The shortest AI Max migration window in Google Ads history is now running. Every advertiser using Dynamic Search Ads, Automatically Created Assets, or campaign-level broad match has roughly five and a half months to prepare. After September, the choice is no longer yours.
On April 15, 2026, Brandon Ervin, Director of Product Management at Google Ads, announced that AI Max for Search has reached general availability. He also confirmed the auto-upgrade timeline. Three legacy features are being absorbed into AI Max in September 2026. There is no formal opt-out for eligible campaigns.
This is the most consequential Search Ads change since the Smart Shopping to Performance Max sunset in 2022. The 2022 migration ran nine months. This one runs forty percent shorter. Agencies and in-house teams that wait until August will land in September with no learning data and no time to course correct.
This post is the AI Max migration playbook. What shipped, what is being sunset, what the headline numbers actually measure, and the week-by-week calendar you should be running between now and September.
What April 15 Actually Shipped for AI Max Migration
April 15 was a state change, not a new product launch. AI Max for Search had been in open beta since May 2025. Google reported that hundreds of thousands of advertisers were already running it before GA. What changed in April:
- GA status. AI Max is now the default recommended campaign type for Search, not a beta toggle.
- Auto-upgrade announcement. September 2026 is the hard deadline for three legacy features.
- Voluntary upgrade tools. In-UI banners for ACA and broad-match users, one-click A/B experiment tools, and DSA-specific upgrade flows started rolling out the week of April 15.
For agencies, the practical takeaway is that AI Max migration is no longer a question of if. It is a question of when, and how much control you keep over the process.
Key Takeaway: AI Max GA is not optional infrastructure. The September auto-upgrade is the real deadline. Voluntary AI Max migration is the only way to control which default features get applied to your campaigns.
The Three Campaign Features Being Sunset
The auto-upgrade absorbs three separate legacy features into AI Max. Each one has a direct replacement inside the new campaign type.
Dynamic Search Ads
DSA generated headlines and selected landing pages from your crawled site content. It matched queries based on similarity to your page copy. Inside AI Max, this becomes search-term matching plus final URL expansion. The behavior is similar. The controls are different.
Automatically Created Assets
ACA generated extra headlines and descriptions for Responsive Search Ads using your site content. Inside AI Max, this becomes text customization. You can apply text guidelines to constrain how the system rewrites your copy. That control did not exist in ACA.
Campaign-level Broad Match
Broad match applied at the campaign or account level expanded coverage on every keyword in scope. Inside AI Max, this is replaced by search-term matching, which uses landing page content and AI signals instead of keyword expansion alone.
Notable non-sunsets: standard keyword campaigns continue. Exact match and phrase match stay. Google’s own spokesperson told Search Engine Land that keywords remain essential because they provide the fuel for AI signals. If your account is pure exact and phrase match with no DSA, no ACA, and no campaign-level broad match, nothing auto-upgrades in September.
The 7% Lift Number Is Narrower Than It Reads
Google’s headline GA claim is a 7% conversion or value lift. That number is not the comparison most advertisers assume.
| The question | What Google disclosed |
|---|---|
| Comparison baseline | AI Max with search-term matching only, not vs. DSA or vs. exact-match keywords. |
| Measurement dataset | Google internal data, 2026. No sample size disclosed. |
| Who is included | Non-Retail advertisers only. Retail is explicitly excluded. |
| Feature set under test | Full feature suite means search-term matching plus text customization plus final URL expansion at the same time. |
Translation. The 7% number is full-feature AI Max compared to a stripped-down version of itself. It is not full-feature AI Max compared to a well-managed DSA campaign. Retail advertisers have no published benchmark at all.
The earlier numbers tell a more useful story. The May 2025 beta launch reported a 14% conversion uplift compared to keyword-match-only setups. The February 2026 text guidelines rollout reported a 27% conversion lift for campaigns that had been heavily reliant on exact and phrase match. Those are real signals. The April GA number is a refinement claim on top of an already-running system.
Key Takeaway: Treat the 7% number as a directional signal, not a forecast. Run your own AI Max migration tests on your own accounts before September and benchmark against your current control campaigns.
