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● High signal (if you run automatically created assets)

The September 1 AI Max Auto-Upgrade: Your Creative Setting Just Became a Targeting Setting

By Kyle Schwietz · 18+ years agency-side on the Google stack · Published August 7, 2026 · Updated September 12, 2026 · 10 min read
Updated September 12, 2026, mid-migration. Google has quietly added a keyword prioritization rule to the broad match setting help page: once a campaign moves to AI Max, its broad keywords stop being prioritized as exact match. The documented fix, converting keywords to exact, removes their historical stats. Also new: the API now exposes each campaign's scheduled upgrade date. Details in the September 12 section below. Earlier corrections from August 29 remain: new legacy configurations have been blocked since August 3, and upgrades roll through the end of September, campaign by campaign.

The short version

Google emailed advertisers on August 5: Search campaigns using automatically created assets or the campaign-level broad match setting are automatically upgraded to AI Max starting September 1, 2026. The two groups do not get the same thing. Broad match campaigns get search term matching and nothing else, which is close to a relabel. Automatically created assets campaigns get search term matching and text customization, and that is a real change: automatically created assets only ever governed creative generation, while search term matching governs which queries you are eligible for. Google describes the upgrade as mirroring your current setup. For the ACA group it adds a targeting system that setting never had. High signal if you run ACA on Search, medium if you run campaign-level broad match, nothing to do if you run neither.

What Google announced

The notice arrived on August 5, 2026 as an email signed by "the Google Ads Team," with no accompanying blog post. Subject line: automatically created assets and campaign-level broad match setting will be upgraded to AI Max. Campaigns using either feature, or both, are automatically converted to AI Max for Search campaigns from September 1. Accounts running neither setting are unaffected.

The configurations differ by group. Per PPC Land's reporting and Search Engine Land's coverage:

Google's framing is that AI Max will be configured "to closely mirror the legacy setup." The email points advertisers to a pop-up banner in the interface for voluntary early upgrade, and states that the automatic upgrade can be avoided by turning the legacy features off or by enabling AI Max yourself: "We recommend transitioning to AI Max now to maintain full control over your campaign setup." There is no option that keeps automatically created assets or the campaign-level broad match setting in their current form.

One correction worth making loudly, because the trades keep merging two separate deadlines. On June 11, 2026, Google moved the Dynamic Search Ads automigration from September 2026 to February 2027, and restored DSA campaign creation on June 15. That five-month extension applied to DSA only. September 1 still stands for these two settings, and the help pages for both were never revised when the DSA date moved.

What changed after this brief first ran

The exit is one-way now. Since August 3, new campaign-level broad match and legacy automatically created assets configurations cannot be created anywhere: interface, Editor, or any API version. Existing setups still run, and switching them off before your campaign's turn still avoids AI Max. But you cannot switch back, which changes the revert calculus described below from untidy to permanent. Google put the technical detail on its Developer Blog on August 12, a week after the advertiser email.

September 1 is a start date, not an event. Google's own announcement expects all eligible upgrades "to conclude by the end of September," with in-account notifications before each campaign transitions. They move in place, at different times, across the month. So if nothing has changed by Tuesday afternoon, nothing has gone wrong and nothing has been reprieved. The practical consequence is for your baseline: the day a campaign flips is the day its numbers stop being comparable, that date differs per campaign, and it is not announced in advance.

If anything in your stack talks to the API, you have a second deadline. API versions released after September 1 remove the legacy entities for these two settings outright. Already-released versions keep working, with the older ones sunsetting around September 2027. Scripts, bulk sheets and connectors need an owner and a date before then, rather than after something breaks quietly.

Update, September 12: the broad match cohort is not the easy call it was

On August 7 this brief rated the campaign-level broad match cohort medium signal, on the grounds that the upgrade was close to a relabel. Google has since added a section to its broad match keywords campaign setting help page that changes that reading, and it did so without an announcement. Search Engine Roundtable spotted the addition on September 1 and PPC News Feed reported it September 10.

The context first. The whole point of the campaign-level broad match setting was a prioritization trick: Google's page says keywords in a campaign with the setting enabled "will be prioritized as if they are both exact and broad match." That is what let an advertiser consolidate a brand campaign to broad match while keeping the traffic priority that exact match would have had against other campaigns in the account. Google's own FAQ on the page explains the setting exists because "traffic would match to other parts of the account and skew the results" without it.

