Google released version 26 of its Ads API on October 14, 2026, adding read access to Search Lift studies, the ability to create Local Services Performance Max campaigns programmatically and a looser EU political advertising declaration for campaigns that target only locations outside the European Union. The release also renames five hotel bid modifier criteria and replaces the account-level enhanced conversions field.

In Short

Google updated the toolkit that software uses to manage Google Ads, and this version adds several new things those tools can read and build. It matters to anyone whose ad tools, reports or agency scripts connect to Google Ads, because some old names were replaced and code using them has to change. Tools can now report on whether ads led people to search more, create the new type of Local Services campaign, and skip an EU political ads question for campaigns aimed only outside Europe.

What Google published

The announcement, signed by Anash P. Oommen of the Google Ads API Team, appeared on the Google Ads Developer Blog on Wednesday, October 14, 2026. It is short. Six groups of features are listed as "highlights," and Google directs developers to the official release notes "for a full list of changes."

v26 is a major release. According to Google, "to use the new capabilities, you must upgrade your client libraries and client code," and the company says it has "published all updated client libraries and code examples." Developers who rely on a client library need the latest version before any of the new fields are reachable.

Google scheduled a live walkthrough for the next day, October 15 at 10:00 AM ET, on its Discord server and the Ads Developers YouTube channel, and said a recording would follow on YouTube.

v26 is also the first version under the faster cadence Google set out two days earlier. On October 12, Google moved the Ads API to two releases a month starting with v26, while keeping four major versions a year. That change, its schedule and the projected November 2027 sunset for v26 are covered in PPC Land's earlier report. The October 14 post repeats it only as a reminder.

EU political advertising declarations become optional for some campaigns

The first item concerns a field that has caused friction since 2025. According to Google, Campaign.contains_eu_political_advertising "is now optional for campaigns and Demand Gen ad groups with upgraded targeting that positively target only locations outside the European Union and contain no proximity or location group criteria."

Three conditions are packed into that sentence. The campaign or ad group must use location targeting that names only non-EU places. It must not use proximity targeting, the radius around an address or point. And it must not use location groups. A campaign that meets all three can leave the declaration unset.

To find out whether a declaration is needed, developers get a new field, require_eu_political_advertising_declaration, on three resources: GeoTargetConstant, CampaignCriterion and AdGroupCriterion. In practice, a tool can check a location before attaching it, and check the criteria already attached to a campaign or ad group.

Why does this matter? Because the declaration has been mandatory, and costly to miss. Google made EU political advertising declarations mandatory in the Ads API in August 2025, with enforcement from September 3, 2025, ahead of the EU's Transparency and Targeting of Political Advertising regulation taking effect on October 10, 2025. Google had already restricted EU political ads to official communications, so campaigns declaring political content stopped serving in the EU from September 22, 2025.

The penalty grew in 2026. From April 1, Google blocked all campaign management calls in any account with even one undeclared campaign, across API versions v20 to v23. A single missing value on an old campaign could stop an integration from editing unrelated campaigns in the same account.

That rule applied regardless of where a campaign served. An advertiser running only in Brazil or Japan still had to answer a question about EU politics. v26 removes that burden for clearly non-EU campaigns, though only for code running on v26. The post does not say whether earlier versions will relax the requirement, or whether the April 1 account-level block now ignores campaigns that qualify for the exemption.

The exclusion of proximity and location group criteria is not explained. A radius drawn around a point near a border can reach into EU territory, which would be one reason to keep those campaigns in scope, but that is an inference rather than something Google states. The post also refers to "Demand Gen ad groups with upgraded targeting" without defining which ad groups that covers.

Five hotel bid modifiers renamed for all travel

The second change is the one most likely to break existing code. Google says it has "renamed hotel-specific AdGroupBidModifier criteria to apply consistently across travel verticals." The mapping:

v26 criterion Replaces
user_set_dates hotel_date_selection_type
advance_booking_window hotel_advance_booking_window
length_of_booking (with min_days and max_days) hotel_length_of_stay
start_day_of_week hotel_check_in_day
start_date_range hotel_check_in_date_range

The new names drop the hotel framing. "Length of stay" becomes "length of booking," which can describe a car rental as well as a hotel night. "Check-in day" becomes "start day of week," which fits a flight or a cruise departure. Google calls the result "vertical-agnostic travel bid modifiers."

