Google is Retiring Dynamic Search Ads in Favour of AI Max. Here is What that Means for Your Paid Search Accounts.

What are Dynamic Search Ads?

Dynamic Search Ads (DSA) have been a fixture of Google’s search advertising platform for over a decade. Rather than matching ads to keywords that advertisers manually select, DSA works by crawling an advertiser’s website and automatically generating ads based on the page content. When a user’s search aligns with what Google finds on the site, it serves a dynamically generated headline and routes traffic to what it judges to be the most relevant page.

For many advertisers, DSA has served a specific purpose: catching search queries that keyword campaigns miss, expanding reach without building out exhaustive keyword lists, and maintaining coverage across large or frequently changing product catalogues with relatively low overhead.

What is AI Max?

AI Max for Search campaigns is Google’s current iteration of AI-powered search automation. Launched in beta in 2025 and exiting beta now, it combines three core capabilities:

• Search term matching: uses AI to identify queries beyond an advertiser’s keyword list, drawing on broader intent signals rather than website content alone
• Text customisation: dynamically adapts ad copy to be more relevant to the individual search
• Final URL expansion: automatically directs users to the landing page Google considers most likely to convert, rather than a fixed destination chosen by the advertiser. Google uses similar logic elsewhere to select sources, like with AI Overviews.

Google positions AI Max as the natural successor to DSA – capturing the same logic of “catch what keywords miss”, but feeding it with broader signals and more sophisticated ad assembly. The underlying shift is from crawling website pages to interpreting real-time intent signals across a wider data set.

What is changing with DSA and AI Max, and when

On 15/Apr, Google formally announced that DSA is being retired as a standalone format. The transition affects three legacy campaign configurations:

• Campaigns using Dynamic Search Ads
• Campaigns using automatically created assets (ACA)
• Campaigns using the campaign-level broad match setting

All three will be automatically upgraded to AI Max for Search. The process runs in two phases.

Phase 1 – voluntary migration (now through August 2026)

Google has begun rolling out upgrade tools allowing DSA advertisers to migrate on their own schedule, porting historical settings and data into standard ad groups configured for AI Max. For ACA and campaign-level broad match users, prompts will appear within the Google Ads interface.

Phase 2 – automatic upgrades (from September 2026)

From September, any remaining eligible campaigns that have not been manually migrated will be upgraded automatically. Once this phase begins, advertisers will no longer be able to create new DSA campaigns through Google Ads, Google Ads Editor, or the Google Ads API. Google expects all automatic upgrades to complete by the end of September.

What gets enabled with AI Max by default

This is where the detail is important. When campaigns are automatically migrated, the settings applied depend on which campaign type is being upgraded:

• DSA campaigns: all three AI Max features will be enabled – search term matching, text customisation, and final URL expansion. Legacy URL controls are preserved.
• ACA campaigns: search term matching and text customisation are enabled by default. Final URL expansion is not automatically switched on.
• Campaign-level broad match campaigns: search term matching is enabled by default only.

Google has stated that settings will be configured to mirror existing setups where possible. In practice, “porting over settings” and “reproducing your intended account structure” are not always the same thing.

The risk of waiting to migrate to AI Max

The case for migrating proactively rather than waiting for the automatic upgrade is mostly about control. When Google moves a campaign automatically, the configuration reflects Google’s defaults, not an advertiser’s deliberate choices.

Final URL expansion is a useful example. For DSA campaigns, it is turned on by default in the automatic migration. That means AI Max will be free to redirect paid traffic to any page it judges relevant – not just the pages an advertiser has specifically chosen. For accounts with clear landing page requirements, compliance considerations, or a detailed view of which pages convert and which do not, that default is not a neutral setting. You don’t want to be sending customers who should be seeing a product page, to a blog post, for example.
Negative keyword infrastructure is another area worth reviewing before migration. The lists built around a DSA campaign over time – often to filter out low-quality or off-brand queries – may not migrate cleanly into the new structure. Auditing them before September would be time well spent.

The pattern from previous forced migrations in Google Ads – most recently the Smart Shopping to Performance Max transition – suggests that advertisers who waited experienced performance instability in the weeks following migration, compared to those who migrated proactively, who mostly avoided the instability.

The broader pattern of Google feature rollouts

It is worth viewing this migration in context. DSA is not the first Google Ads format to be absorbed into a more automated successor. Call-only ads followed the same trajectory: creation disabled, then full shutdown a year later. Smart Shopping became Performance Max. Each time, the structure has been consistent: a voluntary migration window, automatic upgrades for remaining campaigns, then the end of the legacy format.

AI Max is not DSA with a new name. The underlying logic has shifted from “crawl the website, match the query” to “interpret intent signals at scale, assemble the ad accordingly.” The degree of control differs, the operational requirements differ, and the performance characteristics differ. Treating the migration as administrative rather than strategic is the most common way to get caught out.

What to do now about the DSA to AI Max migration

For any account running DSA, ACA, or campaign-level broad match settings, the immediate priorities are:

• Audit which campaigns are affected and how much of your search mix they represent
• Review negative keyword lists and ensure they are in good shape before migration
• Check landing page coverage – understand which pages you want traffic directed to and which you do not
• Review text guidelines and brand controls before enabling AI Max features at scale
• Run a parallel experiment where possible, comparing AI Max against your existing DSA setup before committing fully

Migration tools are available now. The window between now and September is the opportunity to move on your terms rather than Google’s defaults.