Google today told developers that, starting the week of December 1, 2026, the Google Ads API will no longer accept the campaign-level setting that keeps Demand Gen campaigns off the Display Network, leaving that decision entirely to individual ad groups. A post on the Google Ads Developer Blog by Mattia Tommasone of the Google Ads API team says requests that set the old field during campaign creation or update will fail with an error, and that existing campaigns will be rewritten automatically, with a small group of ad groups paused, so that none of them changes where it serves.

In Short

From the week of December 1, software that builds Google Demand Gen campaigns can no longer switch off Display ads for a whole campaign in one go; the only switch left sits inside each ad group. This matters mostly to agencies and tool makers that create campaigns through the Google Ads API, because requests that still use the old campaign setting will be rejected with an error. Google says no existing campaign will start or stop showing on Display as a result, but it will rewrite settings on existing ad groups and pause those set up to run only on Display inside campaigns that blocked it.

What changes in the week of December 1

The post describes two linked changes to Demand Gen campaigns in the API. The first concerns defaults. For newly created campaigns, the campaign-level field network_settings.target_content_network will default to true rather than false. Display targeting will instead be governed at ad group level, through the channel control demand_gen_ad_group_settings.channel_controls.selected_channels.display and through channel strategies. "Overall default campaign serving behavior will remain unchanged," according to the post.

The second is a restriction. Integrations will no longer be able to disable Display for an entire Demand Gen campaign by setting that field to false. "Setting this field during campaign creation or update will result in an OPERATION_NOT_PERMITTED_FOR_CONTEXT error," the post states. Read in context, the error is aimed at attempts to switch Display off. The post does not say whether a request that explicitly sets the field to true, its new default, will be rejected as well.

Timing is expressed as a calendar week, not as an API release, and the post names no version number. Google's channel controls guide currently links to version 26 reference pages, and in October Google said the API would move to two releases a month starting with v26. The week of December 1 begins on Monday, November 30, which is Cyber Monday.

Why Google is removing the campaign switch

Until now, Display targeting in a Demand Gen campaign could be set in two places, and the two did not carry equal weight. "Previously, disabling Display targeting at the campaign level overrode the Display targeting setting at the ad group level," the post says. An ad group could be configured to include the Google Display Network and still never reach it, because a field one level up said no.

Google frames the change as a matter of consistency between its own tools. "Managing Display targeting exclusively at the ad group level eliminates this dual-level configuration, ensuring consistent channel representation across the Google Ads API, Google Ads UI, and Google Ads Editor," according to the post.

The ad group controls themselves are not new. Google's help page on the Display Network's integration with Demand Gen, posted in February 2025, said that from March 2025 the Display opt-in would move from the campaign to the ad group, and that existing campaign-level opt-ins would carry over to every ad group in the campaign. The API followed a month later, when Google Ads API v19.1, announced on April 16, 2025, added ad group-level channel controls for Demand Gen, covering YouTube in-stream, in-feed and Shorts, Discover, Gmail and Display. The campaign-level field nonetheless kept its power to override those controls in the API for more than a year and a half. From December, it loses that power.

Four automatic changes to existing campaigns

The more consequential part of the post concerns campaigns that already exist. Every Demand Gen campaign currently set to target_content_network = false will be updated to true, "alongside automatic transformations applied to their ad groups." Google lists four cases.

  • No-op ad groups. Where Display is opted out at both campaign and ad group level, the campaign field changes and nothing in the ad group is touched.
  • Channel strategy pushdown. Ad groups using the ALL_CHANNELS strategy will be switched to ALL_OWNED_AND_OPERATED_CHANNELS.
  • Channel control pushdown. Ad groups that target Display alongside other channels will have selected_channels.display set explicitly to false.
  • Unservable corner case. Ad groups that target only Display, inside a campaign where Display was opted out, will have their status changed to PAUSED.

