Google AI Max Is Taking Control Away From Advertisers

by Digital Marketing Articles

AI Max’s pitch is simple: hand Google more control, get better results. What’s a lot less clear is what exactly you’re handing over, or what to do with it once you have.

Google shared big numbers on its Q2 earnings call. AI Max is out of beta, 500,000 advertisers are on it, and Google says the average lift is 15% more leads or sales value at a similar return per dollar spent. What Google didn’t share is how that 15% is actually generated: how much comes from matching new search terms, how much from automated bidding, how much from creative combinations the system assembles on its own.

With Google advancing more and more on this direction, there’s a few cases where caution is due: 
→ A search marketer who could once open a search terms report and see exactly which queries triggered a click now gets a system that blends keyword, broad match, and AI-driven matching into one output. Harder to audit, easier to trust blindly.
→ A brand-conscious advertiser who used to approve every headline-to-landing-page combination now hands that assembly to a system that generates and tests combinations on its own
→ An in-house marketer trying to explain a lead spike to their boss, or an agency explaining one to a client, increasingly has to answer “why did this work?” with some version of “the algorithm decided”

Concretely, here’s what you’re loosening your grip on:
→ match type stops being a hard boundary, since AI Max can match a query it judges relevant even outside your keyword’s exact, phrase, or broad setting.
→ Negative keywords still block some queries, but with less certainty, since the matching logic isn’t purely keyword-text-based anymore.
→ The specific headlines and descriptions you wrote can get supplemented or recombined with AI-generated text tailored to the query, so the live ad isn’t always the copy you approved.
→ And pinning a headline or image to a fixed position carries less weight than it did in a standard responsive search ad, since the system will test combinations on its own.

What’s not resolved:
The actual levers Google gives you to influence AI Max (asset inputs, some exclusions, budget and target settings) are coarse compared to what a fully manual, keyword-based account allowed. There’s no clear public playbook for “how do I get better at AI Max” beyond “feed it more assets and trust the system.”

Google calls this the natural evolution of Search advertising. Fair enough if your team is comfortable running a system you can’t fully see inside. Less true if part of your job is explaining exactly why a campaign performed the way it did, to a client, a boss, or yourself.

If you handed AI Max more control tomorrow, could you actually tell your team why a lead came in, or would “the algorithm decided” be the honest answer?

Google is about to stop letting you pick what language your Search ads target

by Digital Marketing Articles

Starting late September, campaign-level language targeting disappears from Search — and, in a reversal from what Google said last year, Performance Max search placements too. No more manually telling a campaign “target Spanish” or “target French.” Google’s systems decide that on their own from here on, based on ad and landing page language, the search term, and the user’s own language settings.

Where this actually bites:
→ A US business running Spanish-language campaigns for Miami or LA
→ A Canadian brand running French campaigns for Quebec inside a national account
→ Any company chasing expats — Brazilians in Portugal, Indians in the UAE — who keep searching in their home language wherever they’ve landed

That kind of precision came from stacking a location target with a manual language setting. Take the language lever away, and Google’s automatic matching has to do that job instead — with no guarantee it draws the line where you would.

The part worth flagging: language targeting also doubled as a diagnostic tool — the way you’d sanity-check why a campaign was picking up irrelevant-language impressions. That lever is going away too. And this lands about nine months later than Google’s original December 2025 deadline, with a scope that grew to include PMax along the way.

Shopping ads are untouched, PMax still respects language setting s on YouTube, Display, Discover, and Gmail, and Google still won’t translate your ad copy — this was always matching, not translation.

The timeline:
→ August 2025: Google says removal is coming by end of 2025, Search only
→ August 14, 2026: Ginny Marvin confirms the update — PMax added, new date set
→ Late September 2026: goes live, no action required for existing campaigns

Google calls this “not a big shift,” since the setting had become redundant. Fair enough for a single-language, single-market account. Less true if reaching a language community inside a bigger market is part of your job — that’s exactly the fine-tuning this removes.

If your campaigns are built around a specific language audience — diaspora, expats, a bilingual local market — are you testing what automatic matching actually catches before this goes live, or finding out after?

If you run Local Services Ads, your dashboard is about to disappear.

by Digital Marketing Articles

Starting this month, LSAs move out of their standalone dashboard and into a new “Performance Max for pay-per-lead” campaign type. If you run local services, this is worth knowing before it happens to your account.

What stays the same:

→ Ads only show on Search and Maps

→ Still keywordless, driven by your Google Business Profile

→ Still pay-per-lead, not pay-per-click

What’s new:

→ One dashboard for campaigns, leads, and calls instead of a separate LSA interface

→ Your Google Business Profile updates sync to your ads automatically

The part worth flagging: your historical performance data does not migrate with you. If you’ve been running LSAs and want to keep that reporting history, you’ll need to export it before your account transitions.

