Dynamic Search Ads Are Becoming AI Max: What to Do

If you or your agency run Google Search campaigns, there is a good chance you have a Dynamic Search Ads (DSA) campaign somewhere in the account. Google has announced that DSA is being upgraded to AI Max, its newer set of AI-driven features for Search campaigns.

The timing has moved since the first announcement, so it is worth checking what applies to your account rather than relying on older articles.

What are Dynamic Search Ads?

Dynamic Search Ads are Google Ads campaigns that use the content of your website, rather than a list of keywords you choose, to decide which searches to show for and to write the headline. They are often used by businesses with a lot of service pages that do not want to build keyword lists by hand.

What is AI Max for Search campaigns?

AI Max is a set of features you switch on inside an ordinary Search campaign. It uses Google's AI to find relevant searches beyond your keywords, to customise ad text and to choose the landing page. Google publishes a set-up guide and a separate reporting guide for it in the Google Ads Help Centre.

When will Dynamic Search Ads be upgraded?

Google's June 2026 update to its announcement says the automatic DSA upgrade will now start in February 2027, after advertisers asked for more time. The Google Ads Help page for DSA gives the same date.

A separate group of campaigns is on an earlier schedule. Google says campaigns that use automatically created assets (now called text customization) and campaign-level broad match were scheduled to upgrade in September 2026. That date has now passed, so if you have such campaigns, open them and see what has changed.

What changes when a DSA campaign is upgraded?

Google's help guide says the upgrade is done from the campaign settings, and that dynamic ad groups are converted into standard ad groups with responsive search ads. It also warns that some older DSA targets are not supported in AI Max and become read-only; the confirmation screen lists them.

Google says automatic upgrades mirror your existing settings, with your URL controls kept for DSA. That is reassuring, but it does not tell you whether the campaign will perform the same afterwards.

Should you upgrade early or wait?

Google recommends upgrading early so that you control how it is set up. For most small businesses the sensible middle path is to test it first, using the experiment option Google provides, and upgrade once you have seen the numbers.

• Upgrade early if your DSA campaign already brings in booked jobs and you want to choose the settings yourself.
• Test first if it is a large share of your spend, or if you have strict rules about wording and landing pages.
• Do nothing yet only if you have no DSA or text customization campaigns. Check, rather than assume.

What this means for your business

1. Find your DSA campaigns. In Google Ads, look for campaigns or ad groups of the dynamic type, and for any with text customization or campaign-level broad match switched on.
2. Write down your baseline: spend, enquiries, cost per booked job and the share of enquiries that became paying customers over the last 60 to 90 days.
3. Check your landing pages. Because AI Max can pick the page and customise wording, make sure every page you would not want a stranger to land on is excluded or fixed.
4. Run the upgrade as an experiment, then compare it to your baseline on booked jobs, not clicks.
5. Leave it alone for the first two weeks. Google advises waiting at least two weeks after enabling AI Max before changes such as adding negative keywords.
6. Review the search terms report weekly and add negatives for searches that bring enquiries you cannot serve.

How do you know whether AI Max is working?

Judge it on what the enquiries turned into. AI-driven Search features can widen the net and lower the cost per lead while the leads get worse, so the useful measure is cost per booked job, which needs the lead and the outcome joined up.

This is where tracking matters. If your Google Ads account only sees form fills, it cannot tell the difference between a good enquiry and a time-waster. Feeding the real outcome back, as covered in our guide to offline conversion tracking, gives the automation a better target. SholaX records the campaign, UTM tags and click IDs with each enquiry in its CRM, and Results joins that to ad spend so you can see which campaigns made money.

A simple rule of thumb

If you cannot say what your cost per booked job was before the change, you will not be able to say whether the change helped. Capture the baseline first.