AI Max September Deadline: Your ACA and Broad Match Plan

Most of the PPC trade press cheered when Google pushed the Dynamic Search Ads automigration from September 2026 to February 2027. The reaction was understandable. DSA accounts got five more months to plan and migrate on their own terms.

The story underneath that headline matters for almost every other Google Ads account you manage. The AI Max September deadline did not move for Automatically Created Assets or campaign-level broad match. Those configurations still flip on the original September 2026 calendar, and that covers a much larger share of lead-gen and ecommerce accounts than DSA ever did.

The June 11 Developer Blog post from Google split one deadline into two. The trade press summarized one half. The other half is still arriving on time. If you have not separated your accounts into the two buckets yet, this week is the right time to do it.

What the AI Max September Deadline Actually Covers

Google updated its official help documentation for AI Max for Search reporting in late June. Search Engine Land reported on the documentation update on June 23, and the same week PPC News Feed published a parallel breakdown of the reporting changes. Both pieces highlighted the February 2027 DSA timeline. Both also noted the line that did not get headline treatment.

Campaigns using Automatically Created Assets and the campaign-level broad match setting will continue to be auto-upgraded starting in September 2026.

That sentence is the AI Max September deadline. It is not a delay. It is the original calendar, intact, applied to two configuration paths that most accounts use without thinking about them as a distinct surface.

Automatically Created Assets are the headlines and descriptions Google generates from your landing page content when you opt in. A large share of Search campaigns have this on by default. Campaign-level broad match is the setting that lets every keyword in a campaign behave as broad match without changing individual match types. Both are common in lead-gen accounts where teams want simpler management.

When September arrives, those campaigns get upgraded. The legacy match logic and the legacy asset logic both move into the AI Max framework, with search term matching, text customization, and final URL expansion as the new operating defaults.

Why The AI Max September Deadline Is The One To Plan Against

The DSA extension to February 2027 was real. So is the September window for everyone else. The difference is cohort size.

DSA campaigns were already in decline before the extension. Many accounts had stopped using them as a primary campaign type and only kept legacy DSAs alive as a catch-all. The February 2027 deadline gives those accounts time to retire or rebuild on schedule.

Automatically Created Assets and campaign-level broad match are a different population. They live inside active Search campaigns that produce most of the volume. Lead-gen accounts running broad match plus Smart Bidding are the dominant cohort exposed to the AI Max September deadline, and that pattern matches the way most agencies set up new Search campaigns this year — the same broad-match-first foundation we lay out in our operator’s guide to Google Ads lead generation.

When AI Max flips on, campaign behavior changes in ways that affect spend allocation and creative serving. Final URL expansion does not auto-enable for ACA or broad-match upgrades at the September flip, which is a small mercy. But search term matching and text customization both activate by default, which moves impressions, clicks, and conversions away from the configuration your bidding model has been learning against.

Your AI Max September Deadline Audit, Account By Account

The work between now and September is not complicated. It is repetitive. You need to know which campaigns sit in each bucket and what baseline data you are protecting.

Start with a flat list of every Search campaign across every account you manage. For each campaign, capture three columns. Is Automatically Created Assets turned on. Is campaign-level broad match set as the campaign default. Is the campaign a DSA. That last column is the one that gets the February 2027 grace period. The first two columns are the September cohort.

For the September cohort, pull the last 90 days of performance by search term, landing page, device, location, and conversion action. This is the baseline you compare against once AI Max activates. If your sales cycle is longer than 30 days, layer in CRM lead quality data from the same window. Account-level CPA is not the right unit of measurement for a campaign migration. Cost per qualified lead is.

Save the baseline outside Google Ads. The platform’s data retention is finite, and you want this snapshot for the next twelve months at minimum. We covered that math in a separate backup playbook earlier this spring.

Voluntary Migration Before the AI Max September Deadline

Google has shipped a voluntary upgrade path. The in-product banner lets you opt in early, before the AI Max September deadline auto-upgrades your campaigns for you. There are two reasons to use it.

