Google announced AI Max for Search in May 2025 claiming advertisers who activate it typically see 14% more conversions or conversion value at a similar CPA or ROAS. By general availability in April 2026, the figure attached to the full feature suite in Google’s own material was an average of 7%. Neither number is a lie. The gap between them is the honest error bar, and it is worth understanding before you flip three switches on a campaign that already works.
I have been testing AI Max since the beta, and next month the decision stops being optional for some accounts: eligible Search campaigns on legacy settings begin upgrading automatically in September. Here is what the bundle actually is, how I read the claims, and the order I would turn things on.
What you are actually opting into
AI Max is one toggle wrapping three features. Search term matching extends your keywords with keywordless and broad match technology. Text customization generates headlines and descriptions from your landing pages and assets. Final URL expansion routes clicks to pages you did not designate. Google’s Ads Liaison confirmed the granularity that matters: each feature adjusts separately, with text customization and URL expansion controlled at campaign level and search term matching at ad group level.
The reporting shipped at launch rather than three years later, which tells me Google learned something from the Performance Max backlash. A Source column in the search terms report shows whether a match came from your keywords, keywordless matching, or broad match expansion. URL-level reporting covers the pages URL expansion picked. Brand controls restrict which brand queries you serve on, and locations of interest narrows geographic intent at ad group level. Negative keywords keep working normally.
Two structural facts frame the whole decision. AI Max went generally available on April 15, 2026, and it is absorbing Dynamic Search Ads: from September, new DSA campaigns can no longer be created, and eligible campaigns using legacy settings begin upgrading automatically, per MediaPost. This is not a side experiment. It is the new default architecture for Search.
Reading the lift claims like a buyer
Google’s launch claim: advertisers who activate AI Max typically see 14% more conversions or conversion value at similar CPA or ROAS, rising to 27% for campaigns relying mostly on exact and phrase match keywords.
Read the 27% carefully. The biggest promised lift goes to the tightest accounts, and that is arithmetic, not magic. If your campaigns are locked to exact and phrase match, any system that loosens matching will find more queries and therefore more conversions. Whether those conversions are incremental to the account, rather than shifted from other campaigns or from organic, is the question the headline number does not answer.
The launch case studies are more useful than the averages. L’Oreal reported twice the conversion rate at a 31% lower cost per conversion, and MyConnect reported 16% more leads at a 13% lower cost per action, with a 30% increase in conversions from net-new queries. That last figure is the one I care about. Net-new queries are the actual product here; most of the rest you could approximate with responsive search ads and disciplined broad match.
Expansion also buys clicks at current prices, and current prices are not kind: average Google Ads CPC hit $5.42 in 2025, up from $4.66 the year before, with 87% of industries seeing increases, per WordStream data covered by Search Engine Land. Loosened matching plus rising CPCs is a combination you monitor, not one you trust.
My own test this spring, on a lead generation account, went exactly the way the structure of the bundle predicts. Search term matching surfaced queries the account’s broad match keywords had never found, several genuinely good. Final URL expansion, on the same account, decided a blog post was a landing page and sent paid clicks there until I excluded it. One bundle, one feature earning its keep, one feature freelancing. That experience is the whole basis for the sequence below.
The order I would turn things on
- Fix measurement first. AI Max optimizes toward your conversion signal. If that signal counts junk events or misses real outcomes, you are about to automate the error. I want 30 to 60 days of clean conversion data before touching anything.
- Set brand controls and exclusions before any feature. Decide which brand queries you will and will not serve on before search term matching starts exploring.
- Enable search term matching first, in one campaign, at ad group level. It has the real upside and the tightest control surface. Review the Source column weekly and feed what you find back in as negatives.
- Hold final URL expansion until the exclusion list exists. Careers pages, legal pages, blog archives, out-of-stock templates: exclude them before enabling the feature, not after the first bad week.
- Text customization last. Generated copy needs a human review cadence, especially in regulated categories. If nobody reads the ads weekly, this stays off.
- If you run DSA or automatically created assets, migrate on your own schedule. The September auto-upgrade will otherwise make the choice for you, with defaults you did not pick.
Where I land, August 2026
AI Max is the rare Google bundle where the controls and the reporting arrived on day one. Use them. Turn on search term matching where your conversion data is clean, hold the other two features to a higher standard of proof, and treat every lift number in this piece, Google’s included, as an invitation to run your own test rather than a result you already own. The 7% at general availability is closer to what a well-run account should expect than the 27% from the launch deck, and even that is worth taking, on your terms, in your sequence.