Google Ads emailed advertisers on August 5, 2026 to confirm that campaigns running automatically created assets or the campaign-level broad match setting will be converted to AI Max for Search campaigns starting September 1, a deadline that survived the five-month reprieve granted to Dynamic Search Ads in June.

The notice, signed by the Google Ads Team rather than a named executive, arrived in advertiser inboxes with no accompanying blog post. Its subject line stated the change plainly: automatically created assets and campaign-level broad match setting will be upgraded to AI Max. According to the email, campaigns using either feature, or both, will automatically be upgraded to AI Max for Search campaigns from that date.

For accounts that never enabled either setting, nothing changes. For the ones that did, the September date closes a migration window that opened in April and that many practitioners assumed had been pushed back along with the Dynamic Search Ads timeline. It had not.

What the notice covers

The email splits the affected population into two groups and describes a different default configuration for each.

Campaigns with automatically created assets enabled will be upgraded to AI Max with search term matching and text customization switched on by default. Campaigns using the campaign-level broad match setting will be upgraded to AI Max with search term matching switched on by default, and nothing else.

According to Google, AI Max will be enabled with settings configured to closely mirror the legacy setup once the auto-upgrades are complete. That phrasing matters for the automatically created assets cohort, because it introduces a targeting change that the legacy feature never carried. Automatically created assets governed creative generation only. Search term matching governs which queries an ad becomes eligible for. Campaigns that opted into automated headline and description writing will, from September 1, also inherit automated query expansion unless the setting is turned off at ad group level.

The broad match cohort is treated differently. Those campaigns receive search term matching alone, without text customization or final URL expansion. Because final URL expansion requires text customization to be active, neither landing page rerouting nor generated ad copy applies to that group by default. Pinned assets in responsive search ads therefore remain respected for broad match campaigns after the upgrade, a detail that carries weight for regulated advertisers who rely on pinning to hold compliance language in fixed positions.

The email also directs advertisers to a pop-up banner inside the Google Ads interface for voluntary upgrades, and states that automatic upgrades can be avoided by turning off the legacy features or by turning on AI Max manually. "We recommend transitioning to AI Max now to maintain full control over your campaign setup," the message states.

Two deadlines, running in parallel

The original schedule, published April 15, 2026 on the Google Ads and Commerce Blog by Brandon Ervin, Director of Product Management at Google Ads, covered three legacy settings at once. Dynamic Search Ads, automatically created assets and the campaign-level broad match setting were all slated to upgrade in September 2026. That announcement also declared AI Max out of beta after eleven months of open testing.

On June 11, 2026, Google moved the Dynamic Search Ads automigration to February 2027, a five-month extension published on the Google Ads Developer Blog and attributed to advertiser feedback about fourth-quarter planning risk. DSA campaign creation, which had been disabled ahead of the original cutoff, was restored on June 15. Twelve days later, Google rewrote the AI Max reporting documentation to embed the 2027 date directly in the help page practitioners consult most often.

The extension applied to Dynamic Search Ads only. The help centre pages for both affected settings still carry the original date. The broad match keywords documentation states that campaigns using the campaign-level broad match setting will automatically be upgraded starting in September 2026. The text customization page carries an equivalent notice for the feature formerly known as automatically created assets. Neither page was revised when the DSA deadline moved.

August 5 was the first direct notification sent to affected account holders confirming a specific calendar date rather than a month.

The mechanics of the broad match setting

The campaign-level broad match setting is narrower than its name suggests, and its behaviour explains why folding it into AI Max is not purely cosmetic.

Enabling the setting converts every existing phrase and exact match keyword in a Search campaign into broad match, and forces any keyword added afterwards to use broad match as well. According to Google's documentation, the setting is available only to campaigns running conversion-based or conversion-value-based Smart Bidding.