The second and third transformations amount to copying the campaign-level block down into each ad group, so that the ad group itself records what the campaign used to enforce. The fourth is different in kind. A Display-only ad group inside a campaign that excluded Display had nowhere to serve, and Google could not simply switch Display off in it. "Demand Gen ad groups must target at least one channel, so turning off Display would leave them with no active channels, which is an invalid configuration," the post explains. Pausing them, according to Google, preserves "their non-serving status while leaving channel controls intact."

What happens to such an ad group afterwards is not addressed. Once the backfill runs, it sits in a campaign whose Display field reads true, with controls that still select only Display. Its paused status becomes the only setting standing between it and Display inventory. The post does not say whether advertisers will be told when the status changes, or how the change will appear in an account's change history.

Google's overall assurance is unambiguous. "None of the existing campaigns being backfilled will change their serving behavior, as the impacted campaigns are already opted out of Display," the post says.

There is a side effect for reporting, though. After the backfill, the campaign field reads true on every Demand Gen campaign, so it no longer distinguishes campaigns that reach Display from those that do not. That information will live only in ad group settings. The audit query Google publishes reflects this: alongside the campaign field, it pulls channel_config, channel_strategy and each of the selected_channels values for every Demand Gen ad group.

Two descriptions of the default

The post's statement that nothing changes by default rests on a single sentence. "Because ad group-level channel controls default to turning off Display targeting, the overall default targeting behavior remains unchanged (targeting owned and operated inventory unless explicitly opted in)," it reads.

That matches what Google says about the Google Ads interface. The help page on the Display Network integration describes the option to include the Google Display Network in an image ad group as unchecked by default.

The API documentation is less clear-cut. Google's channel controls guide for Demand Gen, last updated on October 30, 2026, says that if channel_controls is omitted when an ad group is created, it defaults to ALL_CHANNELS, a strategy the guide describes as delivering impressions on all channels Demand Gen supports. The guide does not state outright whether that includes the Display Network. It does say that under ALL_OWNED_AND_OPERATED_CHANNELS, channels operated by third parties, such as the Display Network, are disabled. And today's post itself treats ALL_CHANNELS ad groups as Display-enabled, which is why it moves them to the owned-and-operated strategy during the backfill.

Together, the documents leave one combination unexplained. What happens to an ad group created through the API after December 1 without any channel controls, in a campaign whose Display field now defaults to true? Under the old arrangement, the campaign-level default of false kept such an ad group off Display regardless of its own settings. The post says the overall default does not change, but it does not walk through this case, and the developer guide, as last updated, does not say that the ad group default excludes Display.

A third default applies to a different route into Demand Gen. According to Google's help page on the Display migration, standalone Display campaigns moved into Demand Gen through its migration process have the Display Network opted in by default, and it cannot be unselected during migration.

What the sample code shows

The post includes a JSON example of an ad group update that leaves YouTube Shorts as the only selected channel, with YouTube in-stream, YouTube in-feed, Discover, Gmail and Display all set to false. As an alternative, Google points to setting channel_strategy to ALL_OWNED_AND_OPERATED_CHANNELS "as a high-level way to opt out of Display without having to explicitly enumerate every individual channel."

Two details in the published material do not line up with Google's reference documentation. The example and the audit query each list six channels, while the channel controls guide lists seven selectable channels, adding Google Maps, and says every field must be set when selected channels are updated. According to Google's help page on channel controls, Maps serves only when a non-affiliated location extension is enabled. Separately, the audit query as printed in the post has no comma after ad_group.status in its field list. Google Ads Query Language requires commas between selected fields, so the query will not run exactly as published.

Google's own recommended actions are short. It asks developers to review campaign creation payloads and move their applications to the ad group control rather than the campaign-level flag, and to audit existing Demand Gen campaigns to confirm that ad group channel selections reflect the reach they intend. Questions are directed to Google's "Google Advertising and Measurement Community" Discord server.

