PPCChat | Google Ads AI Max for Search Campaigns announcement

Posted May 7th, 2025 by Amita & filed under PPCChat.

This week’s PPCChat session focused on Google’s announcement of the new AI Max for Search Campaigns. The discussion explored how experts reacted—whether they’re excited about the launch, and what questions or concerns they might have. Host Julie F. Bacchini guided the conversation, seeking insights on all these key points.

In case you have not read the Google Ads announcement post on AI Max, here it is: https://blog.google/products/ads-commerce/google-ai-max-for-search-campaigns/

Q1: What are your initial thoughts or reactions to the Google Ads AI Max announcement?

Echoing the comments that double-checked if it was April 1st because originally thought it might be April Fool’s. @revaminkoff

Google gonna Google. Least surprising announcement of the year. Just Broad Match being a little more AI(ish). Kind of a nothingburger.EDIT: (I could be underplaying it honestly, I’m just noting what my original reaction was) @PPCKirk

My initial thoughts: people are going to freakMy settled thoughts: Google actually made improvements to DSA while leaving traditional DSA alone. @navahhopkins

True in a lot of ways – also it’s been pretty clear that Google has been moving in this direction for awhile. @revaminkoff

I’m not surprised. AI matching has been in the background and now they are just making it known. @ChristiJOlson

First time seeing the word “keywordless” in a Google Ads announcement and documentation is… unsettling. @NeptuneMoon

Not much for comments until I test it with my brands yet. I am cautiously optimistic that it will work though. My hopes are not high and my expectations are even lower when it comes to Google. @Ichasse

Makes me very nervous. I also wonder why now, when they’ve just announced that they’re bringing back all these ‘new’ (not actually new) features for PMax. So giving with one hand, and taking away with the other. @SusanRichards-Benson

Sounds like ways to get more people to adopt Broad Match. I was glad one of the examples was outside the USA. Plus, service providers in Australia, of all places. @duanebrown

I’m excited about it but it’s definitely a rebanded version of what they already do DSA + RSA @runnerkik

Intrigued. But happy not to have my smaller clients be the Guinea pigs on this one. @DidsReeve

keywordless technology has been around forever though. @navahhopkins

I’d also be curious how transparent they will be with actual search terms. What percentage will be bucketed into ‘other’ @SusanRichards-Benson

Nice catch @NeptuneMoon, super interesting that word was chosen. @PPCKirk

This is yet another problematic update for B2B where keywords are super important. @beyondthepaid

The one plus side — if you have solid landing pages — is my hope that it will let me recapture the low search volume that disappeared but were my top performers for the last few years. @ChristiJOlson

feed based campaigns don’t use keywords. LSAs don’t use keywords @navahhopkins

Like DSAs, this will mean folks need to have their SEO on point, so our SEO brothers/sisters are more important than ever. Cannot have lazy SEOs working on your account for this to work (guessing). @Ichasse

Also, they get the keywords from the landing page Google isn’t always good, but they’re not super Duper pulling words out of thin air yet IMHO. @runnerkik

I think this is really a better report card on how they’re doing with ecommerce and lead gen…. Ecommerce: A+++++ , Lead gen: generous C+ @navahhopkins

If under the hood, they are deploying Gemini 2.5 Pro/Flash, then I am hopeful. @alimehdimukadam

Also from the post: @NeptuneMoon

Does google think locations of interests are the same as keywords?

@beyondthepaid Totally agree on the B2B side for lead gen. It means I’ll be revising and revisiting my LP and optimizing them to capture the long tail. It’s not a B2B lead gen play — although my goal is going to be gaming it to make it work. @ChristiJOlson

This also means that offline conversions are more essential than ever. Absolutely must optimize to a down-funnel action, not just a form fill. @beyondthepaid

@NeptuneMoon that’s referencing their push to use fewer keywords per ad group – not getting rid of them entirely. it’s kind of like when we had to stop bidding on every variant. @navahhopkins

@Ichasse super important point. I wonder if we are looking at a Google world in 5-10 years in which the SEO/PPC/LLM marketer is virtually the same person who is primarily in charge of optimizing schema markup and selecting targets for the full automation to run after. (I still think we are a long way from that, but directionally that seems to be where things are headed with LLM usage) @PPCKirk