Its more consequential effect sits in keyword prioritization. Google operates a four-tier hierarchy for deciding which keyword in an account is eligible for a given query. Exact match keywords identical to the search term rank first. Phrase and broad match keywords, or Performance Max search themes, identical to the search term rank second. AI-based relevance ranking comes third. Ad Rank breaks remaining ties.

Campaigns with the broad match setting enabled are treated as though both a broad match and an exact match version of every keyword were present. Google's stated rationale is measurement. According to the documentation, the change was made after advertisers reported difficulty assessing the impact of a broad match upgrade, because traffic would match to other parts of the account and skew the comparison. The example given in the help page uses a hypothetical exact keyword for a phone model that would otherwise strictly outrank its broad match counterpart in a separate campaign.

Where the same keyword exists in exact match in another campaign, the keyword with the higher Ad Rank goes to auction. Only searches identical to a keyword are affected by the prioritization change.

Reverting is possible. Turning the setting off restores keyword match types, though keywords converted during the enabled period appear under a removed status and must be reinstated at their original match types. Historical statistics stay visible, and broad match performance can be segmented by the narrowest match type that would have captured the traffic.

What text customization does

Automatically created assets were fully rolled out with generative AI in February 2024 for English-language advertisers in the United States and United Kingdom, generating headlines and descriptions for responsive search ads from landing page content. The feature has since been renamed text customization and, according to the current documentation, requires opting into AI Max to use at all. That dependency is the technical reason the September upgrade exists.

Text customization combines extractive techniques, such as pulling snippets from landing page titles, descriptions and meta tags, with generative models grounded in landing page content. Assets are reviewed and refreshed at least every 48 hours, so a change to a landing page propagates into generated copy within that window. Google-generated assets serve only when predicted to outperform advertiser-supplied headlines and descriptions, and they count toward the responsive search ad Ad Strength rating.

Quality controls are described in absolute terms. According to Google, the ad copy generated is guaranteed to be relevant to the advertiser's products and offerings, with the documentation offering the example that the system will not write headlines about makeup when the landing page covers shampoo only. The company also notes it is piloting text guidelines, which allow term exclusions, tone of voice definitions and concept avoidance. That pilot was first documented in September 2025, with a term exclusion cap of 25 words or phrases.

Conditions attached to the upgrade

Two operational caveats appear in the AI Max documentation and apply to campaigns arriving through the automatic route.

The first concerns budget. According to Google, AI Max will not be effective if a campaign is limited by budget, and an alert appears in the interface when a budget-limited campaign has AI Max enabled. Search term matching widens the eligible query pool without widening the budget that funds it.

The second concerns tracking. Final URL expansion substitutes advertiser-supplied URLs with dynamic landing pages, and tracking templates that were built around fixed destinations can break. Google's documentation identifies four supported lpurl tag patterns and warns that static tracking URLs without an lpurl tag can route users to the tracking destination itself rather than a dynamic page. Nonstandard constructions, such as an lpurl tag embedded inside a URL parameter, can produce 404 errors. This applies to the automatically created assets cohort only if final URL expansion is subsequently enabled, since the upgrade does not switch it on by default.

Reporting changes arrive with the upgrade regardless of configuration. The search terms report gains AI Max as a match type alongside a source column distinguishing broad match expansion from keywordless matching, plus a combined view of search term, headlines and URLs. The keywords report shows AI Max summary rows. The landing pages report adds a selected by column. Google introduced the first two AI Max reporting metrics in September 2025, covering expanded matches and expanded landing pages.

Advertisers question the scope

The email generated immediate confusion in the r/PPC community, where a thread posted by user the__poseidon reproduced the message alongside a direct question: the account in question did not have automatically created assets enabled.

The community response was corrective rather than alarmed. "If you don't have it turned on then it won't apply to you. Google is saying they are merging the two settings into AI Max. So if you want to turn them on/off in the future, that is where they will be," wrote fathom53, identified on the platform as Duane Brown. Another participant, Alarming_Plastic1015, characterised the change as "basically just a rebrand and a shove into a new bucket."

