Google has confirmed that from September 2026, Search campaigns using the campaign-level broad match setting or automatically created assets will be automatically upgraded to AI Max, with search term matching switched on by default. Dynamic Search Ads were on the same schedule, but Google has pushed their upgrade back to February 2027 after advertiser feedback. Broad match and auto-created assets get no such reprieve.
If you run Google Ads for a business in Bahrain or anywhere in the GCC, this matters even if you have never heard of AI Max. The upgrade changes which searches can trigger your ads, and sometimes what the ads say, and it happens automatically, whether anyone is watching the account or not.
What Is Actually Changing
AI Max for Search campaigns is Google’s bundle of AI features for standard Search campaigns. It has three parts: search term matching, which uses AI to serve your ads on relevant queries beyond your keywords; text customisation, which generates headlines and descriptions from your landing pages and existing ads; and final URL expansion, which can send clicks to a different page on your site than the one you chose.
Two groups of campaigns are affected. Google’s broad match documentation states that campaigns using the campaign-level broad match setting will be upgraded automatically starting in September 2026, with search term matching enabled by default. Campaigns using automatically created assets, a feature now folded into AI Max as text customisation, will be upgraded with both search term matching and text customisation switched on.
What to Do Before September
Check whether you are affected. Open each Search campaign’s settings and look for the campaign-level broad match setting and automatically created assets. If either is on, that campaign is in the upgrade queue.
Decide whether to opt out or move early. Google’s setup guide shows how to toggle AI Max settings on and off. Turning the legacy features off now avoids the automatic upgrade; enabling AI Max yourself, ideally as an experiment, means you control the timing rather than Google.
Read your search term reports after the upgrade. AI Max ships with expanded search terms reporting. Check weekly which queries are spending your budget and add negatives quickly.
Watch spend and CPA for the first month. New matching behaviour needs time to settle. Budget drift in week one is normal; budget drift nobody notices until the invoice is not.
Automation Is Not the Problem. Absence Is.
Google’s help pages cite a typical 14% lift in conversions or conversion value at a similar CPA or ROAS for advertisers who activate AI Max. We have no reason to doubt the average. But an average is not your account.
In this region the stakes are a little higher. Search term matching will decide whether your ads appear against Arabic queries, mixed Arabic-English searches and loose transliterations, and machine judgement on those still benefits from a human who knows the market. We have written before about how AI is reshaping search, and the pattern holds in paid as well as organic: the tools are genuinely good, and they still need supervision.
The businesses that get hurt by upgrades like this are never the ones that opted in deliberately. They are the ones where the account was set up in 2023, the card is still being charged, and nobody has logged in since. Log in before Google does it for you.
If nobody has looked at your ad account since it was set up, speak to Fabianca about managing your paid campaigns →
