AI Max Audit: What Google's September Change Did

Google's September AI Max change is finished, and it reached past the three campaigns we flagged. We audited all 19 Google Ads accounts under our management on August 25, 2026, one week before the window opened, and found three campaigns on the forced-change path. We ran the same check again on November 13. All three now carry a migration date from Google, and so do 10 other campaigns. Six of the 13 are paused, and one date is October 15, two weeks after the window was due to close. The update comes first; the August audit follows it.

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. The August figures came from the Google Ads API v22. The update figures came from API v25 on November 13, 2026.

What the migration did

◇ The November 13 check covered 83 Search campaigns, 44 of them enabled. The API now returns two fields that the August version lacked: campaign.aca_migration_date_time for the legacy asset setting and campaign.broad_match_migration_date_time for campaign-level broad match. A date in either field marks a campaign Google changed.

• All three campaigns we named took the change. The enabled client campaign carries a date of September 24. The two paused campaigns carry September 17 and September 28. All three now show the AI Max flag.
• 13 campaigns carry a migration date. Twelve came through the legacy asset setting and one through broad match. That is more than the three we counted in August, but the two counts are not like for like: we manage 27 accounts now, up from 19.
• Six of the 13 are paused. They took the change without spending a dollar. Whoever turns one back on will get AI Max settings nobody chose.
• The window ran late. One campaign's date is October 15. Google's stated window was September 1 to 30.
• Campaign-level broad match is gone. Two paused campaigns had it in August. No campaign has it now.
• The package-deal flag spread. bundling_required reads REQUIRED on 37 of our 44 enabled Search campaigns, up from 13 of 18 in August.

AI Max is now on for 41 of the 83 Search campaigns, and for 24 of the 44 enabled ones. That total mixes Google's changes with campaigns we turned on ourselves, so it does not measure the migration. The migration dates do.

One record is already out of reach. The change history only goes back 30 days, so the September writes aged out by the end of October. If you did not export them then, the two date fields are the record you have left.

What to do now

1. Add the two migration date fields to the posture query and run it on every account. The query is in the field guide's preflight section.
2. Check every paused campaign that carries a date before anyone turns it back on.
3. Pull the served-combinations report for each dated campaign that is spending. It shows every expansion down to the search term, the headline, and the landing page.
4. Score each dated campaign against the seven readiness gates, and narrow the ones that fall short at the ad-group and list level.

What September changed

Two legacy configurations trigger the forced changes: campaign-level broad match and standalone automatically created assets. Google blocked creating new ones on August 3, and from September 1 it changed what remained, in place, with search term matching switched on. September 1 was the deadline to prevent the mapping. Every trade headline framed this as a fleet-wide event, so in August we measured what it would touch on a fleet that gets managed weekly.

The August 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 looked like in August

◇ 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 forced-change 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 was the entire September decision for the fleet as we counted it then.
• 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. 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 takes the forced change silently and wakes up months later carrying AI Max settings nobody chose. The November check bore this out, because Google dated paused campaigns along with live ones. Audit everything, including what is not 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 have to make yourself.

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 that is where to work now that the flag covers most of the fleet.

Run it on your account

The audit costs one query per account and an hour of attention. 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.