+1 @PPCKirk and @Ichasse @navahhopkins

Their wording should be better if that is the case. But I am used to comms from Google Ads being less than terrific, particularly as they roll something out initially. @NeptuneMoon

Also, I think personally, Google is going to shift more and more SERPs to impression-based, GDN like ads to monetize their trillions of zero click SERPs. Which also makes all of this keywordless talk more interesting. @PPCKirk

I will say this – it would be smart to take a hard look at your landing pages and make SURE they cover what you want to be found for and not extraneous stuff and/or do not cover your primary desired queries! @NeptuneMoon

@PPCKirk & @Ichasse This period will be the mergers & acquisition / consolidation era of digital roles. @alimehdimukadam

And this is definitely a bigger boon for ecommerce than lead gen, but we expect that. @NeptuneMoon

I would say we may not even be more than 5 years from that. PMax already made SEO much more important and DSAs have been pretty SEO dependent for years, but that was generally only one campaign in an account. PMax became a handful of campaigns, and now we will have A,I which will be the rest of the campaigns (except exact/phrase) if adopted by most marketers. /buckle up for the ride! @Ichasse

Agreed that with AI it is imore important than ever to make sure your SEO is there in the sense that Google knows what your page is about and who it would be relevant for. @revaminkoff

I hope it has the effect of rewarding clean, tidy, articulate website content. @DidsReeve

@PPCKirk the CMOs of large brands love this impression-based marketing..because they’re managing their funnel and need to be able to compare to TV especially in retail. @runnerkik

Also, be aware that the “text customization” in AI Max is what was formerly called “automatically created assets.” @NeptuneMoon

Yeah, I think this will look more like SEO’s dying out and transitioning over to paid honestly. It’s just too easy for CMS’ and LLM answers to solve the main SEO things on a site, where paid still requires a bit more strategy and such. (I get SEOs would likely disagree with me, lol) @PPCKirk

In any case, it is a good idea if you are a marketer to be familiar with at the very least the basics of SEO (schema markup, etc..) @Ichasse

I think SEO will become more important because you need crawlers to be able to understand your site, more than ever @revaminkoff

@revaminkoff yeah but I can just ask LLMs how to fix XYZ technical thing on my site. @PPCKirk

CLS remains the must underutilized tool to improve quality score. @navahhopkins

It’s important for PPCs to understand SEO basics and vice versa. @revaminkoff

I just did that with video watch pages, was crazy how detailed, including the exact code it spit out, it was @PPCKirk

Branding and PR > SEO. @alimehdimukadam

CLS being cumulative layout shift (you need lower than .2) @navahhopkins

@PPCKirk But you need to know to look for it, what to look for/be able to identify the problem in the first place. @revaminkoff

IDK, I know nothing about SEO, I just saw in GSC, asked chatGPT what to fix for the error I saw, and it solved everything. @PPCKirk

@PPCKirk They may “want” to disagree, but at the very least needing a good partnership between the SEO/Marketer will be super important. I have already seen making sure SEOs know the landing pages before special offers/events has been very helpful for some of my accounts. Some clients I am still needing to talk them into getting a good SEO for their sites. @Ichasse

Google (and other platforms) want to be in more control of how and where they serve ads. This trend has been happening for years, but advances in AI are accelerating it. They talk about “meeting the moment” (I know I can hear your groans) but it is going to be a GML theme this year…And they view this type of campaign as one of the main ways they will do that FOR YOU. @NeptuneMoon

I agree there is some level of technicality, for sure! But I guess I’m saying the overall solution and problem are readily apparent to an LLM. I don’t know if SEO will ever die out for speciality cases, but I do think the vast majority of SEO peeps will die out and just the true experts/troubleshooters will remain. I think LLMs will solve 85% of your SEO issues. @PPCKirk

@PPCKirk That approach is now true for optimisations and everything Ops-related. Bigger unlock for all is answer to – why should I pay you if ChatGPT can do it? @alimehdimukadam

