Google Ads in 2026: what changed, and what we've learnt

AI Max went from optional to default

If you only remember one change from this year, make it this one. AI Max for Search is Google's automation layer for normal Search campaigns, and it came out of beta in April 2026.

It does three things. It matches your ads to searches beyond your keywords, it writes extra ad copy for you, and it can send people to whichever page on your site it thinks fits best. Think of it as hiring a very keen junior who never sleeps and occasionally gets creative with the brief.

The bit most people missed

From 1 September 2026, Google began upgrading certain campaigns to AI Max automatically. Campaigns using automatically created assets, or the campaign-level broad match setting, were moved across unless someone had switched those older features off first. Google emailed advertisers about it in August. Plenty of business owners did not open that email, which is understandable, because it looked like every other Google email.

So if your Search campaign has started showing for searches you never chose, or your ads are saying things you never wrote, this is probably why.

The new controls

In April Google also announced AI Brief, a box where you tell the system in plain English what to do and avoid ("never mention price", "we don't do emergency call-outs"). It's rolling out in English first. It also added text disclaimers that always appear in the ad, which matters if you're in a regulated industry and certain words must appear in every ad.

Google didn't take the wheel because you asked. It took the wheel because nobody was holding it.

The 17 August bidding change, and who it hurt

This one deserves its own section, because it hit some accounts hard and most business owners never heard about it.

From 17 August 2026, Google changed how Target CPA and Target ROAS behave in campaigns that are limited by budget. Before, a budget-capped campaign often did better than its target, because the system kept bids low to stay inside the budget. Now it bids up to the target you set. Google's own example: a campaign with a $10 target CPA that was actually getting conversions at $5 will now deliver closer to $10. The rollout finished worldwide, Australia included, on 27 August.

It covers Search, Shopping, Performance Max, Demand Gen and Travel campaigns. Google doesn't change your targets or budgets for you. It just starts taking your target literally.

For years a lot of accounts had a target they never meant. On 17 August Google started believing it.

Who it hurt

The businesses caught out were the ones whose targets were loose on paper but whose campaigns had been quietly overachieving. Think a Shopping campaign with a modest ROAS target that had been returning far more because the budget kept it on a short leash. Since August, advertisers and agencies have reported higher click costs on budget-limited campaigns and returns sliding down towards the target, with some online retailers describing fewer sales for the same or higher spend. These are individual reports rather than a big published study, but the pattern is consistent and it matches how the change works.

There's a flip side. Campaigns that aren't budget-limited may find some clicks have become easier to win, because the capped campaigns are no longer quietly scooping up the low-cost ones.

Google's reasoning

Google says the change gives more predictable results when you adjust budgets, and that the target is now the efficiency lever. Its Ads Liaison put it plainly: Google wants advertisers to set targets that actually mean something to their business. Fair enough. The catch is that plenty of targets were set years ago and never touched again.

What to do about it

• Find the exposed campaigns. Any campaign showing "Limited by budget" on Target CPA or Target ROAS, including portfolio strategies and shared budgets.
• Compare target with reality. If a campaign's actual CPA or ROAS before 17 August was much better than its target, it was the most likely to move.
• Compare before and after. Look at 1 to 16 August against 28 August onwards for click costs, conversions, return and spend.
• Make a decision per campaign. Reset the target to what the business actually needs, raise the budget with some headroom, or switch to Maximise Conversions and accept that cost will move with budget.
• Give it time. Google suggests waiting one to two conversion cycles after any change before judging it.

Your ads can now appear inside AI Overviews

Ads inside Google's AI Overviews, the AI summary at the top of the results, are now available in Australia. Google's help page lists Australia alongside the US, Canada, New Zealand and several others, in English.

Three things to know:

• There's no opt-out. If your campaigns are eligible, they can appear there.
• There's no separate reporting. Those placements are counted inside your normal "top ads" figures, so you can't easily see how they perform on their own.
• Eligibility leans on automation. Google says you need broad match or keywordless targeting (AI Max, Performance Max or Dynamic Search Ads) plus Smart Bidding. A tidy exact-match-only account mostly won't show there.