The new section, quoted in full: "When disabling the broad match campaign setting or moving to AI Max, broad keywords are not treated as exact match keywords in prioritization. To maintain this keyword prioritization without the broad match campaign setting enabled, add copies of exact match keywords in your new AI Max campaign (broad can be converted to exact, but that will remove historical keyword stats). If the standard prioritization of exact match keywords in AI Max is preferred, no action is required."

Read that as three facts. One: the upgrade removes the prioritization the setting was built to provide. A brand campaign that held priority-one status over the rest of the account because of this setting loses it on the day it migrates. Two: the remedy is manual and per keyword. Three: the two ways to apply the remedy are not equal. Adding an exact-match copy alongside the broad keyword keeps the broad keyword's history. Converting the broad keyword to exact, which is the faster bulk operation and the one most people will reach for, discards it. Google puts that distinction in parentheses.

The closing sentence, that no action is required if "standard prioritization" is preferred, is not a contradiction so much as a quiet reframe: standard prioritization is the state in which your consolidated broad match campaign loses to any identical exact keyword elsewhere in the account, which is the state the setting existed to prevent. Whether that is acceptable depends on why the setting was turned on, and for most accounts it was turned on for brand separation.

Also new, and useful: Google Ads API v25.1, released August 19, added Campaign.aca_migration_date_time and Campaign.broad_match_migration_date_time. The scheduled forced-upgrade date is now readable per campaign before it lands. That closes the gap this brief flagged on August 29, where each campaign's flip date was only knowable after the in-account notification arrived. Anyone with API access or a script can pull both fields today and know exactly which day each baseline stops being comparable.

What this changes in the playbook. For the broad match cohort, add two steps before your campaign's migration date. First, pull broad_match_migration_date_time for every affected campaign, or ask whoever runs your scripts to. Second, decide per campaign whether the exact-as-broad prioritization mattered. If the campaign is a brand campaign, or any campaign that holds priority over others on purpose, add exact-match copies of its keywords in the AI Max campaign and leave the broad keywords in place. Do not use bulk match type conversion for this, because that is the path that deletes the stats. If prioritization did not matter, Google is right that nothing needs doing.

The rating for the broad match cohort moves from medium to high for brand campaigns and any campaign that relies on the setting for traffic priority, medium otherwise. The August 7 reasoning stands for accounts where the setting was on for reach alone.

What it actually means

The broad match group is the easy call, and the honest answer is that it barely matters. Those campaigns already ran automated query expansion; the setting is being relocated into the AI Max panel rather than changed. Pinned assets in responsive search ads stay respected, because neither text customization nor final URL expansion is switched on. If you are a regulated advertiser holding compliance language in pinned positions, that is the sentence you needed. One commenter in the r/PPC thread on the email called it "basically just a rebrand and a shove into a new bucket," and for this group that reading is correct.

The automatically created assets group is a different story, and it turns on a distinction Google's "mirror" language quietly erases. Automatically created assets governed creative generation. Search term matching governs query eligibility. Those are separate layers of the account. An advertiser who ticked a box years ago to let Google write extra headlines from their landing pages did not consent to automated query expansion, because that box never offered it. On September 1 they inherit it anyway, switched on by default, unless they turn it off at ad group level. Mirroring a setup does not usually involve adding a system the setup never contained.

Two operational conditions in Google's own AI Max documentation deserve to be read together with this month's other deadline. First, Google states plainly that AI Max will not be effective if a campaign is limited by budget, and surfaces an in-interface alert when a budget-limited campaign has AI Max enabled. Search term matching widens the pool of queries you are eligible for without widening the budget that funds it. Second, as of the August 17 bid target change, budget-limited campaigns on target-based bidding now deliver to the target you typed rather than the better number you were getting. So a budget-limited ACA campaign is about to receive wider query eligibility and a stricter target inside three weeks of each other. That is the interaction to catch before September, and nobody is going to flag it for you.

