Est. reading time: 9 minutes
Google moved the Dynamic Search Ads sunset from September 2026 to February 2027, and the DSA campaigns we see have mostly gone back to running untouched. The pressure came off, and the migration moved down the list.
The extension also covers less than most people assume. Campaigns using automatically created assets or the campaign-level broad match setting are still scheduled to upgrade automatically starting in September 2026, per Google’s announcement of the change. The extra runway applies to the dynamic ad groups themselves.
Moving a DSA campaign into AI Max changes four things at once. The ad group type converts, the ad format converts, the query matching mechanism changes, and landing page selection widens from your page feed to your entire domain. The traffic at risk is the traffic DSA was quietly good at, meaning the long-tail product searches no keyword in the account covers, matched to a specific collection or product page because the feed told Google that page existed. Those matches carry through when the URL controls that produced them get rebuilt first. They get handed to the model’s own judgment when the upgrade runs on defaults.
Capture the DSA baseline before the ad groups convert
The first thing a migration costs you is usually the ability to tell whether it worked. Once dynamic ad groups become standard ad groups, the campaign keeps its history while the composition of the traffic underneath it changes, so a month-over-month CPA read carries very little information on its own.
Google Ads keeps dedicated views for exactly this comparison. In the search terms report, the dropdown above the table switches between search terms, search terms and landing pages from AI Max, search terms from Dynamic Search Ads, and search terms and landing pages from Dynamic Search Ads, as set out in Google’s reporting documentation for AI Max.
Export both DSA views before you upgrade, over a window long enough to cover a full purchase cycle. What you want out of them is a list of converting search terms and the landing page each one resolved to. Then pull the landing pages report for the same window, which aggregates performance at the page level across advertiser-provided URLs and expanded URLs. That gives you the set of pages DSA had decided were worth buying traffic for.
Judge the migration at the term level, not on the aggregate CPA line. Aggregate numbers move for a dozen reasons in the weeks after any upgrade. The question that isolates the migration is whether the terms that were converting still appear in the report, and whether they still resolve to the pages that converted them.
What migrating Dynamic Search Ads to AI Max rewrites in the campaign
The upgrade runs from campaign settings, and the confirmation dialog is worth reading slowly, because it lists changes that are hard to walk back. Dynamic ad groups convert to standard ad groups. Existing Dynamic Search Ads become responsive search ads, with Google generating the minimum number of static assets required through text customization. Legacy DSA targets that AI Max does not support become read-only, and the dialog names them before you confirm.
Two consequences deserve work before you click through. The first is creative. A responsive search ad assembled from the minimum viable set of generated assets is a stand-in for the ad you would have written, and it will serve against your strongest queries for as long as it takes you to notice. Write the RSAs yourself first, with the offer, the shipping threshold, and the guarantee language in headlines you control, and let text customization add to that.
The second is URL rules. Legacy rule types such as page title contains and page content contains become read-only after the upgrade, according to Google’s AI Max setup documentation. You can delete them, and you cannot add new ones or edit the ones you have. Any campaign whose targeting depends on page content conditions needs those conditions restated as supported URL rules before the upgrade freezes them in place.
Google does run a transition on the ads themselves. Legacy Dynamic Search Ads keep serving while the new responsive search ads are generated and reviewed for policy compliance, and they pause into a view-only state once the RSAs are eligible and active.
Page feeds still work, and they need final URL expansion turned off
In a DSA campaign, the page feed was a boundary. Google could send traffic to the URLs in it and nowhere else. AI Max turns on final URL expansion by default, which routes traffic to the URL on your domain predicted to perform best, limited to pages that are query relevant and themed to the ad group. For a Shopify catalog, that eligible set includes thin collection pages, out-of-stock product pages, expired promotions, and blog posts written for organic search.
The feed itself survives the migration. To target specific feed URLs, Google’s documentation directs you to use custom labels for ad group level URL inclusions with final URL expansion turned off. In that configuration, only your specified URLs are used as dynamic landing pages for that ad group, which is the closest available equivalent to how the DSA campaign behaved. If you want the expansion as well, keep it on and use custom labels for campaign level URL exclusions or ad group level inclusions, so your pages and Google’s picks are both eligible.
