It Is Not DSA Getting Auto-Upgraded to AI Max in September: It Is ACA and Broad Match
Two settings put a campaign in scope
Starting September 2026, Google auto-upgrades two kinds of Search campaigns to AI Max: campaigns running automatically created assets (ACA, where the system reads your landing pages and writes additional headlines and descriptions), and campaigns with the campaign-level broad match setting switched on. Either one is enough.
Most DTC teams spent the summer preparing for a Dynamic Search Ads migration, and that one slipped. DSA auto-upgrades now start in February 2027, so the September wave has nothing to do with DSA at all.
AI Max for Search is out of beta. It layers broad match, keywordless matching, text customization, and final URL expansion onto standard Search campaigns while keyword-level control stays intact. Google plans to finish upgrading every eligible campaign by the end of September, so if you are reading this in mid-month, part of your account has probably already flipped.
A ten-minute scope check
Start in Tools and settings, open Change history, set the date range from September 1 to today, and filter the change type to campaign settings. Platform-initiated upgrades log here, and the user column is nobody on your team. That single query returns your upgraded list. On an MCC you can run it at the manager level and cover every sub-account at once.
Next, handle the campaigns that have not flipped yet. Take the Search campaigns that did not show up in change history, open Settings on each, and look at the automatically created assets toggle and the campaign-level broad match toggle. Either one switched on means the campaign is still in scope and gets upgraded before the end of September.
Finally, open an upgraded campaign, go to Settings, and find the AI Max block, where each feature carries its own control. Confirm whether final URL expansion is currently on, because that is the one you can switch off by itself. Ten minutes covers an account with a few dozen campaigns.
What actually changes when the toggle flips
| Control | Before | After |
|---|---|---|
| Match scope | Your keywords plus broad match variants | Plus keywordless matching, where the system reads landing pages and assets to match queries |
| Headlines and descriptions | ACA adds assets alongside the ones you wrote | Text customization can rewrite headlines and descriptions per query |
| Landing page | The final URL you set | Final URL expansion can route traffic to a different page on your domain |
| Reporting | Keyword-level search terms | Keyword-level plus a pool of search terms with no matching keyword |
Final URL expansion causes the most damage of the changes in that table. Traffic you bought for a tested product landing page can end up on a category page or a blog post. Content-heavy DTC sites are the most exposed here, since long-form pages often score well on relevance and convert badly.
Keywordless matching front-loads volume. Impressions and clicks jump in the first few days while conversions lag, because the incoming queries are ones your account has never bid on.
Controls that survive the upgrade
Keyword-level control stays. Exact and phrase keywords still serve, keyword bids still apply, negative keywords still block, and pausing a keyword still works. AI Max sits on top of that structure instead of replacing it.
Brand exclusions stay, in the campaign’s brand list settings. If you use them to keep ads away from competitor brand terms or to defend against counterfeit sellers, that logic is unchanged.
Final URL expansion can be turned off on its own. The opt-out sits inside the AI Max block in campaign settings, and clearing it leaves the other AI Max features running. Single-product stores and anyone with an A/B tested landing page should clear it before anything else.
The search terms report still shows queries brought in by keywordless matching, and you can still add negatives against them. In the first two weeks that report is the highest-value screen in the account, and clearing obviously wrong queries in batches moves CPA faster than adjusting bids does.
What to measure in the first two weeks
Google says AI Max campaigns using the full feature suite (search term matching, text customization, and final URL expansion) average 7% more conversions or conversion value at similar CPA or ROAS. That figure is Google’s own, not an independent measurement, so treat it as a ceiling rather than a floor.
Week one, split the search terms report into two buckets: queries matched to one of your keywords, and queries with no matching keyword. Track what share of spend the second bucket takes and what it converts at. Those two numbers tell you whether the upgrade is paying before blended CPA moves at all.
Week two, open the landing pages report. With final URL expansion on, sort by conversion rate and either exclude the pages dragging the average down or turn expansion off entirely.
Hold other changes until the two weeks are up. Editing bids or budgets mid-window makes it impossible to attribute anything to the upgrade. If cost per conversion is running more than 15% above the pre-upgrade baseline and the keywordless bucket converts clearly worse than your keyword traffic, switch off text customization and final URL expansion, keep search term matching, and run another cycle before deciding.
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