If you run Google Search campaigns and haven't touched their settings in a while, Google is about to touch them for you. Starting 1 September 2026, any Search campaign using Automatically Created Assets or campaign-level broad match gets rolled onto AI Max, Google's newer suite of AI settings, whether anyone on your team asked for it or not (PPC Land, "Google Ads broad match campaigns face AI Max auto-upgrade on September 1"). That makes the difference between AI Max and Performance Max exactly the question worth answering now, before Google answers it for you.
What is AI Max for Search?
AI Max isn't a new campaign type. It's a bundle of AI settings that sits on top of a Search campaign you already have, three components you can toggle individually: search term matching, which uses broad match plus what Google calls "keywordless" technology to find queries beyond the keywords you added; text customization, which writes new headlines and descriptions on the fly based on your landing page and existing assets; and final URL expansion, which can send a click to a different page on your site than the one you specified, if Google's model judges another page is a closer match to the search (Search Engine Land, "AI Max for Search: everything you need to know"; Google Ads Help, "How AI Max for Search campaigns works"). Final URL expansion only runs if text customization is switched on, and switching text customization off turns URL expansion off with it, so the two aren't fully independent controls.
What changes on 1 September 2026?
Google stopped letting advertisers set up new campaign-level broad match or new Automatically Created Assets back on 3 August 2026. From 1 September, existing campaigns still running either setting get migrated onto the equivalent AI Max configuration automatically, in place, rolling out gradually over the month rather than all at once (PPC Land, "Google Ads broad match campaigns face AI Max auto-upgrade on September 1"; Search Engine Land, "Google sets AI Max migration timeline for Search campaigns"). Standard keyword-only Search campaigns, the kind with no broad match and no automatically created assets switched on, aren't part of this particular migration. Dynamic Search Ads get longer: that migration doesn't start until February 2027, after Google pushed the original date back.
AI Max vs Performance Max: the difference that matters
The two get confused because both lean on Google's AI to run more of the campaign automatically, but they're not the same product. Performance Max is a full campaign type that spends across every Google surface at once, Search, Shopping, Display, YouTube, Discover, Gmail and Maps, and gives up keyword-level control and negative-keyword management in exchange for that reach. AI Max stays inside Search: it's a set of enhancements on a campaign you still build around your own keywords, and you keep negative keywords, keyword-level reporting and (per the toggles above) the option to switch individual AI Max components off. Think of it less as "Performance Max, but smaller" and more as your existing Search campaign with three specific automations layered on, each one you can inspect and turn off on its own.
Google's own published numbers put average conversion gains from turning AI Max on at around 14%, rising to about 27% for accounts that were previously running mostly exact and phrase match keywords, non-retail advertisers, based on Google's internal testing (blog.google, Google's own announcement post for AI Max for Search campaigns). That's Google's own figure from its own beta data, not an independently audited number, worth keeping in mind as context rather than a promise for any specific account.
Do you need to do anything before 1 September?
If your account already avoids campaign-level broad match and Automatically Created Assets, no, this particular migration doesn't touch you. If it doesn't, the one place worth checking first is brand campaigns. Search Engine Land's reporting on the migration flags that broad match matching under AI Max can surface ads against competitor brand terms or loosely related navigational queries that a tighter match type would have blocked, and that the accounts most exposed are the ones without brand exclusions already set up on their non-brand campaigns or without clean conversion tracking underneath (Search Engine Land, "Why your brand campaign may not be ready for AI Max"). Before 1 September, it's worth pulling up any brand campaign specifically, confirming negative keywords cover your obvious competitors, and checking conversion tracking is reporting cleanly, because AI Max optimises against whatever signal it's given, good or bad.
What this means beyond your ad account
We've written before about the line between paid and earned AI presence, the fact that a business could buy every ad slot in its category on ChatGPT and still lose every organic recommendation to a competitor, because the two run as separate scoreboards. AI Max sits on the paid side of that same line, but it blurs something else: with text customization switched on, Google's model is now writing some of the actual words that represent your brand in search results, not just deciding who sees the ad. Nobody signs off on that copy line by line before it runs.
That's not a reason to panic, but it is a reason to check. If you'd want to know how an AI assistant describes your brand when someone asks it a buying question, which is the whole premise of AI search visibility, the same instinct is worth applying here: read a sample of the AI-generated headlines and descriptions Google Ads has served under your account, not just the ones you wrote yourself. Google Ads reporting lets you filter for AI Max-generated assets specifically, so this doesn't require guessing.
The wider pattern is the one running through nearly everything we cover here: more of what a prospective customer sees about your brand, in an ad, in a chat answer, in a search result, is now being assembled by a model rather than typed by a person on your team. Watching that from the outside, seeing what's being said and by whom, is the same discipline whether the words came from an AI Overview, a chatbot's answer, or your own ad account's asset optimisation panel.
Two things worth doing this week
- If you run any brand campaign on Search, check it for AI Max eligibility now, not on 1 September. Confirm negative keywords cover your named competitors and that conversion tracking is clean, since AI Max amplifies whatever signal quality is already there.
- Once the migration lands, read a sample of the AI-generated ad copy Google served, filtered in your reporting. It's a five-minute check, and it's the same principle as checking what a chatbot says about you, just on a channel you're already paying for.
The short version
From 1 September 2026, Google auto-upgrades any Search campaign using campaign-level broad match or Automatically Created Assets onto AI Max, a bundle of three toggleable AI settings (search term matching, text customization, final URL expansion) that sits on top of your existing Search campaign rather than replacing it. It's a narrower, more controllable product than Performance Max, which spans every Google surface and drops keyword-level control entirely. Google's own beta data claims a double-digit conversion lift, higher still for exact-and-phrase-heavy accounts, though that's the company's own figure rather than an independent audit. The one concrete thing worth doing before the migration lands is checking your brand campaigns for exclusions and clean tracking, and afterwards, reading a sample of the copy Google's model wrote for you.