For developers, the impact is mechanical but real. Any bid management tool that reads or writes these modifiers by their old names will need to change those references when it moves to v26. Because the Ads API keeps older versions alive until their sunset dates, code pinned to v25 or earlier is likely to keep seeing the old names for now, though the post itself does not discuss backward compatibility.

The rename follows a broader restructuring of travel advertising inside Google Ads. On April 30, 2026, Google announced it would fold travel ad formats into Search campaigns with AI Max, bringing hotel and flight formats under one structure. A week earlier, v24 had added a read-only travel_feed_data field on AssetSet, exposing Hotel Center, Merchant Center and partner identifiers for travel feeds. Generic bid modifiers are a natural next step if hotels, flights and other travel products are to share campaigns. The post, however, lists only the renamed criteria and does not say which travel verticals can now use them.

Search Lift arrives in the API

According to Google, v26 "expanded lift measurement capabilities with support for Search Lift studies." The additions are read-only:

  • a new SearchLiftKeywordBundle resource
  • two new segments, segments.search_lift_keyword_bundle and segments.search_property
  • 15 new Search Lift metrics, among them relative_search_lift, normalized_incremental_searches and search_lift_impressions

Google says these metrics can be analyzed "alongside Campaign.lift_measurement_config," tying Search Lift results to the lift configuration already exposed on campaigns.

Search Lift belongs to the same family as conversion lift and Brand Lift: a test that holds back a share of users from ads and compares behavior. Search Lift measures branded searches on Google and YouTube rather than transactions, and carries a US minimum of $10,000. The keyword bundle resource suggests that studies measure searches for a defined set of brand terms, and the property segment suggests results can be split by where the search happened. Neither interpretation is spelled out in the post, which names the resources but does not describe them.

This is the second lift expansion in two months. v25.1, released on August 19, added 24 Conversion Lift metrics along with read-only LiftMeasurementConfig and LiftMeasurementFlight resources and Brand Lift dimension resources. Lift measurement in that release was limited to allowlisted accounts, and studies still had to be set up in the Google Ads interface or by a representative. Taken together, by PPC Land's count, the two releases add 39 lift metrics to the API. The v26 post does not say whether the allowlist still applies, and it adds no way to create Search Lift studies through the API.

Why is incrementality data moving into the API? Agencies and measurement vendors increasingly want lift results next to their own models, not trapped in a single interface. Google cut the minimum spend for incrementality experiments to $5,000 in November 2025, which widened the pool of advertisers able to run tests. API access lets those results flow into reporting pipelines without manual exports.

There is a caveat worth stating plainly. Lift studies are designed, run and reported by Google, measuring the effect of Google ads on Google searches. API access makes the numbers easier to collect. It does not make them independent.

Local Services Performance Max campaigns can be created by API

Developers can now create Local Services Performance Max campaigns. According to Google, this works by "setting PmaxCampaignSettings.local_services_enabled (which is now settable on creation and immutable afterwards) and providing the required country_code and Google Business Profile listing_id in LocalServicesPmaxCampaignSettings."

The immutability matters. A Local Services campaign must be created as one, and a standard Performance Max campaign cannot be switched over later, nor can a Local Services campaign be switched back. Tools that build campaigns will need to decide the type at the outset.

Google also says it has added "support for linking leads to campaigns, coupon lead type, and message lead conversion category." The post gives no further detail on how leads are linked or what the coupon lead type covers.

The timing tracks Google's migration of Local Services Ads into Google Ads. In July 2026, Google detailed a plan to fold Local Services Ads into Google Ads as a pay-per-lead Performance Max campaign type, without carrying over historical performance reports. The first phase began in August for selected US home and storefront advertisers in categories such as plumbing, HVAC and roofing. Service-area businesses and accounts with custom configurations are scheduled to move in late 2026, and non-US accounts and remaining categories in 2027.

Software built for the old Local Services Ads system has had to adapt. On October 12, PPC Land reported that LSArespond had passed 2,000 users as Google moved Local Services Ads into PMax, one example of the tooling that sits on top of these campaigns. The required country_code field hints that the API is being prepared for the non-US phase of the migration, although the post does not say which countries are supported at launch.

Enhanced conversions configuration moves to a unified field

According to Google, v26 adds "Customer.enablement_setting and Customer.effective_enablement_setting to expose the unified enhanced conversions configuration for the account, replacing Customer.enhanced_conversions_for_leads_enabled."

