Google is retiring dynamic search ads and moving every DSA campaign into AI Max for Search, but the date you probably have in your diary is wrong.
The April announcement said September 2026. In June, Google pushed the DSA part back to February 2027. The other two things in the same announcement are still going in September.
If you run a UK small business account with a DSA catch-all ad group, some of your targeting carries over, some of it turns read-only, and the reporting you use to police it moves to a different screen.
What Google actually announced, and when it changed
On 15 April 2026 Brandon Ervin, Director of Product Management at Google Ads, published the upgrade notice. Three legacy features were to be upgraded automatically from September 2026: dynamic search ads, automatically created assets (ACA), and the campaign-level broad match setting. New DSA creation would end at the same time.
That post now carries an update dated 11 June 2026. Google is "extending the timeline for Dynamic Search Ads sunset and auto-upgrade, which will begin in February 2027". ACA and campaign-level broad match "will continue to be auto-upgraded starting in September 2026". Ginny Marvin, the Google Ads Liaison, gave the reason the next day, as Search Engine Land reported:
"We've heard your feedback loud and clear: you need more time to transition from Dynamic Search Ads (DSA) to AI Max." Ginny Marvin, Google Ads Liaison, via Search Engine Land
The Google Ads help page for DSA now says the same thing: "starting in February 2027, campaigns using Dynamic Search Ads (DSA) will automatically be upgraded to AI Max." The ability to create new DSA campaigns was restored on 15 June and is due to be removed again in January 2027.
timeline
title DSA to AI Max dates (Google announcements, 2026)
April 2026 : AI Max leaves beta. DSA, ACA and campaign-level broad match to auto-upgrade from September
June 2026 : DSA auto-upgrade moved to February 2027. DSA creation restored from 15 June
September 2026 : ACA and campaign-level broad match campaigns auto-upgrade to AI Max
January 2027 : New DSA campaign creation removed again
February 2027 : Remaining DSA campaigns auto-upgrade to AI Max
So in late October 2026, a Search campaign with the campaign-level broad match setting on, or with automatically created assets enabled, has either been upgraded already or is about to be. Your DSA ad groups have until February.
What carries over from DSA to AI Max
Your DSA ad group becomes a standard ad group with AI Max switched on, and the URL controls you set up come with it. Google's AI Max help page says "Existing Dynamic Search Ads will become Responsive Search Ads". The old DSAs keep serving until the new RSAs pass policy review, then they are paused in a view-only state.
For the DSA upgrade specifically, all three AI Max features are switched on by default: search term matching, text customisation and final URL expansion. That default is exactly why it pays to decide what to turn off before AI Max goes on. Google's announcement page says this happens "with your legacy URL controls preserved". For ACA campaigns only search term matching and text customisation go on. For campaign-level broad match, only search term matching.
Page feeds survive. Marvin confirmed in a thread on LinkedIn reported by PPC Land that AI Max supports URL rules and page feeds, and that "you can add multiple custom labels". The Google Ads API documentation backs this up: standard Search ad groups accept URL and CUSTOM_LABEL conditions, with the page feed attached to the campaign as an asset set.
Negative keywords carry over because they were never a DSA feature in the first place. They sit at campaign or ad group level, and Google's reporting page treats them as the first tool for reining in AI Max search term matching. Brand exclusions, if you set them up during the AI Max beta, stay at campaign level.
What turns read-only or stops working
Two DSA target types, "page title contains" and "page content contains", are not supported in AI Max and become read-only on upgrade. Marvin said it plainly: "AI Max doesn't support all of the rules you may be currently using (e.g. page contains) in DSA." Read-only means they keep working as they are, but you cannot edit them or add new ones.
The category targets Google generates from your site, the ones listed on the DSA targets page, have no stated equivalent in AI Max either. If your DSA campaign leans on "Categories", you will need to rebuild that targeting as URL inclusions or a labelled page feed before February.
There is also a dependency that catches people out. Final URL expansion, the part of AI Max that picks your landing page the way DSA did, requires text customisation to be on. Google's own words: "Deactivating text customization automatically disables Final URL expansion." Turn off the AI-written headlines to keep control of your copy and you lose the landing page matching too.
Pinned assets are the other casualty: when final URL expansion sends a click to a different page, pinned headlines and descriptions are not used.
DSA versus AI Max side by side
The table below puts the two systems next to each other, using Google's AI Max documentation, the DSA targets page and the practitioner reports published since April.
| Feature | Dynamic search ads | AI Max for Search |
|---|---|---|
| Where it lives | Dynamic ad group inside a Search campaign | Setting on a standard Search campaign, on by default for new campaigns |
| Targeting by URL (equals, contains) | Yes | Yes, as URL inclusions at ad group level |
| Page feed with custom labels | Yes, up to 100 feeds per account | Yes, attached as a page feed asset set |
| Page title or page content rules | Yes | Not supported; existing rules go read-only |
| Google-generated categories | Yes | No stated equivalent |
| Headline source | Generated from page content, HTML title is the main signal | Text customisation from domain, landing pages, existing ads and keywords |
| Landing page selection | Automatic from the target set | Final URL expansion, which needs text customisation on |
| Keywords in the ad group | None | Your keywords plus keywordless matching on top |
| Exclusions | DSA exclusions by URL, negatives | URL exclusions at campaign level, negative URLs, negative keywords, brand exclusions, up to 25 term exclusions and 40 messaging restrictions in text guidelines |
| Bidding | Any strategy | Conversion-based Smart Bidding needed for the features to work properly |
| Reporting | DSA search terms report | Search terms report with Match type "AI Max", Source column, two aggregate rows in the keyword report |
The bidding row matters because plenty of small UK accounts still run DSA on manual CPC or Maximise Clicks as a cheap research campaign. Google says the three features "require conversion-based Smart Bidding strategies" to work properly. If your account has no conversion tracking worth the name, fix that first.
