Local Services Ads Is Becoming Performance Max Pay-Per-Lead, and Your History Doesn't Make the Trip
The short version
Google is retiring the standalone Local Services Ads dashboard and migrating LSA into Google Ads as a new campaign type: Performance Max for pay-per-lead goals. Migration starts in early August 2026, each account gets 14 days notice, and your lead history transfers but your aggregate performance reporting does not. If you run zero LSA and manage no one who does, this is low signal: close the tab. If you or your clients run LSA, this is the highest-signal item of the month, and the move is to export everything this week, before any notice arrives.
What Google announced
In a Help Center page published the week of July 20, Google said Local Services Ads will transition to Performance Max campaigns with pay-per-lead goals, managed inside the regular Google Ads interface. The rollout begins in early August 2026 with a small group of US advertisers in four verticals: pet care, home services, wellness, and education. It continues in phases through 2027, with accounts outside the US migrating in 2027. Google says every advertiser will be notified 14 days before their campaigns move, and coverage from Search Engine Land and PPC Land filled in the details Google's page underplays.
What stays: you pay only for valid leads such as calls, messages, and bookings, not clicks. Ads keep serving only on Search and Maps. Targeting stays keywordless, driven by your Google Business Profile and service categories. The Google verification badge remains. What goes: the standalone LSA dashboard, and with it the aggregate performance reports it hosts. Lead records transfer to the new campaign type; the reporting history describing how your campaigns performed over time does not.
What it actually means
Local Services Ads was the last major Google ad product with human-legible economics. You set a budget, chose direct or maximized bidding, saw a lead price shaped by a vertical rate card, and could reconcile every dollar against a named lead. Folding LSA into Performance Max moves lead pricing from something resembling a rate card to an auction model you cannot inspect. Your vertical lead targets become bid strategy inputs, and if you have read the August 17 bid target brief, you already know how Google treats the gap between the number you state and the number the bidder runs on.
The tell is what does not migrate. Deleting aggregate performance history is not a storage decision. That history is the baseline an advertiser would need to prove the new bidder performs worse than the old system, and after migration it exists only if you exported it first. Google's own page says lead history carries over, which sounds reassuring and is beside the point: you keep the record of who called you, and you lose the record of what a lead used to cost.
This is the third brief in the same arc. The August 17 change makes your stated targets literal. The PMax Partners alpha showed Google conceding, for some accounts, that the machine needs a steering wheel. Now the last manually priced product gets absorbed into the same bidding brain. Your number becomes Google's number, one product at a time.
The pushback writes itself: the August cohort is small, four verticals, US only, so why the urgency? Because the 14-day notice is the trap. Nobody knows their migration date in advance, an agency with dozens of LSA clients cannot export years of reporting across a client book in two weeks while also rebuilding campaign structure, and the phased rollout means every LSA account gets this eventually. The advertisers who migrate last have the most to learn from the first cohort, but only if they froze a baseline while the dashboard still existed. It also lands the same summer Google is reshuffling the rest of the local stack: local inventory ads flip on by default August 31, another quiet change with a hard date.
Google gave every LSA advertiser a delete date and 14 days notice. The export you run this week is the only baseline you will ever have.
Signal or noise: High if you run LSA, low if you run none
For LSA advertisers and the agencies managing them, this is the rare rollout where waiting has a hard cost: once your migration date passes, the historical reporting is unrecoverable. For everyone else there is nothing to do, and this brief will not pretend otherwise. The split is the point of the rating system: triage your week honestly.
The Monday-morning playbook
Track A: you run LSA.
- Run the export this week, before any notice arrives. Pull the lead list with timestamps (and call recordings where available), the charge and billing history, and weekly performance reports broken out by service vertical.
- Screenshot what has no export button. Bid mode, budgets, service areas, vertical lead targets, and business hours settings. Some of this exists nowhere else.
- Freeze a baseline. Record your trailing cost per lead by vertical and by month. This number is about to become unverifiable, and it is the only way you will ever know whether the new bidder beats the old system.
- Calendar the notice. Assign someone to check for the 14-day migration notice weekly, per account.
- Decide your structure before Google does. If you run multiple service lines, decide now how they should map to campaigns in the new format, rather than accepting whatever the migration builds.
Track B: agency ops.
- Inventory the book. List every client with active LSA and assign an export owner per account, with a completion date this week.
- Template the client email. Explain what is changing, what you are exporting on their behalf, and when their account is likely to move. Forwardable beats clever.
The bottom line
Migrations this size are rarely reversible and never negotiable, so the leverage is all in the preparation window, and the window is open right now. The export costs an hour per account this week. The same export costs everything if you attempt it 15 days after your notice arrives. Treat the four-vertical August cohort as your rehearsal: watch what happens to their lead prices, compare it against the baseline you froze, and walk into your own migration date knowing exactly what the old system was worth.
Sources
- Google Ads Help: "Local Services Ads transition to Performance Max campaigns with pay-per-lead goals", published week of July 20, 2026
- Search Engine Land: "Local Services Ads come to Google Ads via Performance Max"
- PPC Land: "Google folds Local Services Ads into Google Ads, cuts historical reports"
- Search Engine Roundtable: "Google Local Services Ads To Transition To Google Ads Platform"
Frequently asked
How do I export Local Services Ads data before the Performance Max migration?
In the Local Services Ads dashboard, export your lead list with timestamps, your charge and billing history, and your weekly performance reports by service vertical, then screenshot settings that have no export button: bid mode, budgets, service areas, and vertical lead targets. Do it before your migration notice arrives; Google gives each account only 14 days warning, and the dashboard hosting those reports is retired after migration.
When does the LSA to Performance Max migration start?
Early August 2026, starting with a small group of US advertisers in pet care, home services, wellness, and education. Google says the rollout continues in phases through 2027, with accounts outside the US migrating in 2027. Each account receives notice 14 days before its migration date.
Does Local Services Ads history transfer to Performance Max?
Partially. Your lead history transfers, so records of who contacted you and what was said carry over. Aggregate performance reporting does not transfer, and the standalone LSA dashboard that hosts it is retired, so historical metrics like cost per lead by vertical over time are gone unless you export them before your migration date.
Get the next brief in your inbox
When Google ships something that matters, you'll get the decode: what changed, whether it's signal or noise, and the move worth making this week. Free, no firehose, unsubscribe any time.