Chapter 9 switched AI Max off when the Search campaign was built, because Google turns it on by default. That raises the obvious question: if Google is this keen on it, when does a small business turn it back on?
The short answer is last, after everything else in this guide is working, and only as a test. Below: the three things the AI Max switch changes, why Google's own fine print pushes it to the end for a small account, a quiet upgrade that may have already flipped it on, and a test you can trust when its turn arrives.
Google's 27% Lift for AI Max Comes From Its Own Internal Data. Your Account Is the Only Test That Counts.
When Google launched AI Max in May 2025, it led with numbers. The headline figure was 14%: that much more in conversions or conversion value for a typical advertiser, at roughly the same cost per conversion. Then came a second figure aimed straight at accounts like the one this guide builds: "For campaigns that are still mostly using exact and phrase keywords, the typical uplift is even higher at 27%."
The footnote explains where those numbers come from: Google's internal data, from campaigns that got more than 70% of their conversions from exact or phrase match. That's a real data set, but it's Google's, about Google's product, averaged across advertisers whose budgets and conversion volumes you can't see. A typical result across many advertisers doesn't tell you what will happen in one small account with a handful of leads a week.
David Smania, BrandRocket's founder, has watched Google's sales reps cycle through whatever Google is pushing that quarter, and AI Max is on that list now. His position isn't that AI Max is bad. "I'm not anti-AI Max," he says, "but if we do it, it would have to be a test within its own campaign and budget." The last section of this chapter sets up exactly that test.
One AI Max Switch Turns On Broader Matching, Google-Written Headlines and Swapped Landing Pages.
Google describes AI Max as "an optimization layer within existing Search campaigns," not a new campaign type. You switch it on inside a Search campaign, and it changes three things at once.
Search term matching. Google describes it as reaching past your keyword list with broad match plus matching that doesn't need a keyword at all. It's on by default for every ad group once AI Max is on. In practice it lets Google show your ads on searches you never added as keywords, based on your ads and your landing pages. That's why we treat AI Max as broad match by another name: it undoes the control Chapter 6 built with square-bracket keywords.
Text customization. This used to be called automatically created assets. Google's AI reads your existing ads and your site, then drafts additional headlines and descriptions of its own. Google says it reviews them at least every 48 hours, refreshes them as needed, and only shows them when they're predicted to do better than the ones you wrote. Chapter 8 spent a whole chapter writing headlines from your customers' own words; this setting mixes Google's lines in with yours.
Final URL expansion. With this on, the page you built for an ad becomes a suggestion; Google may land the visitor somewhere else on your domain if it expects a better result. Google requires text customization alongside it, so the headline can be rewritten to fit whatever page it chose. Chapter 4 built one page per search for a reason.
AI Max also comes with some controls: brand settings, location controls at the ad group level, URL exclusions and text guidelines that block terms you never want in your ads. Those are useful, and we'll use them in the test. But they're limits on a wider campaign, not a substitute for choosing your own searches.
AI Max Runs on Conversion-Based Smart Bidding, So a Small Account Still Setting Bids by Hand Isn't Ready for It.
Here's the line from Google's own setup page that decides the timing for a small business: "Features like search term matching, final URL expansion, and text customization require conversion-based Smart Bidding strategies in order to function effectively."
Conversion-based Smart Bidding means bid strategies that learn from your conversions, such as Maximize conversions, with or without a target cost per conversion. Chapter 7 kept a small account off all of them and on hand-set bids until it reaches about 30 quality conversions a month, steadily. Below that, Google's bidding has too little to learn from, and so does AI Max. Flipping the AI Max switch in a campaign with manual bids doesn't give it what Google says it needs.
Even after the account clears that gate, AI Max isn't next in line. Here's the order this guide has followed:
- Square-bracket keywords with hand-set bids (Chapters 6 and 7).
- A broad-match Exploration campaign on a target cost per lead, once about 30 real leads a month hold steady (Chapter 7).
- Performance Max, tested on its own budget (Chapter 10).
- YouTube through Demand Gen, if the budget allows (Chapter 11).
- AI Max, last.
Why last? Because by then you have everything AI Max is supposed to improve: a broad-match campaign that already shows which wider searches turn into leads, months of search terms, and a real cost per lead to measure against. AI Max on top of that is a test you can actually read. AI Max in place of it is a guess.
And AI Max never goes into the square-bracket campaign itself. That campaign's whole job is to hold the searches you've already proven, at prices you chose. Broadening it defeats the purpose.
Google Is Moving Campaigns That Use Text Customization Into AI Max Automatically, Without a Separate Opt-In.
Even if you never touch the AI Max switch, it may get switched for you. Google's help page on text customization says that "starting in September 2026, campaigns using text customization, formerly known as automatically created assets, will automatically be upgraded to AI Max."
So if a campaign still has automatically created assets turned on, perhaps from a Google rep or a quick setup years ago, it can now be running AI Max without anyone deciding it should. Check each Search campaign's settings. If AI Max shows as on and you didn't choose it, turn it off, or at least turn off search term matching and Final URL expansion until the account is ready.
You can also see it in the data. Google's search terms report now labels these matches with "AI Max" as their own match type and adds a column showing why the search matched. If searches you never targeted show up under that label, that's AI Max at work.
One more quirk. Google has moved brand settings for Search inside AI Max, so the brand exclusion controls Chapter 10 used for Performance Max are reached through AI Max in a Search campaign. A small account doesn't need them there. As Chapter 2 set up, your business name runs in its own small campaign, which keeps brand searches separate without turning AI Max on.
An AI Max Test Belongs in a Separate Campaign With New Money and a Shut-Off Date, Not in the Campaign That Already Works.
When the account is ready, after the other steps are working and leads cost what you expect, AI Max gets a test built to give a clear answer. These are the conditions we use:
- Its own campaign. Build a separate Search campaign for the test, copied from the Exploration campaign's best ad groups. Don't switch AI Max on in a campaign that's already producing leads.
- New money. Fund the test with extra dollars. If the money comes out of a campaign that's already producing leads, a good result might only mean AI Max collected leads that campaign would have brought in anyway.
- One feature at a time. Start with search term matching only. Hold back Final URL expansion and text customization until the first results are in, so every click still lands on a page you built and every headline is still one you wrote.
- A target that matches the rest of the account. Bid to the same target cost per lead your Exploration campaign already achieves.
- Text guidelines on. Add the words and claims you can't or won't use, so any Google-written line that does run stays within bounds.
- An exit date. Write down the cost per real lead the test has to hit and the date you'll decide. If it misses, pause it.
For the first few weeks, open the search terms report daily, just as Chapter 6 recommended when broad match first goes live. Add negative keywords for anything off target. And judge the test on leads that turned into customers, not on clicks.
A small account may run this test and find that AI Max brings in more leads at the same price. Good: keep it, and widen it slowly, one feature at a time. It may also find the opposite, more traffic and more spend with no more customers. That's a useful answer too, and it costs far less to learn in a fenced-off test than in the campaign that pays the bills.
Next: Google's Ad Credit and Smart Campaigns Look Like Shortcuts for a Small Business.
That completes the order: from tracking and hand-set bids up through broad match, Performance Max, YouTube and AI Max. The last three chapters are bonuses. Chapter 14 starts with two things Google offers new small advertisers, ad credits and Smart campaigns, and why the budget should decide, not the coupon.
Every chapter so far is on the guide's home page.
When we take over an account through Google Ads management, the first settings check includes AI Max on every Search campaign, including ones upgraded automatically. Doing it yourself? Open each Search campaign's settings tonight and look for AI Max. If it's on and nobody chose it, switch it off.
