"Your campaigns are changing automatically" is the kind of sentence that would make any performance marketing manager's eyes water. But we’re here to help you get ahead of it. From September, Google is deprecating Dynamic Search Ads (DSA) in favour of AI Max for Search - and the migration covers DSA campaigns, automatically created assets (ACA), and campaign-level broad match, whether you've opted in or not.
DSA has been a useful workaround for years. It lets Google automatically match your ads to relevant search queries based on your website content, filling the gaps that keyword lists couldn't always cover. Handy. But also a bit of a blunt instrument.
AI Max for Search is Google's attempt to do the same job with significantly more intelligence behind it. It still fills keyword gaps, but it does so using a combination of your landing page content, your existing creative assets, and Google's machine learning to match ads to queries in a far more contextual way.
Think of it less as a keyword-extension tool and more as a smarter ad delivery system.
A few things land at once:
New DSA creation stops entirely. Any campaigns already using DSA, ACA, or campaign-level broad match will be automatically migrated to AI Max. You won't be asked for permission; it'll happen.
The new ad format brings together your creative assets, landing page context, and query signals into a single, more adaptive campaign type. Google's own data suggests AI Max delivers around 7% more conversions at a similar CPA/ROAS when using the full feature set.
That 7% is worth taking seriously, but it's also worth treating as a starting point rather than a guarantee. Results will vary by account, by sector, and by how well the migration is handled.
We won't pretend this is all hypothetical. We've already been running AI Max across a number of client accounts, and the early picture is encouraging.
We've seen it delivering incremental clicks and revenue for the brands we've tested it with. For one ecommerce brand, we saw a +35% increase in clicks and +42% increase in conversions. These are conversions that wouldn’t have happened if it wasn’t for AI Max. Across all our tests, the incremental revenue ranges between +5% to +35% with % varying based on verticals and budgets spent on search campaigns.
One thing we want to be clear about (because the narrative around AI and search advertising can sometimes get a bit carried away): Exact Match, Phrase Match, and Broad Match keywords are all still very much part of the picture.
AI Max doesn't replace keyword strategy. It sits alongside it, extending reach into query territory that traditional keywords don't cover efficiently. Your keyword architecture still matters. Audience signals still matter. What's changing is the mechanism for handling the gaps, not the foundations of how search campaigns work.
If DSA campaigns are running in your accounts, the most important thing is to go in with a plan rather than wait for the automatic migration to make decisions for you.
Our advice to action before September:
We're already doing this across all the accounts we manage where DSA is in play. If you're doing it yourself, the structured testing approach is the bit we'd encourage most strongly. The migration will happen, but how clearly you can read the results is entirely within your control.
We've been in this industry long enough to have watched plenty of "the future of search" announcements fail to deliver. We're not the type to get swept up in platform hype.
But the logic behind AI Max is sound, the early data is positive, and the direction of travel - towards more contextual, less mechanical ad serving - is one we've believed in for a while.
It's not a magic fix. And the migration period will need careful handling. But if your accounts are well set up, and you go into September with a clear plan, we think this is more opportunity than headache.
Want to talk through what the DSA migration means specifically for your campaigns? Get in touch with the team.
