AI Max
An opt-in setting for Search campaigns, announced by Google in 2025, that bundles its AI matching and creative features together: broader query matching beyond your keywords, automated text and asset generation, and landing page selection.
Why it matters
It widens what a Search campaign will match on, which is a bigger change to who you buy than it first appears. More reach with an unqualified conversion goal means more of everything, and in lead generation more of everything is mostly more of the wrong thing.
What goes wrong
The pattern is the same one Performance Max, Advantage+ and Smart+ established: each release moves another control from you to the platform, and each one raises the importance of the signal you send back, because that signal is what is left to steer with. Widening matching before the values are right amplifies whichever mistake is already in the feed. Getting the values right first, then widening, is the order that works.
How to check it on your own account
If you turn it on, keep a comparable campaign without it for long enough to read the difference in closed deals rather than in leads.
Next to this
- Performance MaxGoogle AdsGoogle's goal-based campaign type, which runs one campaign across Search, Display, YouTube, Discover, Gmail and Maps from a set of assets and an audience signal, with Google deciding placement, targeting and creative.
- Value-based biddingBidding on what a conversion is worth rather than on how many conversions arrive.
- Control groupIn this context, the leads that never came from the channel you changed.
- Smart BiddingGoogle AdsGoogle's automated bid strategies, which set a bid for every individual auction using signals about the user, the query and the context.
The rest of this step
Measure this on your own data
The diagnostic reads a CRM export in your browser and reports your volume, your match rate and the spread between your leads against the thresholds in this glossary. Nothing is uploaded and no account is needed.