AI Max Google Ads: what's changing in September 2026 and how to prepare your campaigns

We've been hearing the same buzz around Google Ads for months: “DSAs are leaving, everything migrates to AI Max”. And for once, it's not social media noise. On 15 April 2026, Google confirmed the release of the open beta of AI Max for Search and set the timetable that many advertisers would rather not see so close: at September 2026, Search campaigns with Dynamic Search Ads, Automatically Created Assets and campaign-level broad match settings will be automatically upgraded to AI Max.

Translated into the language of any business that invests in Google AdsIf you still have campaigns using DSA or the old broad match, in a matter of weeks you will no longer be able to create new campaigns and, shortly after, the ones you already have active will jump to the new format on their own. And as is often the case with Google's automatic changes, arriving at the change without preparation is the quickest way to see your CPA skyrocket on a Monday morning.

Let's sort out what we know, what the data says and, above all, what you should be checking before the clock reaches zero.

What exactly is AI Max for Search

AI Max is not a new campaign that you have to create from scratch. It is a optimisation layer which is switched on over your existing search campaigns. When you activate it, Google applies three blocks of functions that until now have been spread across different configurations:

• Extended concordance with context: It's no longer just a broad match. The system mixes your keywords with real-time intent signals, your web content and user behaviour to decide when to appear.
• AI-generated text: the ads are automatically adapted to the query. The system creates variants of titles and descriptions based on the assets you provide, your landing page and your history.
• Intelligent bidding and targeting rules: some of the eternal keyword lists are eliminated and replaced by targets, audiences and guardrails.

What matters: AI Max is not Performance Max nor will it replace it. PMax continues to cover all inventories (YouTube, Display, Discover, Gmail, Maps, Search). AI Max lives inside the search network. It coexists with PMax, it does not replace it.

The calendar you need to keep glued to your screen

This is what Google has officially announced:

• 15 April 2026: AI Max moves out of beta and into general availability.
• April-September 2026: voluntary window. You can migrate at your own pace, with the Google Ads calculator to support you.
• September 2026: the creation of new campaigns with DSA in Google Ads, Google Ads Editor and the API. At the same time, eligible campaigns that continue with DSA, ACA or broad match at campaign level are automatically migrated.

Compared to the transition from Smart Shopping to Performance Max, this time Google gives us about five and a half months leeway. About a 40% less than runway than the last major migration. If your agency or team manages multiple accounts, this changes the planning.

What the data says about the performance of AI Max Google Ads

We have to tread carefully here, because most of the public figures come from the advertiser itself. According to Google, campaigns that fully activate AI Max - i.e. all three feature blocks at the same time - register on average 7% more conversions or conversion value at the same CPA or ROAS than those that only used search term matching. It's not an extraordinary improvement, but it's not inflated marketing either: the data is measured on accounts that already had a decent setup.

What we will see in agencies over the summer - we are already seeing it in some accounts that have migrated early - is quite consistent with that figure:

• Accounts with good data feeds (rich web, clean assets, well-measured conversions) tend to do better.
• Accounts with little historical signal or weak tracking sometimes remain flat or worsen slightly.
• Accounts with railguards well configured from day one suffer much less in the transition.

If you ask me what the clearest pattern is, it's that last one: campaigns that go into AI Max with no rules about what the AI can and cannot say are the ones with the most surprises in the first 15 days.

What to check before you press the button

Migrating to AI Max is not about ticking a checkbox. It is about preparing the environment so that the artificial intelligence play in your favour rather than playing blindly. These are the areas where working calmly is making a difference:

1. Quality of your website

AI Max reads your landing page and your site to generate text variations and to decide when it is relevant to display. If your website has poor, poorly structured or outdated content, you are giving the AI bad raw material. Before migrating, make sure that each landing page has clear titles, concrete descriptions and a headline that says straightforwardly what you are offering and to whom.

2. Assets of the advertisement

The system needs variety. Few titles and repeated descriptions mean less room for optimisation. It is advisable to come up with at least 10-15 titles and 4 different descriptions, aligned with the different angles of your value proposition.

3. Guardrails: what AI can't say

It's probably the least eye-catching part, but the most cost-effective to set up. The railguards are lists of words or phrases that the system cannot use in advertisements. This is where they come in:

• Names of competitors.
• Sensitive legal terms (especially if you work with regulated sectors: health, finance, legal).
• Promises you can't keep (“guaranteed”, “the best”, “no cost” if it's not true).
• Off-brand tone.

Setting up these safeguards well before migrating avoids that classic scare of discovering on a Friday that you have been advertising for a week something that your legal department would have instantly vetoed.

4. Tracking and conversions

If your conversion pixel is weak, AI Max will optimise for weak signals. Before migrating you should check that the GA4, Google Ads tag, enhanced conversions and, if e-commerce, the product feed are clean and sending consistent data.

5. Account structure

AI Max works best with fewer campaigns and more muscle in each campaign. Now is a good time to consolidate duplicate campaigns, merge redundant ad groups and review audience targeting logic.

How we are approaching it at Vandelay

In practice, we are not blindly migrating accounts as soon as Google opens the door. The flow we are using with Google Ads clients in Barcelona and the rest of Spain is quite simple:

1. Pre-audit of the account, with a focus on tracking, creative assets and structure.
2. Controlled test of AI Max in one or two non-critical campaigns, with budgets comparable to the historical one.
3. Actual comparison for 2-3 weeks: CPA, ROAS, quality of traffic, search terms coming in and, above all, what AI Max is generating in the texts.
4. Scaling to the rest of the campaigns once we have evidence, not before.

Applied in this way, migration is no longer a leap in the dark and becomes a data-driven decision. Which, in digital marketing, is the difference between adopting a technology because it “plays” and adopting it because it moves results.

What will really make a difference

There's something worth saying as it stands. AI within Google Ads is going to do more and more things for you, but will not replace the discretion of the account manager.. It will replace tasks: picking keywords one by one, writing five ad variants on a Friday at seven o'clock, manually deciding which query deserves more bids at eleven o'clock at night. What it will not replace is strategy, business reading, customer insight and the ability to say “this thing the AI is proposing doesn't fit the brand”.

September 2026 will separate the accounts that came prepared from those that found out about it through a dashboard notification. If you manage Google Ads investments - yours or your team's - this summer is the time to get your house in order before the change comes without asking.

If you want a quick review of how your account is doing in preparation for the migration to AI Max, at Vandelay we usually open a free 15-minute call to diagnose the starting point and to say, without any make-up, whether it makes sense to migrate now or to wait a few weeks. Sometimes the best decision is not to touch anything yet. And that, in an industry that lives on change, also needs to be said.