This links straight to what's happening on the organic side. We covered the click problem in what Google AI Mode and zero-click search mean for your business. Paid and organic are now fighting over the same answer box, and the answer box is winning.

Dynamic Search Ads are on their way out

Dynamic Search Ads, the campaigns that build ads from your website content, are being folded into AI Max. Google originally planned to migrate them automatically in September 2026, then pushed that back to February 2027 after advertisers asked for more time.

If you run DSA campaigns, don't wait for the automatic move. Plan the switch yourself so you control the settings, rather than discovering in March which defaults Google picked on your behalf.

Tracking got stricter, and smarter

Two changes pull in opposite directions, and both come back to data.

Consent now does the gatekeeping

From mid-June 2026, it was widely reported that Google stopped using Google Signals as a fallback for advertising data. In plain terms: if a visitor says no to advertising cookies on your consent banner, Google doesn't get that data another way. A banner set up badly can quietly shrink your remarketing audiences and your conversion numbers at the same time.

Bidding that learns the whole journey

In May Google announced a beta of journey-aware bidding, which lets Search campaigns learn from what happens after the enquiry, like a phone call or a sale recorded in your CRM. For lead generation businesses that's the good news of the year. Smart Bidding finally gets told which leads turned into customers, instead of treating a tyre-kicker and a $40,000 job as the same thing.

The catch is you have to send it that information. Which brings us to the theme of the year: automation is only as smart as the data you feed it. Rubbish in, confidently optimised rubbish out.

AI Mode ads: interesting, not here yet

At Google Marketing Live in May, Google showed new ad formats for AI Mode, its chat-style search, including conversational ads and a lead-gen agent that answers customer questions from your website inside the ad itself.

Worth knowing about, not worth panicking about. These were announced as tests, and as of October there's no confirmation they're running in Australia. What is clear is that eligibility will run through AI Max or Performance Max. If you want to be in that queue later, the groundwork starts now.

The genuinely useful smaller updates

• Video from still images. Google's Asset Studio can now use Veo to turn up to three images into short videos of up to 10 seconds. Handy for YouTube ads and Demand Gen if you've never had video.
• Ads Advisor. Announced in April, with real-time policy checks and account security monitoring, rolling out to English accounts.
• Campaign total budgets. Set one budget for a fixed period, a few days to a few weeks, instead of babysitting daily caps through a sale.
• Performance Max visibility. Campaign-level negatives, search term reporting and channel reporting all arrived during 2025 and are now standard. If your Performance Max account still runs like a black box, that's a setup problem, not a Google problem.

What we've learnt this year

We've had a front-row seat to all of this across the accounts we manage. The lessons are less about any single feature and more about how the job has changed.

• Check what's switched on. Go through every Search campaign and look at the AI Max settings. Defaults changed while you weren't looking.
• Guardrails beat levers. AI Brief, negative keywords, brand settings and URL exclusions are now the steering wheel. Use all of them.
• Read the search terms report weekly. It now shows which searches came from AI Max. It's the fastest way to catch money leaking into the wrong searches.
• Your website writes your ads now. With text customisation and final URL expansion, Google pulls copy and picks landing pages from your site. A clear, well-structured site is now part of your ad account.
• Treat Google's averages as a starting point. Google publishes average uplifts, and independent tests have sometimes found less. Run a proper experiment and judge on your own numbers.
• Set targets you actually mean. Since 17 August, Google takes your Target CPA or ROAS literally on budget-capped campaigns. Check every target reflects real margins.
• Fix tracking before anything else. Consent Mode set up properly, enhanced conversions, and offline or CRM conversions for lead gen. Every automated feature above depends on it.

If you'd like a second set of eyes on what changed in your account this year, that's exactly what our Google Ads team does. And if you're still deciding whether ads are even the right first move, start with SEO or Google Ads: where should your first $2,000 go?