The timeline depends on your account, but broadly:
→ August 2026: U.S. home and storefront service businesses started migrating
→ Late 2026: Broader U.S. advertiser groups follow, including service-area businesses
→ 2027: The transition expands to non-U.S. accounts and remaining categories

Another Google product getting pulled into the same unified dashboard. 

The dashboard gets simpler. Just don’t forget to export your data before your account transitions.

If you’re running Local Services Ads, is anyone on your team exporting that historical data before the migration hits?

Source: https://searchengineland.com/

Google automatically updates Smart Shopping to Performance Max

by Digital Marketing ArticlesNews

Google is eliminating Smart Shopping campaigns for good. If you want to know how and when, keep on reading.

Google is now automatically updating Smart Shopping campaigns into Performance Max. Although this is something Google has been anticipating for a while, updates will be fully out in September. 

What does this mean? Google will self-update from your previous Smart Shopping campaign to Performance Max, which will include your previous learnings, budgets, and campaign settings. 

If you don’t want Google to update your campaign without your knowledge, it is best if you do it yourself with the “one-click” tool ASAP, before Google decides to take matters into its own hands and update everything automatically. 

What do you think about Google’s automatic update setting? Did it take you by surprise? Let us know in the comments below.

If you want to read Google’s official statement, click here for further information. 

Our Take

It is no surprise that Google is terminating Smart Shopping campaigns and transforming them into Performance Max. It has been clear all along that automation was the next step, so this automatic upgrade was expected. However, you can be caught off guard when you open your Google Ads account after the update is complete, especially if you never used the “one-click” button and Google simply decided to do this on its own. 

Some advertisers were worried that, with this automatic update, the campaign’s history and previous performance number wouldn’t carry on. Yet, you can view the campaign’s data history by selecting “View Smart Shopping campaign data”. We can vouch for that.

We suggest you take control of your own updates and use the “one-click” button to avoid any morning surprises. It is best to update these campaigns yourself by the end of the month so that you adjust easily to new Performance Max settings at your own pace. 

As always, we will be assessing these new Performance Max settings and we’ll let you know if any issues are worth reporting. Stay tuned!

About Quantikal

Quantikal is a data-driven performance marketing agency based in Buenos Aires, Argentina. We help clients scale their business through profitable digital ad spending by constantly obsessing over clients’ key metrics. Quantikal’s experience working in diverse online companies in marketing roles including media buying allows us to provide solutions in the ever-demanding increase of marketing performance, doing more with less thus becoming a strategic partner.

Performance Max campaign updates

by Digital Marketing ArticlesNews

Significant changes were announced to Performance Max campaigns at Google’s last event. If you want to know more, keep on reading.

Google Marketing Live 2022 gave us a lot to talk about. Among other important updates, the company announced new optimizations, insights, and in-store goals for Performance Max campaigns. In this post, we’ll explain everything you need to know about these additions

Optimization score

Google is now adding recommendations for optimizing the Google Ads platform, placing a new tip section in their most automated campaign type. This provides advertisers with helpful information about how campaigns are performing, followed by advice on a potential solution.

Additional insights

As we mentioned in our previous article, advertisers will get more insight into what is driving your ads’ performance, including consumer, audience, and auction information. Phrases such as “x is performing better compared to last week” will be displayed on your insights tab, followed by a graph with trend details. 

Experimentation tools

This new experimentation tool takes existing campaigns and compares them to a potential version of Performance Max, showing how much lift could be seen if launched. As it is a model, advertisers can’t control this experiment, so it only includes a potential visual. You can’t work with it and you can’t experiment with further changes. 

So beware, you might want to measure additional volume with your own means to see if it actually is incremental.

Do you think this new experimentation tool will be a good aid? Let us know in the comments below.

Further access with Search Ads 360

Lastly, those advertisers who use SA360 will now have access to manage Performance Max campaigns. Also, if you prefer the Google Ads app, these new updates might work in your favor. Google is cooking some operative changes to the app so that Performance Max campaigns can be managed from the comfort of your device.

Our Take

All of these additions can give advertisers more options to manage their campaigns, so, great news! Even though Google sticks with the automation mentality, we are grateful that they decided to add tools that provide further information since this campaign type is already very self-regulated to begin with. 

As expected, we will continue to review these changes and we’ll let you know if any news is worth sharing. Stay tuned!

About Quantikal

Quantikal is a data-driven performance marketing agency based in Buenos Aires, Argentina. We help clients scale their business through profitable digital ad spending by constantly obsessing over clients’ key metrics. Quantikal’s experience working in diverse online companies in marketing roles including media buying allows us to provide solutions in the ever-demanding increase of marketing performance, doing more with less thus becoming a strategic partner.