Google overhauled its advertising roadmap at Google Marketing Live 2026 on 20 May. If you haven't looked at your Google Ads account since, this is the post you need.
AI Max isn't a niche feature for advanced accounts anymore. It's soon to be the foundation of how Google Search advertising works going forward — and it's the only way your ads become eligible to appear inside AI Mode, the fastest-growing search surface on the planet. Here's what that means in practice.
What is AI Max for Search?
AI Max is Google's campaign-level feature for Search that bundles three AI-driven capabilities into a single opt-in. When enabled, it does the following:
Search term matching expands your campaign beyond your keyword list, using Google's understanding of your ad copy, landing pages, and user intent to find relevant queries you aren't explicitly targeting. This includes keywordless matching — Google finds searches that relate to what your website is about, regardless of whether you have a corresponding keyword.
Text customisation (formerly Automatically Created Assets) allows Gemini to dynamically generate headlines and descriptions tailored to individual queries, drawing from your existing ad assets and landing page content.
Final URL expansion routes users to the most relevant page on your website for a given search — not necessarily the URL you specified. If a user searches for something specific and a different page on your site better matches that intent, Google will use it.
Google cited a 27% conversion uplift for AI Max at its GML EMEA 2026 broadcast, a figure that applies specifically to campaigns still heavily reliant on exact and phrase match keywords. According to Google, advertisers using the full AI Max suite — search term matching, text customisation, and landing page features together — see an average of 7% more conversions at a similar CPA or ROAS versus using search term matching alone.
The independent picture is more nuanced. An analysis of more than 250 retail campaigns by Smarter Ecommerce found a median revenue uplift of +13%, but a median CPA increase of +16%, with ROAS outcomes ranging from +42% to -35%. In other words: the technology works, but outcomes are variable. Account quality, tracking setup, landing page relevance, and structural foundations all influence results significantly. We've seen this in our own testing. Where AI Max performs well, it's always on accounts with strong bones — well-organised campaigns, high-quality landing pages, and accurate conversion data. Where it underperforms, those foundations are usually missing.
As of April 2026, AI Max for Search moved out of beta and is now fully available to all advertisers globally.
The bigger picture: AI Max is your entry point into AI Mode
Google's search results page is changing fundamentally. AI Overviews — those AI-generated summaries that appear at the top of search results — are now live in the UK and over 200 countries. As of Q1 2026, ads appeared in 25.5% of AI Overview results, up from around 5% in early 2025 — roughly a 394% increase year-on-year.
But AI Mode is the bigger shift. AI Mode is a fully conversational, chat-style version of Google Search that lets users ask long, complex questions and receive synthesised answers with follow-up capability. AI Mode has now crossed 1 billion monthly users, with queries more than doubling every quarter since launch. Searches in AI Mode average three times the length of traditional queries, and 1 in 6 are non-text.
Those longer, more complex queries represent genuinely high-intent traffic — people doing serious research before making purchasing decisions. That's the audience every advertiser wants to reach.
To show ads in AI Mode and AI Overviews, you need AI-powered targeting. The eligible campaign types are Search campaigns using AI Max or broad match, Shopping campaigns, and Performance Max. Standard exact and phrase match Search campaigns running without AI Max are not eligible for these placements;. Tthere is no other route in.
DSA campaigns: the September 2026 deadline - UPDATED: New transition deadline will be February 2027
If you're running Dynamic Search Ads, this requires immediate attention.
On 15 April 2026, Google confirmed that AI Max for Search will replace Dynamic Search Ads entirely, with automatic upgrades rolling out in September 2026. {UPDATED: New transition deadline will be February 2027 after Google Ads has listened to feedback}. Three groups are affected: DSA campaigns, campaigns using Automatically Created Assets, and campaigns using campaign-level broad match.
Voluntary migration is available right now. Waiting for Google to migrate your campaigns automatically carries real risk — settings get carried over imperfectly, targeting nuances are lost, and you typically don't discover problems until performance has already declined.
Migrating now means you control which AI Max features you enable, what URL inclusions and exclusions you set, which brand terms you include or exclude, and how the transition is structured for each account. Migrating in September means Google makes those decisions for you.
If you have DSA campaigns running, audit them now, understand what they're delivering, and build a migration plan before the deadline.