I know I am using AI for more and more in my work. It does have a lot of capabilities and is still a hugely untapped resource for marketers in many ways. The coding alone is huge and very fast. @Ichasse

So LLMs rely on having accurate data to pull from to “solve” issues like your SEO. So if that type of content goes away and gets outdated, so does an LLM’s abiility to “solve” for SEO @NeptuneMoon

@PPCKirk the next phase of SEO which was touched on heavily at Mike King’s SEOWeek event last week is LLM Optimization — feeding the right data and inputs into LLMs and ensuring they can scrape so that your the source even if folks don’t realize that you are the source. @ChristiJOlson

@alimehdimukadam The answer there is AI on its own does nothing. Paired with someone who understands what they are doing is when it becomes very useful. @Ichasse

Mkay, here’s the plan SEO’s should do then @NeptuneMoon Step 1: remove LLM crawlers from all actual good resources. Step 2: create a bunch of terrble advice SEO forums that allow LLMs to crawl>Boom, industry saved! @PPCKirk

Quite frankly I’m just sick of them using the word “Max”. @RyanSappington

Since I recently moved and ChatGPT had announced its shopping feature, was experimenting with interior suggestions. In a normal response, it’s UTM tagged, but didn’t see it in Excel. @alimehdimukadam

Yeah, I still cannot help but think of a truck commercial when I hear anything MAX. @Ichasse

Nobody in this thread would admit anything they’ve stamped “Max” on is anything but Mid. @RyanSappington

They really should have named it “AI Mid Search” maybe if we put out enough resources from all of us online, LLMs would begin to name it that instead of AI max, mwahahaha @PPCKirk

How many maxes are we up to now? Performance Max, Search Max and now AI Max? @NeptuneMoon

I would pay good money to live in a universe where AI was named in Mando’a @navahhopkins

Alright, that rants over. This release was unexpected and not exciting. Still looking for AI SERP Auction activity to get involved in. @NeptuneMoon You think they’re gonna stop at 3 @RyanSappington

Don’t see how it could be a win for lead gen. @AndrewRios

orilin gota’la = profit maker @navahhopkins

Oh no @RyanSappington they will max the maxes! @NeptuneMoon

I’m not sure how I feel, my accounts are a in niche industries, so it may not be a fit right now with the use of broad match. @DiiPooler

Q2: What, if anything, are you excited about in the Google Ads AI Max announcement?

So what’s the non-fluff of what this actually does? @AndrewRios

I am always excited to test new things, so that would be what I am excited for. Clients are always bugging us for something new to try and this will be that something new to get them off our backs for a month at least, errr I mean something fun we can try and then talk about. @Ichasse

I hope the actual progress made by Deepmind team – Gemini models is properly implemented without tinkering for maximizing Google’s ad revenue share or shaking the cushions.Coz the Gemini Models standalone are really good. @alimehdimukadam

It won’t be some silver bullet though, so again my expectations are low. @Ichasse

Being able to use the maxed out broad match in a campaign without having to just convert everything to campaign broad is a nice option if you want to test it. @NeptuneMoon

Here’s the best thing about all of these Google changes, and I’m not even kidding you: our own job security.If we struggle to keep up with all this, even as more automation comes, I promise you our clients/bosses are totally lost unless they really have a desire to personally dig in. at some point, Google is changing their product up so much, that it just means those of us who keep up with this will keep getting hired, lol @PPCKirk

@PPCKirk If they are digging into this stuff then they are leaving big picture stuff untouched and the business will suffer, so I hope they don’t, because then it would not be job security for anyone in the brand. @Ichasse

I am super into being able to remove DSA headlines that don’t work. @navahhopkins

I’m not as sure about that as you are @PPCKirk – if money can be saved by having AI “do it” many will go that route. Especially if the economy is weak or struggling for any period of time. And we are probably heading into exactly that type of environment now…@NeptuneMoon

Both viewpoints are true. @alimehdimukadam

Small businesses will absolutely have AI do it if they don’t feel they can afford paid professionals. Not sure that is even on the immediate horizon yet though. It will be some day, but not in the near future. @Ichasse

@Ichasse yes, but what I’ve found is that eventually that behavior has to change, either from the biz dying, or the owner realizing it. @PPCKirk