Both readings capture something accurate. For the broad match cohort, the setting genuinely does relocate into AI Max rather than change behaviour. For the automatically created assets cohort, the addition of search term matching is a substantive change to query eligibility, not a relabelling.

Why the September date carries weight

AI Max has been contested since its beta launch on May 6, 2025, when Google promised 14% more conversions or conversion value at similar cost. That figure was revised in the April 2026 general availability announcement to an average of 7% more conversions or conversion value at a similar CPA or ROAS, measured across the full feature suite compared with search term matching alone. The footnote attached to the claim identifies it as Google internal data from 2026, excluding retail advertisers.

Independent measurement has not matched it. In August 2025, Ezra Sackett, Director of Paid Search at Monks, reported that 99% of AI Max impressions produced zero conversions across roughly 30,000 search terms in client accounts. Later that month, analysts flagged aggressive AI Max expansion onto Search Partner Network placements, where Intelligency Group research had found return on ad spend 37% below Google Search proper. In November 2025, an analysis of more than 250 retail campaigns found AI Max delivering conversions at roughly 35% lower ROAS than traditional match types. Attribution disputes followed, with Google clarifying in December 2025 that search term matching relies on inferred intent rather than literal query text.

Google has answered with controls rather than retreat. Branded search controls arrived inside AI Max in May 2026, giving advertisers three options for whether ads appear on queries containing brand names. AI Brief, a natural-language instruction layer, launched on April 30, 2026 alongside text disclaimers that force mandatory compliance text into ads using final URL expansion. The same day, AI Max reached standard Shopping campaigns, and travel formats were folded into standard Search campaigns with AI Max as the activation layer.

Distribution is the pressure point. At Google Marketing Live on May 20, 2026, Vidhya Srinivasan, VP and GM of Google Ads and Commerce, confirmed that appearing in new AI search ad formats requires AI Max for Search or Performance Max with text customization. Conversational Discovery ads and Highlighted Answers are not reachable through legacy Search configurations.

The pattern extends beyond one platform. Microsoft retired Predictive Matching into its own AI Max product in July 2026, absorbing a keyword expansion feature into an automation layer covering query matching, asset personalisation and URL routing.

For accounts that reach September 1 without acting, the configuration is decided by which legacy feature was in use. For the rest, the choice is between adopting AI Max on their own schedule and switching off the legacy settings entirely. There is no third option that preserves automatically created assets or the campaign-level broad match setting in their current form.

Timeline

Summary

Who: Google Ads notified advertisers whose Search campaigns use automatically created assets or the campaign-level broad match setting. The message was signed by the Google Ads Team. The original April 2026 announcement was authored by Brandon Ervin, Director of Product Management at Google Ads.

What: Campaigns using either legacy setting will be automatically upgraded to AI Max for Search campaigns. Automatically created assets campaigns receive search term matching and text customization enabled by default. Campaign-level broad match campaigns receive search term matching enabled by default. Advertisers can avoid the automatic upgrade by turning off the legacy features or by enabling AI Max themselves.

When: The email was sent on August 5, 2026. Automatic upgrades begin September 1, 2026. The parallel Dynamic Search Ads automigration was moved to February 2027 on June 11, 2026, and does not affect the September date for these two settings.

Where: The change applies to Google Ads accounts globally, managed through the Google Ads interface, Google Ads Editor and the Google Ads API. A pop-up banner offering voluntary upgrade appears in the Google Ads interface.

Why: According to Google, AI Max campaigns using the full feature suite of search term matching, text customization and final URL expansion see an average of 7% more conversions or conversion value at a similar CPA or ROAS than campaigns using search term matching alone, based on internal 2026 data excluding retail advertisers. Text customization now requires AI Max to operate, which makes the migration of automatically created assets a technical dependency rather than a purely commercial choice. Independent testing has repeatedly reported weaker outcomes than Google's internal figures, and access to newer AI search ad formats now depends on running AI Max or Performance Max with text customization.