Google converts every eligible Search campaign to AI Max between September 1 and 30, 2026. We audited all 19 Google Ads accounts under our management on August 25, one week before the window: zero enabled campaigns use campaign-level broad match, 25 campaigns still carry the legacy automatically created assets setting that also triggers conversion, and once you remove the campaigns already running AI Max, the entire auto-conversion path holds three campaigns. Exactly one is enabled and spending. The panic reads fleet-wide; the exposure, on a managed fleet, is one deliberate decision. The surprises sat elsewhere: paused campaigns that convert silently, a competitor's brand matched by default, and an API flag that makes AI Max a package deal on 13 of our 18 enabled campaigns.
This is the audit story. The product mechanics, cohort defaults, and opt-out paths live in our verified dossier on the September auto-upgrade, and the operating manual, including the exact queries we ran, is the AI Max Field Guide. Figures marked ◇ are first-party, pulled from the Google Ads API v22 on August 25, 2026.
What September changes
Two legacy configurations trigger the automatic conversion: campaign-level broad match and standalone automatically created assets. Google blocked creating new ones on August 3, and from September 1 through 30 it converts what remains, in place, with search term matching switched on. September 1 is the deadline to prevent the mapping. Every trade headline frames this as a fleet-wide event, so we measured what it actually touches on a fleet that gets managed weekly.
The audit
One GAQL request per account answers the whole question. It returns each Search campaign's match-type setting, its legacy asset setting, and whether AI Max is already on, which covers both triggers and the current posture in a single pass. The four-query version, verified live and ready to paste, is in the field guide's preflight section; it runs read-only through the API, a script, or the AI agent that helps manage your account.
What 19 accounts actually look like
◇ The posture on August 25:
- Campaign-level broad match: zero enabled campaigns. The setting exists on two paused campaigns fleet-wide. Years of match-type discipline mean the loud trigger is simply absent.
- Legacy automatically created assets: 25 campaigns still opted in. This is the live trigger, and most of the 25 are paused historical campaigns nobody looks at.
- 14 campaigns already carry the AI Max flag. Two are enabled: our own agency campaign and our own vehicle-wraps campaign, both deliberate tests on our own money.
- The remaining auto-conversion path holds 3 campaigns, and exactly 1 is enabled and spending: a client location campaign that did $1,199.20, 284 clicks, and 22 conversions in the last 30 days. That single campaign is the entire September decision for this fleet, and it gets made deliberately, against the readiness gates, before the window opens.
- Context for what expansion has to beat: across all 19 accounts in the last 30 days, keyword-attributed Search spend split 55.3% phrase, 32.5% exact, and 12.3% broad of $11,971.57 total. The baseline is precision that already converts.
Three findings we did not expect
Paused campaigns are the quiet risk. The migration language does not exempt them, and 25 mostly-paused campaigns carry the trigger here. A paused campaign converts silently in September and wakes up months later carrying AI Max settings nobody chose. Audit everything, not just what is spending.
Competitor conquesting happened by default. On our wraps campaign, the served-combinations report shows AI Max matched a local competitor's brand name twice, with no keyword and no setting we chose. The report that catches it, ai_max_search_term_ad_combination_view, shows every expansion down to the term, the headline, and the landing page, and almost nobody pulls it. Brand exclusions are a decision you make, not a default you inherit.
AI Max is a package deal on most of our fleet. ◇ The flag bundling_required reads REQUIRED on 13 of our 18 enabled Search campaigns, which means component settings like text customization cannot hold without the campaign-level umbrella. Containment on those campaigns lives at the ad-group and list level, and knowing that before September beats learning it after.
What we are doing before September 1
- The one exposed campaign gets a deliberate decision this week, scored against the seven readiness gates, instead of a default it would inherit on September 1.
- Every account gets a calendar entry for early October: re-run the posture query, diff it against the August 25 output, and pull the change history to see exactly what the migration wrote. The change-history query has a 30-day lookback, so the audit has to happen inside the window that matters.
- The two first-party AI Max tests keep their weekly served-combinations review. Five impressions of expansion took minutes to inspect; the habit exists for the day it takes hours.
Run it on your account
The audit costs one query per account and an hour of attention, and the alternative is Google making the decision for you on September 1. The field guide carries the paste-ready queries, the readiness scorecard, and a machine-readable appendix your AI agent can lift whole; the dossier documents the mechanics against 66 dated sources. Both were built from the audit this post describes.