There is also a trap on the way out. If you decide to switch the campaign-level broad match setting off rather than migrate, know that reverting is untidy: turning it off restores match types, but keywords that were converted while it was enabled land in a removed status and have to be reinstated at their original match types by hand. Historical statistics stay visible. If there is any chance you will revert, export your keyword list with match types now, while the original state still exists somewhere other than your memory.

On what to expect once it lands: independent measurement of AI Max has consistently run below Google's own figures. Google's April 2026 general availability claim was an average of 7% more conversions or conversion value at similar CPA or ROAS for the full feature suite versus search term matching alone, sourced to internal 2026 data excluding retail, revised down from the 14% claimed at beta launch in May 2025. Against that, an analysis of more than 250 retail campaigns in November 2025 reported conversions at roughly 35% lower ROAS than traditional match types. Neither number tells you what your account will do. Both tell you to hold a baseline rather than trust the first two weeks of dashboard.

Which is harder than it sounds, because the reporting changes shape at the same time the traffic does. The search terms report gains AI Max as a match type plus a source column distinguishing broad match expansion from keywordless matching. The keywords report adds AI Max summary rows. The landing pages report adds a "selected by" column. Those changes arrive with the upgrade regardless of which components you keep. A baseline frozen on September 2 is a baseline taken in different units than the one you needed.

Automatically created assets decided what your ads said. Search term matching decides who sees them. Google is calling the second one a mirror of the first.

Signal or noise: split by cohort

High signal if you run automatically created assets on Search. You are getting a targeting change bundled into what was a creative setting, on a default, with 25 days notice and no blog post. That is structural, and the decision about search term matching should be made deliberately rather than inherited. Medium signal if you run the campaign-level broad match setting. The behavior is largely preserved and pinning still holds; the real work is knowing the revert path is messy and exporting your match types before you need them. Noise if you run neither. The email went out broadly and confused plenty of people whose accounts have neither setting enabled. Check once, confirm, and move on.

The Monday-morning playbook

You have until September 1. The useful window is now, because a baseline taken after the upgrade is taken in different units.

  1. Find out which cohort each campaign is in, or whether it is in either. Check Search campaigns for the campaign-level broad match setting and for automatically created assets, now surfaced as text customization. Google Ads Editor is faster than the interface across a book of accounts. Plenty of advertisers who got the email have neither setting on; confirming that is a legitimate outcome.
  2. Freeze the baseline before September 1, and know it has to hold for a month. Export search terms, keyword performance, ad and asset performance, landing pages, and CPA or ROAS by campaign. Do this now: the search terms, keywords and landing pages reports all change structure with the upgrade, so a post-hoc comparison is not comparing like with like. Because campaigns migrate at different times across September, take the export once before the first and then note each campaign's actual flip date as its in-account notification arrives. A single September baseline will silently straddle both states.
  3. Inventory anything that touches these settings through the API. Scripts, bulk sheets, reporting connectors, in-house tooling. API versions published after September 1 drop the legacy entities entirely and the older versions sunset around September 2027. This is the one item on this list with a year of runway and no reminder attached, which is exactly why it gets missed. Put a name and a date against it now.
  4. ACA cohort: make the search term matching call deliberately. It arrives on by default. It can be toggled off at ad group level, but it must be on at campaign level to be available at ad group level at all. Decide per campaign, and treat brand campaigns as a separate decision rather than a default.
  5. ACA cohort: decide on text customization. To turn it off, go to Campaigns, select the Settings tab, tick the campaigns you want to edit, choose AI Max, open the Asset optimization panel, and deselect the Text customization checkbox.
  6. Check budget-limited status on every affected campaign. Google says AI Max is not effective on budget-limited campaigns. With the August 17 target change already in force, a budget-limited campaign is getting wider eligibility and a stricter target within three weeks. Either fund it or keep search term matching off.
  7. Compliance and regulated accounts: audit your pins. The broad match cohort keeps pinned assets respected. The ACA cohort gets text customization, which generates headlines and descriptions from landing page content and refreshes them at least every 48 hours. If pinned copy is carrying required disclosure language, verify behavior before September 1 and look at the text guidelines pilot, which allows term exclusions up to a 25-term cap.
  8. Before reverting anything, export keywords with match types. Turning the campaign-level broad match setting off pushes converted keywords into a removed status; they must be reinstated at their original match types manually. The export is your only clean record of what those were.
  9. Agency ops. Inventory which clients sit in which cohort and put a name against each. Template the client note now: which setting they have, what switches on, what you are turning off and why, and the date you will review it. Send it before September 1, not after the first weird search term shows up.

