Google just put a sunset date on Dynamic Search Ads. Here's what to lock before September flips it to AI Max.
AI Max for Search reached general availability back in April. The news at Marketing Live this month was the timeline for what comes next: Google confirmed the DSA wind-down. Auto-upgrade of broad match plus ACA starts September 2026. Full DSA migration got pushed to February 2027 after advertisers pushed back.
Calling it a DSA sunset undersells it. Google's folding DSA into AI Max with more reach and less of your control, and it happens whether you prep or not. So I'd rather flip it on my terms.
Here's what AI Max actually changes under the hood:
Final URL expansion. The system can send traffic to any page on your site it thinks matches intent, not just your designated landing pages. Powerful, and the fastest way to leak budget to your shipping-policy page if you leave it open.
Search-term matching. Broad keyword matching gets a Gemini layer on top, so you surface on queries you never added. More volume, more junk, depending on how clean your negatives are.
Text customization. It rewrites headlines per query. Great for coverage, a brand-voice risk if you sell anything regulated.
Google's own number: running the full suite (term matching + text customization + URL expansion) drives roughly 5-10% more conversion value at similar CPA versus matching alone. Real, but that lift assumes your account hygiene is already tight.
So before September, I'm locking three things on every account:
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URL expansion controls. Exclude the pages that should never take paid traffic - cart, account, policy, thin collection pages. Whitelist the ones that should.
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A hardened negative list. AI Max widens matching, so the negatives are now doing more work than the keywords. I rebuild them before turning it on, not after I see the waste.
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Brand exclusions. Same reason as always. I don't want to pay AI Max to harvest branded search I already get for free, then call it incremental.
The new search-term by landing-page report that shipped late June is the one to watch. It finally shows where expansion is actually sending traffic. First thing I open on any AI Max account now.
The accounts that get hurt in September are the ones running on default match types and a thin negative list today. AI Max doesn't create that problem. It scales it. I'd rather walk in with the levers already set.
Ruslan co-founded Tegra in 2017. Runs the Google Ads practice - feed, PMax, search, attribution. Writes weekly about the parts of paid search operators are afraid to touch.