The AI Max Migration Nobody Opted Into
September 30, every Broad Match and Automatically Created Assets campaign still standing gets upgraded to AI Max. Whether you logged in this month or not.
Luka JovanovićGoogle2 min read
Key takeaways
The deadline is automatic
September 30 sweeps in every Broad Match and Automatically Created Assets Search campaign left in the account. New ones were already blocked on August 3.
Settings carrying over is not performance carrying over
AI Max changes how targeting and creative decisions get made, not just where a toggle sits. Tuning does not transfer with the label.
Ten minutes now beats a mystery later
Screenshot the current settings before the migration touches them, so a dip in three weeks has an explanation instead of a shrug.
September 30. That's the day every Broad Match and Automatically Created Assets Search campaign still standing gets automatically upgraded to Google's AI Max format. Not a beta. Not an invite. If your account has one sitting untouched, it moves whether you logged in this month or not.
Google blocked new campaigns of that type back on August 3. Everything left is getting swept in over these final weeks. Dynamic Search Ads got a longer runway, that auto-upgrade got pushed to February 2027 after advertiser pushback, but the ability to spin up new DSA ad groups disappears permanently once that deadline lands too (Search Engine Land; Google).
What "carries over your settings" leaves out
Here's the part that annoys me about how platforms handle this. "Carries over your settings" gets repeated in every announcement like it's the same thing as "keeps your account performing the way it did." It isn't. AI Max changes how targeting and creative decisions get made, not just where a toggle sits in the UI. A campaign that's been tuned against a specific audience for months doesn't just inherit that tuning because the label changed. It gets recalibrated against new logic, on your account's live data, while your budget keeps spending underneath it.
I've watched this pattern before on other platforms. The announcement always sounds like a formality. The actual performance dip, when it happens, always looks like a mystery to whoever's reading the dashboard three weeks later without knowing a migration happened underneath them.
The fix costs ten minutes
Log into the account today, not on the 29th. Screenshot the current campaign settings before AI Max touches them. Not because you'll necessarily need the before-and-after, but because "I don't actually know what changed" is a much worse position to be in with a client than "here's exactly what changed and when."
Sources
Written byLuka Jovanović
Seen it go differently?
Tell me. I'd rather be corrected than quoted.