September 1 is one of five dated Google changes landing between now and February 2027. The rest are in the deadline calendar.

The bottom line

If you run the campaign-level broad match setting, this is housekeeping: confirm, export your match types, move on. If you run automatically created assets, do not let the word "mirror" do your thinking. A creative automation setting is being used as the entry point for a targeting automation setting, on a default, announced by unsigned email with no blog post, 25 days out. That may still be the right configuration for your account. It should be a decision you make before September 1, with a baseline already frozen, rather than one you discover in the search terms report in October. The wider strategic question, what it means when the reports you would audit this with are themselves changing shape, is the subject of the companion essay on Uncommon Move: The Sealed Auction: Google Search Goes Opaque in Q3 2026.

Update, August 14, 2026: September is now carrying a second Search change. Google announced that campaign-level language targeting is being removed from Search, AI Max for Search, and the Search Network portion of Performance Max, starting in September. That makes the baseline freeze in step one below more valuable, not less: two platform changes inside one reporting month means anything you fail to export before September 1 becomes impossible to attribute afterward.

Frequently asked

What happens to automatically created assets on September 1, 2026?

Search campaigns using automatically created assets are automatically upgraded to AI Max for Search campaigns starting September 1, 2026, with search term matching and text customization enabled by default. Automatically created assets has been renamed text customization and now requires AI Max to run at all, which is the technical reason for the migration. The addition to watch is search term matching: automatically created assets governed creative generation only, while search term matching governs which queries your ads are eligible for. Campaigns using the campaign-level broad match setting are treated differently and receive search term matching alone, without text customization or final URL expansion.

How do I opt out of the AI Max auto-upgrade?

There is no setting that declines the upgrade while keeping the legacy features. Google states that automatic upgrades can be avoided in two ways: turn the legacy features off entirely before September 1, 2026, or turn AI Max on yourself so you control the configuration. If you accept the upgrade, individual components can still be disabled afterwards. Search term matching can be toggled off at ad group level, and text customization is turned off under Campaigns, Settings, then AI Max, then the Asset optimization panel, by deselecting the Text customization checkbox.

Does the September 2026 AI Max upgrade apply to Dynamic Search Ads?

No. Google moved the Dynamic Search Ads automigration from September 2026 to February 2027 on June 11, 2026, and DSA campaign creation was restored on June 15, 2026. That five-month extension applied to Dynamic Search Ads only. The September 1, 2026 date still stands for automatically created assets and the campaign-level broad match setting, and the help pages for both settings were never revised when the DSA date moved. Two AI Max deadlines are now running in parallel and they are frequently conflated.

When exactly will my campaign be upgraded to AI Max?

Not necessarily on September 1. Google's announcement says it expects all upgrades for eligible campaigns to conclude by the end of September 2026, and that advertisers receive notifications in the account before a campaign transitions. September 1 is when the migration window opens, not a single switch-over date, so campaigns move in place at different times across the month. Practically this means two things. If nothing has changed in your account in the first week, nothing has gone wrong and nothing has been postponed. And because each campaign flips on its own date, a performance baseline taken at any point during September will straddle both configurations for part of your account, so record each campaign's actual transition date as its notification arrives rather than treating September as one period.

Can I still create a new campaign-level broad match setting?

No. Since August 3, 2026, creating new campaign-level broad match configurations or legacy automatically created assets has been blocked across the Google Ads interface, Google Ads Editor and all versions of the Google Ads API. Existing configurations continue to run until they are upgraded, and turning them off before the upgrade still avoids AI Max, but the move is one-way: once disabled, the legacy setting cannot be recreated. Anyone considering switching off rather than migrating should treat it as permanent and export their keyword list with match types first, because keywords converted while campaign-level broad match was enabled land in a removed status on revert and must be reinstated manually.

Sources

KS

Kyle Schwietz

Agency leader and strategist with 18+ years running marketing on the Google ad stack. Selected for Google's 2026 Master of Leadership Summit, one of 34 nationally. Also publishes Uncommon Move on agentic AI marketing strategy.