What 2022 Taught Us About Auto-Upgrade Windows
The Smart Shopping to Performance Max migration in 2022 is the closest comparison. The patterns repeat.
| Event | Smart Shopping to PMax | DSA to AI Max |
|---|---|---|
| Announcement | January 27, 2022 | April 15, 2026 |
| Voluntary upgrade starts | April 2022 | Week of April 15, 2026 |
| Auto-upgrade window | July to September 2022 | September 2026 |
| Total duration | About 9 months | About 5.5 months |
| Promised lift | +12% conversion value at same or better ROAS | +7% conversions or value at similar CPA or ROAS |
Two lessons from 2022 that apply now.
First, learning periods bite the agencies that wait. Campaigns migrated in the final auto-upgrade window in 2022 hit the holiday season with two weeks of learning data. Campaigns migrated in April had four months. Performance differences in Q4 2022 tracked migration timing more tightly than budget or creative.
Second, default settings get applied when you let the auto-upgrade run. Voluntary migration is not just earlier, it is more controlled. You decide which AI Max features turn on. You set the text guidelines. You shape the asset library before the system starts learning. That control window closes when the auto-upgrade fires.
Your AI Max Migration Calendar From Now Through September
Five and a half months sounds like a lot until you map it. Here is the AI Max migration cadence we recommend.
Weeks 1 to 4: Audit and Inventory
Pull every Search campaign in every account. Tag each one as DSA, ACA-enabled, campaign-level broad match, or pure exact and phrase match. The last bucket is safe. The first three are all in the September queue.
Weeks 5 to 8: Pick Your Pilots
Choose two or three campaigns per account that represent your range. Mid-budget. Mid-volume. Stable conversion data. Avoid your top spend and your test budgets. You want learnable signal, not extreme stakes.
Weeks 9 to 16: Run A/B Experiments
Use the in-UI experiment tools that rolled out the week of April 15. Run AI Max against your current setup for at least four weeks per pilot. Measure conversion volume, conversion value, CPA, and search query reports.
Weeks 17 to 22: Roll Out the Winners
Migrate the campaigns where AI Max won, with the feature set that drove the win. Document text guidelines and final URL expansion settings as templates for the rest of the account.
Weeks 23 to 24: Final Cleanup Before Auto-Upgrade
Anything still on legacy features by late August should be migrated voluntarily. The auto-upgrade in September will apply Google defaults, not yours.
Key Takeaway: The agencies that win this AI Max migration will not be the ones with the best AI Max setup. They will be the ones with the most learning data by September 1.
What AI Max Migration Means for Your Account Structure
AI Max changes the unit of optimization. Keywords are still the fuel, but the system now optimizes against landing page content, search-term matching, and asset combinations at the same time. Three implications.
Landing page quality stops being a CRO problem and becomes a media problem. AI Max reads your pages and uses what it finds to match queries. Thin pages drag down match quality. Detailed, intent-rich pages expand it. If you want a deeper read on landing page intent and conversion rate, our conversion rate optimization team has written about this in detail.
Text guidelines become a real lever. The February 2026 rollout proved that controlled text customization beats uncontrolled. Write your guidelines before September. Document the rules. Make them part of campaign setup, not an afterthought.
First-party data still matters more than the campaign type. Customer match lists, offline conversions, and value-based bidding feed the AI Max signal. Accounts with weak first-party data will see weak AI Max performance. The migration does not fix that.
The Bottom Line on AI Max Migration
September 2026 is not a soft deadline. It is the date Google takes the wheel on three campaign features that thousands of advertisers depend on. The 7% headline lift is real but narrower than it sounds. The actual upside is owning your AI Max migration instead of inheriting Google’s defaults.
You have five and a half months. Use four of them to test, one to roll out, and half to clean up. Agencies that run that calendar will enter Q4 with confident, well-trained AI Max campaigns. Agencies that wait will spend Q4 fighting learning periods.
If you are running Google Ads at scale and you want a second set of eyes on your AI Max migration plan, our team is here to help. Click here to schedule a free consultation with our team. Let’s Grow!