This is the API catching up with a change already made in the Google Ads interface. In April 2026, Google said it would collapse enhanced conversions into a single toggle, first letting accounts accept user-provided data from tags, Data Manager and the API at the same time. By June, Google had replaced three enhanced conversion methods with one on/off setting, merging enhanced conversions for web and for leads at both the account and conversion action level.

An API field named specifically for leads no longer matches that model. Its replacement reflects the merged setting. The post does not explain the difference between the two new fields, though the naming suggests one holds the value set on the account and the other the value that actually applies, which may differ when settings are inherited or overridden. Code that reads enhanced_conversions_for_leads_enabled to audit account setups will need updating on v26.

Shopping listing type and Demand Gen budget floors

The last group is smaller. Google says it has "expanded Campaign.listing_type support to Shopping campaigns." The post does not list the values the field accepts or what it controls for Shopping.

The second item has a direct operational use. According to Google, CurrencyConstant "now exposes the minimum budget per day for a Demand Gen campaign in a given currency." Since April 1, 2026, Google has enforced a minimum daily budget of $5, or the local equivalent, on Demand Gen campaigns. Budget changes below the floor fail with a BUDGET_BELOW_DAILY_MINIMUM error on v21 and later, and with a generic error on v20. Until now, a tool had no clean way to know the local-currency floor before submitting a budget. With the minimum exposed per currency, a Demand Gen campaign builder can validate budgets before a call fails.

What the post leaves out

For a major release, the announcement is notably quiet on breaking changes. The renames and the enhanced conversions field replacement are the only removals it mentions. It lists no deprecations, no removed resources and no migration notes. Earlier majors were more explicit: v25, released on July 22, removed two lifecycle goal resources outright. Whether v26 contains other breaking changes can only be confirmed from the release notes, which the post does not summarize.

Another open item is absent too. In September, Google moved Ads API access management to Google Cloud projects and said developer tokens would be rejected in a future major version. The v26 post does not mention developer tokens at all, which suggests, without confirming, that v26 is not that version.

The wording of the cadence reminder has also shifted slightly. The October 12 announcement described the faster schedule as giving automated agents near-instant access to new features. Two days later, the reminder reads: "This faster cadence gives your automated agents and workflows earlier access to new Google Ads features." Google also restates that "our release blog posts and YouTube live events will move to twice a quarter, covering key updates across several releases at once," which means posts like this one will soon summarize several versions at a time.

Why this matters for advertisers and agencies

Few advertisers call the Google Ads API themselves. Most meet it through bid platforms, reporting tools, feed managers and agency scripts. v26 affects them in three ways.

First, some tools will need work before they can move to v26. Travel bid managers and account audit tools that touch the renamed modifiers or the old enhanced conversions field face code changes, even if the changes are small.

Second, data that previously lived only in the Google Ads interface is reaching third-party tools. Search Lift results, Local Services campaign creation and per-currency Demand Gen minimums all fall into this category. For agencies running Local Services clients through the migration, API creation of the new campaigns removes a manual step.

Third, the EU political advertising change reduces a compliance burden that fell on advertisers with no EU exposure at all. It does so only in v26, only for campaigns that meet three targeting conditions, and without, according to the post, any change to the rules for campaigns that do reach the EU.

Timeline

Summary

Who: The Google Ads API Team, in a post signed by Anash P. Oommen, affecting developers, ad tech vendors, agencies and advertisers whose tools connect to Google Ads.

What: Version 26 of the Google Ads API adds read-only Search Lift data with 15 new metrics, programmatic creation of Local Services Performance Max campaigns, an optional EU political advertising declaration for campaigns targeting only non-EU locations, renamed travel bid modifiers, a unified enhanced conversions field and a per-currency Demand Gen minimum budget.

When: Released on October 14, 2026, with a live walkthrough on October 15. It is the first version under the two-releases-a-month cadence set on October 12.

Where: Published on the Google Ads Developer Blog; the release applies to the Google Ads API worldwide, with the political advertising change tied to EU targeting.

Why: Google is bringing the API in line with changes already made in the Google Ads interface, including the Local Services migration, the single enhanced conversions toggle and travel campaign restructuring, while easing an EU compliance requirement for advertisers with no EU targeting.