@NeptuneMoon I think you are right to a point, but the convos I have are that it really is confusing to everyone who isn’t into it. Tho the jobs will shift for sure, I.e., the need to be able to troubleshoot with things like schema markup killing dynamic remarketing in PMax, or conv tracking audits, etc. So even if something like PMax is heavily automated, there are still many speciality intricacies that are there. @PPCKirk

In other words, brand owners LOVE automation and not paying us (1) after it’s set up (lol, truly the hardest part), and (2) until it breaks. Then they’re completely lost @PPCKirk

@Ichasse If Google actually does prove useful for small businesses, it’ll be time to worry. But so far, the automations, auto-apply, smart campaigns, pmax, etc have harmed small businesses the most in my opinion. @alimehdimukadam

I’m so glad you guys are discussing this topic–it’s something I think about every day. @KristenLienemann

This is why I’m beyond glad I went into consulting vs managing accounts the writing is on the wall there, but strategy will always be in demand. @runnerkik

I do think what automation will kill, is crazy high retainers from agencies who don’t do anything in the accounts. that, with a potential recession, will eviscerate large agencies, IMO @PPCKirk

@alimehdimukadam Small business has been beaten up by the changes. The algo does not reward small spends and/or small data sets which we have all seen. Our big clients get great data and results and smaller ones sometimes have a difficult time just showing up. @Ichasse

@PPCKirk But when Google is pushing AI Max to advertisers, that may sound quite tempting in ways that it has not previously. Even non-tech people are intrigued by AI. I think there will always be a place for PPC pros and for businesses that want more than want everyone else gets by just using the AI in a platform. But I have also been in business long enough to know that shiny things, particularly those with a money-saving aspect, can gain a lot of ground. Time will tell!!!! @NeptuneMoon

Yeah def agree with that PPCKirk

Nothing excited me per say. Curious to test it out with a couple clients where Broad Match does really well for because of the product they sell across North America and Europe. @duanebrown

Yea, I think anyone doing an audit can simply download the change history and corresponding stats and upload to Claude/GPT (privacy/confidentiality maintained) – lot of ‘agencies’ will get exposed. @alimehdimukadam

Funny I was looking at the word ‘agency’ since high agency and Agentic AI are the flavor, in literal sense an agency was supposed to be the same what this conversation is all about – to act on behalf of the client with some autonomy and execute to get results. A topic for another day @alimehdimukadam

Agree that the changes do make it seem like marketing is just another thing you can outsource to AI – but then we all know the practicalities of that, so far at least, don’t hold. and also that the AI needs a lot of information/spend that small advertisers don’t have. @revaminkoff

Q3: What, if anything, are you concerned about in the Google Ads AI Max announcement?

How this will be applicable to lead gen and/or lower conversion volume accounts is a question mark for me. @NeptuneMoon

Well I think someone asked this on the call so I can’t take credit for it. but checking the box for AI Max, and then having that suck up all the budget of the campaign. @runnerkik

Any time I see “one button click” to describe something as comprehensive as this, I get itchy too…@NeptuneMoon

“keywordless” for search makes me nervous. @revaminkoff

That it hasn’t been thoroughly tested before it was rolled out. @JeffreyHain

It’s the continued trend with Google moving away from control professionals to AI. @ChristiJOlson

Creatives and Ad Copy. Even though I am a fan of all frontier models, that nuance is still missing. And I doubt it’ll be solved anytime soon. @alimehdimukadam

Maybe this has been addressed already (haven’t had time to catch up completely) but if it’s “keywordless”–will there be search terms to analyze? @KristenLienemann

I know this has already been said, but Google is leaning too much on calling things “Max” @revaminkoff

Keywordless stuck out to me right away too. I will also say that as per usual, the brands referenced had name recognition @NeptuneMoon

Will this auto-click on set up, so something we have to remember to turn off in the campaign set up work flow or after it is published. @duanebrown

One click is also way too easy for a client to accidentally do if they get that advice from a Google person @NeptuneMoon

I worry about the lack of negative controls – like don’t use x pages or the account can’t make y claims or doesn’t want to use z language. @revaminkoff

