically created assets and the campaign-level broad match setting. Two weeks later, on April 30, Google extended the approach to standard Shopping campaigns through AI Max for Shopping and to travel advertisers through Search Campaigns for Travel, and introduced AI Brief, a Gemini-based field for steering AI Max in written instructions.

The migration then hardened. Google blocked new campaign-level broad match settings and automatically created assets from August 3, 2026, emailed advertisers on August 5, and converted affected campaigns between September 1 and September 30. Broad match campaigns arrived with search term matching on and the other two features off; automatically created assets campaigns arrived with search term matching and text customization on. Dynamic Search Ads were originally due in September too, but on June 11, 2026, Google moved their automigration to February 2027, citing advertiser feedback and the fourth-quarter trading period.

Microsoft Advertising followed with a product of the same name and the same three components. It folded Predictive Matching into AI Max search term matching in documentation spotted on July 29, 2026, and began rolling out AI Max to all accounts globally on August 19, 2026, according to liaison Navah Hopkins.

Why it matters for advertisers

For two decades the keyword was the unit of control in paid search. AI Max inverts that. It treats keywords as signals, writes copy the advertiser has not seen in advance and chooses pages the advertiser did not specify. Budget decisions move from the keyword list to Google's model of intent, and the search terms report becomes the main record of what was bought.

Eligibility for newer placements reinforces the shift. According to Google documentation, ads in AI Mode and AI Overviews draw on broad match, Performance Max, AI Max or Dynamic Search Ads; a September 2026 test opened AI Mode to exact and phrase keywords only for queries with "explicit and direct user intent", in the words of Google Ads liaison Ginny Marvin.

Limitations and disputes

Performance claims conflict, partly because they use different baselines. Google's 14% launch figure compared AI Max with campaigns that did not use it. The 7% figure Google cited in April 2026 compared the full suite with search term matching alone. Alphabet chief business officer Philipp Schindler cited a 15% average uplift on the July 22, 2026 earnings call, as PPC Land reported. Microsoft reported that testers saw "at least 8%" more conversions, a figure that turned out to be the lower confidence bound of 10 statistically significant experiments out of 44, with a spend-weighted average of about 13.6%.

Independent data is less favourable. Ezra Sackett, director of paid search at Monks, reported in August 2025 that "99% of impressions have 0 conversions" across about 30,000 AI Max search terms. In November 2025, Smarter Ecommerce found AI Max conversions delivered about 35% lower ROAS than other match types across more than 250 retail campaigns, while Xavier Mantica's four-month test put AI Max cost per conversion at $100.37 against $52.69 for exact match. None is a controlled, published study; nor are Google's figures.

Matching scope is the second dispute. Mike Ryan of Smarter Ecommerce found that about 29% of exact match impressions in a 383-million-impression EMEA sample had been broadened by AI Max by July 2026, up from zero in January 2025. Reporting adds a third: Brad Geddes of Adalysis found AI Max traffic credited to exact and phrase keywords and identical queries listed under two match types, and Marvin replied that Google is "increasingly determining relevance by inferred intent". Negative keywords still match literal strings, so they control an intent-based system imperfectly.

Generated copy also raises compliance questions in regulated categories, and the branded search control that appeared between May 29 and June 1, 2026 answered complaints about prospecting budgets leaking onto brand queries.

What AI Max is not

Performance Max is a separate campaign type that runs across Search, YouTube, Display, Discover, Gmail and Maps from asset groups. AI Max is a setting inside a Search campaign, which keeps keywords, ad groups and Search-only reporting.

Broad match is a keyword match type. AI Max's search term matching includes broad match expansion but adds keywordless matching, and it absorbed the old campaign-level broad match setting in September 2026.

Dynamic Search Ads targeted queries by crawling a website and generated headlines from it. AI Max replaces it, though Google's June 2026 notice says remaining DSA campaigns will be upgraded to "Performance Max or AI-powered Search campaigns", a wider destination than the April announcement named.

AI Mode is Google's conversational search surface, an inventory where AI Max ads can appear, not a buying tool. The name also covers Google's Shopping variant and Microsoft's product.

Recent developments

On September 23, 2026, Google extended the AI Brief closed beta to Dutch, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Portuguese and Spanish, and promised a unified report showing the search term, creative and landing page for each ad, with availability "later this year". Google also removed campaign-level language targeting for Search and Performance Max from September, replacing it with automatic language detection. In early October, previews of up to 10 sample generated assets appeared, according to PPC News Feed. A search terms and ad combinations report was spotted in testing around October 14, according to consultancy Bavian. As of October 2026, the Dynamic Search Ads automigration remains scheduled for February 2027, and Microsoft has set no forced conversion date.

Timeline

  • May 6, 2025 - Google announces AI Max for Search campaigns, claiming 14% more conversions or value, 27% for exact and phrase-heavy campaigns.
  • Late May 2025 - Global beta rollout begins.
  • July 2, 2025 - AI Max appears as a match type in search terms reports.
  • August 13, 2025 - Monks' Ezra Sackett reports 99% of AI Max impressions with zero conversions in early tests.
  • November 6, 2025 - Smarter Ecommerce publishes analysis showing about 35% lower ROAS for AI Max conversions.
  • February 26, 2026 - Text guidelines beta goes global for AI Max and Performance Max.
  • April 15, 2026 - AI Max exits beta; Google announces the retirement of DSA, automatically created assets and campaign-level broad match.
  • April 30, 2026 - AI Max for Shopping, Search Campaigns for Travel and AI Brief announced.
  • May 29 to June 1, 2026 - Branded search control appears inside AI Max.
  • June 11, 2026 - DSA automigration moved to February 2027.
  • July 22, 2026 - Alphabet cites a 15% average AI Max uplift on its earnings call.
  • July 29, 2026 - Microsoft documentation folds Predictive Matching into AI Max.
  • August 3, 2026 - New campaign-level broad match and automatically created assets settings blocked.
  • August 19, 2026 - Microsoft Advertising begins global AI Max rollout.
  • September 1 to 30, 2026 - Broad match and automatically created assets campaigns migrated to AI Max.
  • September 23, 2026 - AI Brief closed beta expands to seven more languages; unified AI Max report announced.
  • October 2026 - Text customization previews and a search terms and ad combinations report spotted.
  • February 2027 - Scheduled DSA automigration.

Summary

Who: Google introduced AI Max for Search in May 2025 under product leads Brian Burdick and Brandon Ervin; Microsoft Advertising launched its own AI Max in 2026. Advertisers and agencies running Search campaigns on Smart Bidding use it, and independent analysts at Smarter Ecommerce, Monks and Adalysis have measured it.

What: A bundle of three settings inside a Search campaign - search term matching, text customization and final URL expansion - that lets Google match queries beyond the keyword list, generate ad copy and choose landing pages.

When: Announced May 6, 2025; out of beta April 15, 2026; absorbed campaign-level broad match and automatically created assets in September 2026; Dynamic Search Ads follow in February 2027.

Where: Google Search and its AI surfaces, including AI Overviews and AI Mode, with Shopping and travel variants; Microsoft's version runs on Bing and its partner network.

Why: Google argues keyword lists miss the long, conversational queries that AI search produces. Critics argue the same automation reduces control, blurs reporting and, in several independent datasets, lowers efficiency.