In a sentence: From 1 September 2026, Google will automatically switch eligible Search campaigns over to its AI Max system — broadening your keywords and handing its AI control over your ad text and landing pages — and if you do nothing, the likely result for many small businesses is wasted ad spend, lower conversion rates, and lower sales. For businesses where compliance is essential, such as those in the health or finance industries, there is potential to cause damage by breaching regulations.
At Web Intelligenz, we’ve reviewed and opted out of many accounts we manage for clients ahead of the deadline.
Recently an email from Google Ads landed in inboxes across Australia. It was easy to miss — sent from a no-reply address, written in Google’s usual understated tone — but the contents matter to anyone running Google Search ads. And the businesses most at risk are the ones who never open it.
What Google announced
From 1 September 2026, Google will automatically upgrade Search campaigns that use automatically created assets (recently renamed “text customisation”) or the campaign-level broad match setting to its new AI Max system. No approval required. If you don’t act before the deadline, Google acts for you.
This follows Google’s April announcement that AI Max was moving out of beta, and it sits alongside a bigger change: all remaining Dynamic Search Ads campaigns will also be migrated to AI Max by the end of September — and for those, there is no opt-out at all.
What Google AI Max actually does
AI Max is Google’s push to bring Performance Max-style automation into standard Search campaigns. When it’s switched on, Google’s AI can:
- Rewrite your ad text. Google generates new headlines and descriptions based on your website and existing ads — words you didn’t write and didn’t approve.
- Broaden which searches trigger your ads. Search term matching expands your reach well beyond the keywords you deliberately chose, in ways that behave much like broad match.
- Choose your landing pages. With Final URL expansion, Google can send clicks to whichever page of your site it decides is the best match — not necessarily the one built for that campaign.
The “do nothing” case: what actually happens to your campaigns
Google’s pitch is appealing: broaden your reach so you don’t miss out on potential customers. But for most businesses, the game isn’t reach — it’s return on ad spend. And getting a strong return usually means doing the opposite of what AI Max does by default: narrowing your keywords so that a higher proportion of the people you reach are people who will actually buy from you.
Broadening works the other way. Your campaigns start showing for additional search terms you never chose — searches that sound related but come from people who were never going to buy from you. Every one of those clicks costs you money. That’s not reach; that’s wasted ad spend.
It’s worth being cynical for a moment about who benefits. Broader matching means more auctions, more clicks, and more spend — which is good for Google regardless of whether those clicks turn into sales for you. Narrowing your targeting improves your return but reduces Google’s revenue from your account. When the default setting happens to favour the platform, the default deserves scrutiny.
The landing page piece compounds the problem. One of the biggest drivers of return on ad spend is conversion rate — and conversion rate lives and dies on the quality of the landing page. A page built for a specific campaign, with the right message and a clear next step, converts. When AI Max redirects your clicks to whichever page Google’s systems judge to be a match, you can end up paying to send visitors to a poorer-converting page. Same ad spend, fewer sales.
Google’s answer to all of this is that its systems optimise over time. That’s true — but machine-learning optimisation works best with lots of data, and lots of data means lots of ad spend. Large advertisers with big budgets can feed the algorithm enough conversions to steer it. Most small businesses can’t. On a modest budget, the “learning” phase can consume a big chunk of your monthly spend before the system has anything meaningful to learn from.
Put it together and the do-nothing scenario looks like this: come September, campaigns quietly broaden. Clicks come in on irrelevant searches. Visitors land on pages that weren’t built for them. Conversion rates slip, sales fall, cost per sale climbs — and the business owner is left staring at the numbers wondering what’s gone wrong, because as far as they know, nothing changed.
What we did for our clients
Our concern isn’t AI — we use AI tools across our own work every day. Our concern is default automation without oversight. So over the past two days we’ve gone through our managed client accounts, campaign by campaign, and:
- Turned off text customisation (the setting formerly known as automatically created assets), so Google can’t generate ad copy on our clients’ behalf
- Disabled the campaign-level broad match setting, so keywords keep the match types we deliberately chose
- Flagged any Dynamic Search Ads campaigns for a managed transition plan, since those have no opt-out and need to be restructured on our terms before Google restructures them on its own
The result: our clients’ campaigns will pass the 1 September deadline untouched, running exactly as they were built — deliberate keywords, approved messaging, and landing pages chosen for a reason.
Does that mean AI Max is always the wrong choice?
No — and this is worth being honest about. AI Max includes some genuinely useful controls (brand exclusions, text guidelines, better search term reporting than old broad match ever had), and for larger accounts with the budget and conversion volume to feed the algorithm, a carefully configured AI Max test can make sense.
Our position is simply that it should be opt-in, deliberate, and measured — a test we design, monitor, and can switch off — not a default Google applies while nobody’s looking. Where we believe AI Max could genuinely improve a client’s results, we’ll propose a controlled trial and talk to them first.
What you should do if you manage your own Google Ads
If your account isn’t professionally managed, here’s your checklist before 1 September:
- Find the email. Search your inbox for the Google Ads notice titled “Automatically created assets and campaign-level broad-match setting will be upgraded to AI Max.”
- Check your campaign settings. In Google Ads, go to the Campaigns section, open the Settings tab, and review the AI Max / asset optimisation panel for each Search campaign. Untick “Text customisation” if you don’t want Google writing your ads.
- Check your broad match setting. Make sure “Use broad match keywords” is off at campaign level unless you’ve deliberately chosen it.
- Audit any Dynamic Search Ads. These are being migrated regardless — export your search term and performance data now, and plan the transition rather than letting it happen to you.
- Ignore the upgrade banner. The pop-up in the Google Ads interface prompting you to “upgrade to AI Max” is the opt-in path, not the opt-out.
And after 1 September, watch your search terms report closely. If clicks start arriving from queries you don’t recognise, or your cost per sale starts climbing, this change is the first place to look.
The bigger picture
This is part of a clear pattern: Google is steadily moving automation from opt-in to opt-out to mandatory. Search itself is changing too — AI Overviews and AI Mode are reshaping how people find businesses, and paid search is following the same trajectory. The advertisers who do well in this environment won’t be the ones who resist every change, or the ones who accept every default. They’ll be the ones with someone paying attention.
AI is a massive productivity tool for skilled people who know what they are doing. AI can be a big money waster for people who lack the knowledge and experience to control their AI.
That’s the job. If you’re not sure how this change affects your account — or you got the email and don’t know where to start — get in touch and we’ll take a look.
Web Intelligenz is a Melbourne digital marketing and web development agency that has worked with more than 300 Australian businesses over 13+ years. We manage Google Ads accounts with a simple philosophy: every dollar of spend should be a deliberate decision.