URL exclusions are campaign level and require text customization and final URL expansion to be on. URL inclusions are ad group level and accept rules such as URL contains and custom labels. One detail catches accounts that experiment and then back out. Existing URL inclusions and exclusions are ignored while the AI Max settings are off, so a campaign toggled off and then on again is not running the controls you think it is.
After the upgrade, the landing pages report carries a “Selected by” column showing which URLs AI Max chose. Read it weekly for the first month. Pages no merchandiser would have put behind paid traffic surface quickly, and every one of them is budget draining out of the pages that convert.
Pinned assets stop applying
Pinned responsive search ad assets are not respected once final URL expansion or URL inclusions are on, because a pinned line may not match the page that got chosen. Brands running required disclosure language or a price claim through a pin need that language in every headline variant it could appear in, or they need both settings off and the narrower reach that comes with them.
Tracking templates written for static URLs send expanded traffic to 404s
Final URL expansion substitutes the URL you provided with a dynamic landing page. Where the campaign also uses a tracking template, that substitution can produce a broken expanded page, and Google’s documentation on how AI Max works names 404 errors as the result when the template is not configured compatibly.
What breaks here is the landing page, not the match. The system finds the query, wins the auction, charges you for the click, and then delivers a page that does not exist. The failure hides well, because the search terms report shows the term performing badly rather than the page failing to load.
Google names four compatible forms of the lpurl tag. The tag followed by a question mark, by an ampersand, or by a hash where tracking parameters come after the landing page, and the tag on its own where there are no tracking parameters. Two configurations fail. A tracking template that specifies a static URL with no lpurl tag can send users to that static URL instead of a dynamic landing page. An lpurl tag used as only part of a URL parameter can return a 404.
The instruction from Google is to confirm that a dynamic landing page from final URL expansion works with your template before enabling AI Max. For most Shopify brands that is a short exercise with the template, any app-based redirects, and a handful of test URLs.
Test before you commit, and check whether the account can run the test at all
AI Max experiments split traffic inside the existing campaign. A percentage runs with AI Max off as the control, the remainder runs with it on, and because the traffic stays in one campaign the ramp is shorter than copying the campaign into a separate trial.
The eligibility list is where ecommerce accounts get stuck. You cannot create an AI Max experiment through that flow if the campaign already has text customization enabled, targets the Display network, belongs to a portfolio bidding strategy, uses a shared budget, uses bidding exploration, or has another active experiment. Every one of those except Display targeting also blocks the custom experiments route.
Shared budgets and portfolio strategies are common in DTC accounts, which means the test many brands assume they can run is closed to them. The workaround is to move the campaign onto its own budget and bidding strategy for the test window and restore it afterward. Where that is impractical, the fallback is a before-and-after read against the baseline export from earlier, over matched windows, judged on the same converting terms.
Two conditions govern whether the result means anything. AI Max features require conversion-based Smart Bidding to function as intended, so a campaign on manual CPC will not produce a fair test. Google also states that AI Max will not be effective in a campaign limited by budget, and surfaces an alert in the account when that is the case. Resolve the budget constraint before you read the experiment.
Google reports an average of 7% more conversions or conversion value at a similar CPA or ROAS when the full AI Max suite is used against search term matching alone, and the footnote attaches that figure to non-retail advertisers. For a DTC brand, that footnote is the argument for running the experiment rather than assuming the result. Once AI Max is live, Google recommends waiting at least two weeks before making changes such as adding negative keywords, which is a good reason to schedule this outside peak season.
February 2027 reads as distant until you count what sits in front of it. URL rules restated as supported types, responsive search ads written by someone who knows the offer, tracking templates verified against a live expanded page, a test window where the account allows one, and two weeks of ramp. Brands that work through that this autumn will run AI Max on settings they chose. Brands that wait will inherit whatever the automatic upgrade configures and spend early 2027 working out which converting queries went missing. If the DSA campaigns in your account need that work, we can go through them with you.
