Paid Ads Strategy

Dynamic Search Ads Are Changing in 2026: What to Do Now

If you run Dynamic Search Ads — and a lot of service businesses quietly do, because DSAs are the "set it up once and it finds the searches" campaign type — Google has news for you. DSAs are going away. Not eventually: on a published schedule, with automatic migration for anyone who doesn't move first.

Here's the timeline, what changed in June, and how to migrate without giving up control.

The timeline (updated June 2026)

In April 2026, Google announced it would retire Dynamic Search Ads and automatically upgrade eligible campaigns to AI Max for Search starting September 2026. In June, Google revised the plan and gave everyone breathing room:

• Now – January 2027: DSAs keep running. The ability to create new DSA campaigns — briefly removed — was restored on June 15, 2026. Google calls this the voluntary migration window.
• January 2027: creating new DSA campaigns ends.
• February 2027: automatic migration begins. Remaining DSA campaigns get upgraded whether you've planned for it or not.

There is no opt-out. The only choice you control is whether the migration happens on your terms or on Google's schedule.

What AI Max actually is

AI Max for Search is Google's asset-based replacement: instead of pointing at your site and letting Google generate ads from page content (the DSA model), AI Max campaigns combine broad-match keywords, Smart Bidding, and AI-generated assets, with the AI deciding much of what serves where. It can perform well. It can also spend confidently in the wrong places if your inputs are sloppy — which is exactly why migrating deliberately beats being migrated.

The plan for service businesses

1. Fix conversion tracking before anything else. AI-driven campaigns are only as good as the signal you feed them; an AI Max campaign optimizing toward a broken conversion event is a budget shredder with a clear conscience. Run the checks in our conversion tracking checklist first.

2. Test now, while DSA is your control group. Google's own recommendation matches what we'd tell you: use a Campaign Experiment to run AI Max against your existing DSA and measure performance parity before committing. You have until January to run a clean test. That's a luxury — use it.

3. Carry your exclusions over deliberately. Whatever negative keywords, URL exclusions, and brand controls made your DSA behave are not guaranteed to migrate the way you'd hope in an automatic upgrade. Rebuild them in the new campaign yourself and check the search-terms report weekly during the test.

4. Watch spend during the transition. Broad match plus Smart Bidding will explore. Set budgets you can tolerate exploration on, and review weekly — not quarterly — until performance stabilizes.

5. Put the migration on your calendar, not February's. A campaign you migrate in October with two months of experiment data behind it is a different animal from one Google converts in a February batch job.

The bigger pattern

This is the third major push in as many years moving advertisers from explicit controls toward AI-managed campaigns. Sometimes the AI version wins on performance; sometimes it wins on Google's margin. The response isn't resistance — it's measurement. Clean tracking, honest experiments, tight exclusions, and the willingness to keep what works and kill what doesn't. That's how we run every account, DSA or not.

If DSAs are load-bearing in your account and you'd like a second set of eyes on the migration plan — or you're not sure whether that "set it once" campaign from 2023 is even earning its budget — book a demo and we'll look at it live.

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