Display's move into Demand Gen

Today's change is the latest step in a consolidation that has been running for two years. On September 4, 2024, Google said Video Action campaigns would be merged into Demand Gen, with creation of new Video Action campaigns ending in March 2025 and the rest upgraded automatically in the second quarter of 2025. Display followed. Display & Video 360 announced on March 3, 2025 that Display Network inventory would be added to Demand Gen line items, with implementation scheduled for late April 2025, and Google's help page says opted-in Google Ads ad groups with image ads began serving on the Display Network in April 2025.

The pace picked up in 2026. From March 9, Google's Performance Planner stopped supporting Display and Video campaign planning while keeping Demand Gen. On May 26, Google announced that standalone Display campaigns would be folded into Demand Gen, citing its own data for an average 9.5% ROI increase from adding the Display Network to Demand Gen. A migration tool began a phased rollout in June 2026. Google has still given no date for when new Display campaigns can only be created inside Demand Gen, or for when remaining campaigns will be migrated automatically. On the buy-side platform, the Display & Video 360 API gained full Demand Gen support in a rollout from June 10 to June 24, 2026.

Then, on October 14, Google introduced channel prioritization and budget allocation. For Demand Gen, that system splits inventory into two rankable groups, Google's own channels and the Google Display Network, though Google's help page says budget allocation is not supported for Demand Gen campaigns and that API and Editor support was still to come. Ten days later, PPC Land reported that Search campaigns will lose their fixed 50% Display budget split in February 2027 when Display Expansion moves to the same prioritization settings.

Across all of these steps, the direction is the same. Display inventory that used to be bought through dedicated campaign types or blanket switches is becoming a channel inside other campaign types, governed by ad group checkboxes and, since October, by priority tiers.

Why it matters

For advertisers who work in the Google Ads interface, Google says nothing changes in where ads appear. The effects fall on the software layer: agency platforms, third-party management tools and in-house integrations that create or edit Demand Gen campaigns through the API. Any of them still sending the campaign-level false will start receiving errors once the change takes effect, and any that read the campaign field to judge Display exposure will see every Demand Gen campaign marked as Display-enabled.

The change also alters what a single setting can guarantee. Until now, one campaign-level value could keep every current and future ad group in a campaign away from Display inventory. From December, excluding Display is a property of each ad group, set one at a time or through the owned-and-operated strategy. For accounts with many ad groups, that is more settings to keep consistent, and an ad group added later no longer inherits a block from its campaign.

Is the scale of the backfill large? The post does not say. It gives no count of campaigns or ad groups that will be rewritten or paused, does not say on which day of the week the change will land, and does not describe how the four transformations will appear in the Google Ads interface or in Google Ads Editor.

Timeline

Summary

Who: The Google Ads API team at Google, in a post by Mattia Tommasone, and the agencies, tool vendors and in-house developers that create or manage Demand Gen campaigns through the API.

What: The campaign-level Display setting for Demand Gen, network_settings.target_content_network, will default to true and can no longer be set to false; attempts return an OPERATION_NOT_PERMITTED_FOR_CONTEXT error. Display is controlled only through ad group channel controls and channel strategies. Existing campaigns set to false are switched to true, with ad group settings rewritten to keep Display off and Display-only ad groups paused. Google says no campaign's serving changes.

When: Announced today, November 9, 2026, effective from the week of December 1, 2026, which begins on Cyber Monday, November 30.

Where: The Google Ads API, affecting Demand Gen campaigns, with Google saying the change aligns the API with the Google Ads interface and Google Ads Editor.

Why: Google says the two-level setup, in which a campaign-level opt-out overrode ad group settings, created inconsistent channel representation across its tools. The change follows Google's move of standalone Display campaigns into Demand Gen, announced on May 26, 2026. The post leaves open how an API-created ad group without channel controls behaves once the campaign field defaults to true, since Google's developer guide gives that ad group default as ALL_CHANNELS.