@NeptuneMoon Ohh my, that should be the biggest concern. One click by the client after a call/email from a Google Rep. @alimehdimukadam

Did we talk about the fact that it has a URL expansion component? @runnerkik

This made me laugh out loud too. As if exact matching is anywhere near exact…@NeptuneMoon

Can we address the fact that this “Max” approach that Google is taking only works if your client is not trying to push specific products/ doesn’t only have budget for specific things? @revaminkoff

Is Google really trying to say they don’t match red to colorful? That is hilarious. @NeptuneMoon

I have to remind myself constantly that Google focuses on things that will benefit big spenders more than small/mid sized businesses. They can lose 90% of the folks who can only afford $350-$1,000 / month in spend (plumbers, bakeries, book stores, coffee shops, etc…) if they can get a Loreal to spend 5-10% more on their ad budget. This is why I think we see so many smaller businesses struggling with paid. I feel like this may lead to the same thing. @Ichasse

Also, can we talk about lack of control on which landing page people see too? This Max wants to decide that too. @NeptuneMoon

LIstening to just one more consistent and ongoing product pitch from the reps is really all I was looking for this year. @RyanSappington

From ChatGPTHere’s your satirical roast:⸻Google AI Max: Because You Clearly Didn’t Want Control Anyway

“With Google AI, Search ads can now be supercharged to drive even better performance.”Translation:
“We took Performance Max, threw it into a blender with Dynamic Search Ads, and sprinkled buzzwords like ‘AI’ and ‘supercharged’ to make it sound like innovation. Now you get mysterious conversions, surprise traffic sources, and ad copy that sounds like a chatbot on Red Bull.” @alimehdimukadam

I just don’t take the calls anymore from Google to be honest. @Ichasse

Q4: What questions do you have about AI Max? (I will use these for the chat with Ginny Marvin on AI Max next week, along with questions you can ask her live)

Where can you add exclusions/negative controls? (i.e pages that shouldn’t be used, negative keywords, negative ad copy, etc.) @revaminkoff

What are the minimum recommended budget and conversion volume levels for accounts to test AI Max? @NeptuneMoon

How would this work along side of Performance Max campaigns? Would you use both? @NeptuneMoon

Any and all transparency with controls would be appreciated. I think the previous announcement by Ginny & Google giving additional data for pmax reporting was a preclude to this one. @alimehdimukadam

How much of a feedback loop on the data are we getting immediately at launch? Sampled/obfuscated data similar to how the Pmax rollout was? @RyanSappington

I’d like some more explanation on the role of keywordless versus our keywords too? @NeptuneMoon

How does AI Max interact with, or not compete with, traditional text-based search campaigns? Your typical exact, phrase, broad match campaigns. @JeffreyHain

Will geographic targeting settings be impacted? The section about geographic interests is unclear… @NeptuneMoon

Also, the reporting link in the graphic above goes to the page about Performance Max reporting – will reporting be the same or different from PMax? Here is the page I pulled this from: https://support.google.com/google-ads/answer/15910187 @NeptuneMoon

1 – Controls (geo, negatives, etc…) we have and 2 – affirming the priority of the different campaigns. I am assuming it still goes exact > phrase > Pmax, then broad/AI max, but would want to make sure. @Ichasse

After a month of testing, I am sure there will be more questions. @Ichasse

How does AI Max compare to Search Max? @revaminkoff

I’d love a chart on AI Max, Search Max and Performance Max compared! @NeptuneMoon

Preferably not from a Loreal sized account… @Ichasse

OOoOooOoo yeah @NeptuneMoon, a venn diagram of that match type sequencing I yearn for. @RyanSappington

How does AI Max adapt to seasonal or trend based searches? @DiiPooler

During campaign setup, is AI Max on by default or must you turn it on? @NeptuneMoon

What are the enhancements that will be provided to the search terms report and will the final url expansion be required or is that optional? (Mainly for a client that uses specific forms on each landing page). @HeatherBrousell

Also, it was mentioned that there would be the ability to remove specific AI-generated assets/extensions. How does that differ from the settings we have today, where we can turn off all auto-generated assets? @HeatherBrousell

PPCChat Participants