Why the foundations matter more than ever (image here of the google example of how it works)
AI Max's URL expansion feature makes something visible that was previously hidden: Google will send users to whichever page on your website it judges most relevant, regardless of your instructions. If those pages are thin, unconvincing, or slow to load, AI Max's targeting sophistication cannot rescue the conversion rate.
This is where the relationship between paid media, SEO, and web development stops being a discussion about budget allocation and becomes operationally critical.
The signals Google's Gemini models use to understand your business — your landing page copy, your site structure, your user experience quality — are the same signals that determine where and how your ads appear in AI-powered search. A well-optimised website isn't just good for organic rankings;. Iit directly feeds the targeting and relevance engine for your paid campaigns.
The new AI Mode ad formats make this even more explicit: in Conversational Discovery ads, Highlighted Answers, and Business Agent for Leads, Gemini is writing the words your potential customers read. You provide the brand inputs and the website content; the AI composes what users actually see.
Businesses running paid campaigns in isolation from their wider digital presence are going to find that AI Max underperforms for them. Businesses where the paid strategy, the content quality, and the website experience are genuinely aligned will see materially better results.
What this means for UK businesses in 2026
AI Mode is live in the UK. AI Overviews are running ads. The September 2026 DSA migration deadline is set. New AI Mode ad formats are being tested and will expand globally.
The businesses that are positioned well for this environment share a few characteristics: their tracking is clean and feeding accurate signals to Smart Bidding; their campaigns are structured logically rather than sprawling; their landing pages are genuinely useful to visitors; and their paid, organic, and web teams are working from the same playbook.
If that describes your business, AI Max is worth testing carefully and methodically. If it doesn't, the priority is getting those foundations in order before enabling automation that will amplify whatever is already there — good or bad.
This is a significant moment for Google Search advertising. The window to get ahead of it is still open.
My take
We keep coming back to this because it keeps being true: the accounts seeing the best results from AI Max aren't the ones with the cleverest campaign structures. They're the ones with clean conversion data, landing pages that actually do their job, and a website that Google can make sense of. Sort those first.
CTA: We're a Google Premier Partner agency helping businesses across the UK navigate Google's AI-powered advertising changes. If you want an honest assessment of whether your campaigns are ready for AI Max — and what to do about DSAs before September — get in touch for a no-obligation account review.
References used in this post:
- Google Marketing Live 2026 announcements: blog.google/products/ads-commerce/google-marketing-live-2026-collection
- New generation of ads for the AI era: blog.google/products/ads-commerce/google-marketing-live-search-ads
- DSA migration to AI Max: mediapost.com
- AI Mode reaching 1 billion users / query length data: technobezz.com
- Independent campaign performance study (250+ campaigns): almcorp.com
- Ads in AI Overviews penetration data: theslidefactory.com
What's new from Google Marketing Live 2026
At GML on 20 May, Google announced a new generation of ad formats built with Gemini that live inside AI Mode. These change what advertising in this environment actually looks like.
Conversational Discovery ads are designed to answer a user's specific question directly inside AI Mode. Gemini analyses the intent behind the query and dynamically generates ad creative tailored to that specific conversation — rather than serving a static asset created in advance.
Highlighted Answers allow sponsored results to appear inside AI Mode's list-style recommendation responses — so when Google produces a "best options for X" type answer, a relevant, high-quality ad can appear as one of those recommendations.
Business Agent for Leads embeds a Gemini-powered chatbot trained on an advertiser's own website directly inside a search ad. Rather than filling out a static lead form, a prospective customer can ask questions and receive answers drawn from the business's own content — a significant shift for lead generation campaigns.
AI Max for Search is also gaining a new feature called AI Brief, which allows agencies and advertisers to guide the system with brand tone and messaging requirements — giving you more control over how Gemini represents your business.
Conversational Discovery ads and Highlighted Answers are currently in testing in the US. Business Agent for Leads is in open beta in the US for English-language accounts. UK rollout timelines haven't been confirmed, but the direction is clear.
One important detail: across both Conversational Discovery ads and Highlighted Answers, Gemini generates an independent AI explainer that runs alongside each ad, synthesising information about the product or service without advertiser input. This is a new dynamic that requires advertisers to ensure their websites contain accurate, high-quality information — because Gemini will draw on that content regardless of what your ad copy says.