The exclusions row matters because at least one practitioner says the controls do not yet behave as DSA exclusions did. Rameez Ramzan, a performance marketing manager quoted in the PPC Land thread, reported campaigns still landing on pages he had excluded: "In DSA it works spot on, but in AI Max it is not accurate."
How the reporting changes
The DSA search terms report does not disappear, but the useful work moves to the standard search terms report with a Match type filter. Google's AI Max reporting page lists four views, two of them still labelled for Dynamic Search Ads, and defaults to the landing page view.
To see what the keywordless matching is doing, filter the Match type column for "AI Max" and add the Source column. Google warns that "the search terms report may show lower numbers for AI Max" when filtered this way.
The keyword report gains two aggregate rows at the bottom: "Total: AI Max expanded matches" for traffic from broad match keywords AI Max created, and "Total: AI Max landing page matches" for queries matched through your pages or assets instead of your keywords.
The landing pages report gets a "Selected by" column that shows which URLs AI Max chose for you. The asset report marks AI-written headlines as "Google AI" in the "Added by" column. From the search terms or landing pages report you can tick a row and choose "Add as negative keyword" or "Add as negative URL".
The reporting is laid out for a keyword campaign with AI Max on top. If your old DSA ad group had no keywords at all, most of its traffic will show up in that second aggregate row, a single line, and the per-term detail lives in the search terms report.
What independent tests say about performance
Google's own figure is 7% more conversions or conversion value at a similar CPA or ROAS. That compares the full feature suite with search term matching alone, uses 2026 internal data, and covers non-retail advertisers only. PPC Land noted that it is down from the 14% Google quoted at the May 2025 launch.
The largest independent dataset we found is from Smarter Ecommerce, where Mike Ryan analysed 271 retail campaigns with AI Max on and compared the AI Max traffic against broad match in the same accounts.
| Metric | Broad match | AI Max |
|---|---|---|
| Click-through rate | 2.3% | 2.0% |
| Conversion rate | 5.6% | 4.6% |
| CPC | €1.57 | €1.58 |
| CPA | about €28 | €34.21 |
| Average order value | €112 | €89 |
| ROAS | 4.0 | 2.6 |
That is a 35% lower ROAS for retail accounts. Ryan's reading was measured: "I don't find the situation damning, and I wouldn't tell people to stay away from AI Max." His concern was that the extra conversions may not be incremental, so test before you trust the headline number.
The same episode estimated that about 20% of e-commerce search ad cost still ran through DSA, which is why the sunset matters more for ecommerce retailers than for service businesses.
For a UK service business, where DSA usually exists to catch long-tail queries a 50-keyword account misses, the comparison that matters is AI Max against your current DSA ad group. Nobody has published that at scale yet, so you have to run it yourself.
A migration checklist for a UK SME account
Do the upgrade yourself before February. The automatic upgrade applies Google's defaults, and the voluntary tools let you choose. This is the order we would work through on a small account with one DSA campaign and a handful of keyword campaigns.
- Audit the DSA targets. List every target by type. URL equals, URL contains and custom label targets carry over. Page title, page content and category targets need rebuilding as a URL rule or a labelled page feed. Do this first because new page feeds take 2 to 14 days to crawl.
- Check landing page quality. Final URL expansion can pick any page on your domain that it judges relevant to the ad group, so blog posts, old news pages and the careers page are all fair game unless excluded. Pages must return a 200 status and be crawlable by AdsBot-Google, as the DSA help page spells out, which is the same technical SEO hygiene that helps those pages rank organically.
- Set URL exclusions at campaign level. Use the URL Exclusions tab on the Keywords page and add rules for /blog, /news, /careers, /privacy and anything else that should never be a paid landing page. These are ignored if AI Max is later switched off.
- Rebuild negatives. Pull the last 90 days of the DSA search terms report, sort by cost with zero conversions, and move the junk into a shared negative keyword list applied to every Search campaign. AI Max matches on your assets as well as your pages, so the existing list is a floor.
- Add brand exclusions. If competitor names were leaking into DSA, create a brand list under Shared library and apply it in the AI Max settings panel.
- Confirm conversion tracking and Smart Bidding. If the DSA campaign runs on manual CPC, move it to Maximise Conversions or Target CPA with a real conversion action before upgrading.
- Run a four-week experiment. The DSA help page describes a custom experiment with "Upgrade campaign" enabled in the settings. Split 50/50, leave it four weeks so you get a full month of weekday and weekend data, and compare cost per conversion, conversion rate and the share of clicks landing on pages you did not choose.
- Decide on text customisation with your eyes open. Keep it on if you want landing page matching, because final URL expansion goes with it.
On the accounts we run, the DSA ad group is usually a research tool as much as a sales channel: it shows us which queries a keyword campaign is missing. Under AI Max that research lives in the search terms report filtered to Match type "AI Max", so build a saved filter for it on day one.
Where this leaves a small account
Nobody outside Google has a clean DSA-versus-AI-Max dataset for service businesses, and the retail data that does exist is not flattering. Google's uplift claim halved between launch and the exit from beta, and the delay to February suggests the product was not ready for forced migration.
The decision rule we would apply is simple. If your DSA ad group is under 15% of Search spend and your site has fewer than a hundred pages, upgrade it in November, set the exclusions above, and watch it for a month. If DSA is a large share of spend, or your site has thousands of product pages, treat February as a project with its own budget line and run the experiment before Christmas trading starts. A good Google Ads agency will have this on its roadmap already.
If you want a second pair of eyes on a DSA account before the upgrade, our paid media team can audit the targets, exclusions and tracking and set up the experiment. Get in touch and tell us how much of your Search budget runs through DSA today.