The first reason is control. When you opt in yourself, you configure the AI Max settings during the upgrade rather than accepting Google’s defaults. Brand controls, URL exclusions, and negative keyword logic carry over the way you set them, not the way the auto-upgrade interprets them. That gap matters more for lead-gen accounts than for ecommerce, because lead quality is harder to measure post-flip than revenue.

The second reason is timing. A voluntary upgrade in July or August gives your Smart Bidding model time to adjust before September traffic patterns shift. If you wait for the auto-flip, your learning phase starts in the middle of late summer demand and runs into the early Q4 ramp. That is the worst possible window for a bidding model to absorb a configuration change.

The risk on the voluntary side is also real. AI Max behavior is still new, and public benchmarks are thin. Google’s own number is an average 7% lift in conversions or conversion value at a similar cost per acquisition compared to search term matching alone. That is a population average, not a guarantee. Treat it as a planning input, not a forecast.

If you run side-by-side tests, keep them short and tightly capped. Thirty days is enough to see directional movement on cost per qualified lead. Anything longer eats into the prep window itself.

Reporting Changes And Adjacent Deadlines

The other quiet update in the June help documentation is the reporting layer. AI Max changes how search terms, landing pages, and DSA segments appear inside the report. Google added new views for search terms with landing pages from AI Max campaigns, search terms without landing page attribution, and DSA search terms that can now be reviewed separately during the migration window.

If your team built dashboards on the legacy report shape, plan a quick audit before September. Search term reports show where customers are directed after the click, not just the query that triggered the ad. That changes how you read landing page performance and how you build negative keyword lists. Google also recommends a one-to-two week review cadence on search terms and item-group performance once AI Max is active. Daily checks are too noisy. Monthly checks are too slow. This is the same cadence we use for Smart Bidding in our real-time policy review playbook, and the logic carries over cleanly. If your account runs Asset Studio inside Performance Max, the parallels are worth studying. Both surfaces emphasize intent matching and conversion goals over keyword relevance.

The AI Max September deadline does not sit alone on the calendar. The July 2026 terms changes reclassify conversion labels for Smart Bidding, which means the same conversion action can feed the bidding model differently after the terms shift. Value-based bidding setups need a second look before the cohort flips, because the value signal is what AI Max uses to allocate budget after the migration. The Demand Gen placement exclusion audit is a useful warm-up for the same audit logic you will need inside AI Max.

For accounts still running Display through Demand Gen, the migration overlaps with the cross-network attribution discussion in a way that affects budget allocation. Journey-aware bidding is the closest analog to how AI Max thinks about query-to-conversion paths. And if your last migration was the Maximize Conversion Value rollout in Standard Shopping, you already know how a Smart Bidding learning window behaves around a configuration change. Capture the baseline, cap the budget shift, and review on a one-to-two week rhythm until the model settles.

How to Build Your AI Max September Deadline Plan This Week

The plan that actually ships before September is the one that fits inside a normal week of agency work. Five steps, in order.

One. List every active Search campaign across every account. Flag the ones with Automatically Created Assets on and the ones with campaign-level broad match. That list is the September cohort.

Two. Pull the 90-day baseline for the September cohort. Save it outside Google Ads. Include conversion actions, search terms, landing pages, and CRM lead quality if you have it.

Three. Pick a small representative sample. Two to four campaigns is plenty. Use the voluntary upgrade path on those campaigns in July or early August, with brand controls and URL settings configured during the upgrade.

Four. Run a 30-day side-by-side comparison on the sample. Cost per qualified lead is the metric. Budget caps are tight enough that a bad learning phase cannot run away from you.

Five. Document the migration decision for the rest of the cohort before September. Some campaigns get voluntary upgrades. Some get rebuilt as standard Search with broad match plus Smart Bidding. Some can wait for the auto-flip with controls pre-set.

If you want help mapping the cohort and building the audit, book a free consultation and we will walk through the campaigns with you.

September is a planning constraint, not a surprise. Google handed everyone six months of notice and a voluntary path. The accounts that arrive with a clean baseline and a tested sample will move through the flip in a week. The ones that did not prepare will spend Q4 chasing a learning phase they could have run on their own schedule.

Let’s Grow!