Tuesday, September 1. Google started moving Search campaigns into AI Max. Nobody was asked.
If you run ads for a client, for a shop, or for your own business, this one affects your account directly. Read it slowly.
What actually happened
From September 1, any Search campaign using Automatically Created Assets or the campaign-level broad match setting started getting upgraded to AI Max for Search.
Two versions of the same change:
1. Campaign had Automatically Created Assets on → it moves to AI Max with search term matching and text customization on by default.
2. Campaign had campaign-level broad match on → it moves to AI Max with search term matching on by default.
Advertisers got the email. Plenty of people scrolled past it.
The part most people missed
There is no opt-out button for the migration itself.
The only control you ever had was switching those two settings off before the upgrade reached your account. If they are still on today, the change is coming to you whether you planned for it or not.
Who is completely safe
If your Search campaigns run on normal responsive search ads with keyword-level match types (broad, phrase, exact), and you never enabled Automatically Created Assets or the campaign-level broad match setting, nothing happens.
Your keywords stay. Your match types stay. Your ad copy stays.
Go and confirm it yourself though. Open the account, check the settings, don’t assume.
Why this matters more for us
Text customization is the line I keep re-reading.
That means Google can rewrite parts of your ad copy based on the search. For a Nigerian brand that is a real risk, because the machine does not know that “delivery nationwide” means something specific about your logistics partner, or that you only take orders from Lagos and Abuja on weekdays.
Search term matching is the other one. Broader matching means you start paying for searches you never picked. On a ₦50,000 monthly test budget, ten wasted clicks a day is your whole month.
So here is what I would do this week if I had ads running:
✅ Open every Search campaign and check whether ACA or campaign-level broad match is on.
✅ Pull your search terms report every three days for the next two weeks, not once a month.
✅ Build your negative keyword list before the spend teaches you the hard way.
✅ Screenshot your ad copy now, so you can tell later whether Google rewrote something.
And while you are in your dashboards
Google Analytics showed zero traffic for September 1 across basically every install. Forums and timelines were full of people thinking their site had died overnight.
It was a reporting bug. Realtime kept showing live users the whole time, and Google acknowledged that standard reports were not displaying the data. Your traffic was fine. Your report was not.
If you screenshot a client report on September 2 and sent it as gospel, go and correct it before they ask.
My honest read
Google is not asking anymore. It is telling.
Every year the manual controls get quieter and the automation gets louder, and the marketers who win are the ones who read the emails, check the settings, and keep a record of what their account looked like before the change.
Automation is fine. Automation you did not audit is how budgets disappear.
Which of your campaigns had ACA switched on? Go and look, then come and tell me what you found. We pull accounts apart like this inside the community every week — join us → digitrybe.com/community
Related: Meta Just Changed How It Counts Your Ad Results and Paid Ads vs SEO: Where Should a Nigerian SME Put Its First ₦100k?
