Google Ads AI Max: How It Works and When to Use It

At the end of May, Google began rolling out the beta version of its latest AI-powered feature for Google Ads, AI Max.

In 2025, Google is focusing heavily on AI automation and machine learning across Google Ads and organic search features like AI Overviews.

For some businesses, these AI features can simplify campaign set-ups and budget control, but for others, more automation and less manual control bring new challenges around campaign optimisation, budget efficiency, and ROI.

To help you understand how to use these new features, I sat down with our Google Ads specialists to write this detailed article that covers everything you need to know about AI Max and whether it’s worth using for your business.

First off, let’s go over what AI Max is exactly…

What are AI Max campaigns?

How AI Max placements, targeting, and budgets work

AI Max is a new campaign type in Google Ads that uses artificial intelligence to decide where your ads show, who sees them, and how your budget is spent.

It’s designed to make running search-based campaigns simpler and more efficient. You set the goal for your campaign, like generating leads, bookings, or sign-ups, and AI Max uses machine learning to choose the best places to show your ads.

While it’s built for search, AI Max doesn’t just cover Search campaign placements.

AI Max ads can appear across other Google channels, including Display, YouTube, Discover, and Gmail.

The AI automatically shifts your budget towards the placements delivering the strongest results.

Instead of manually managing placements and bidding, you set your audience signals, budget, and conversion goals. The AI does the rest, learning where to shift your budgets over time to create the highest return.

Balance of automation and control

AI Max ads aren’t completely automated. You still guide the process by providing audience signals, location targeting, ad assets, and setting up conversion tracking.

The difference is that you don’t decide exactly which placements to target or how much budget to assign to each. Google’s machine learning does everything for you, showing reports on where your ads appear and how they perform across different channels.

These reports can help you understand whether the AI is making the right calls and whether adjustments are needed.

In that way, it’s quite like Performance Max campaigns. You have limited control over where ads are shown and how budgets are allocated, but you can monitor and tweak your setup if needed.

How AI Max compares to traditional search campaigns

In a standard search campaign, you choose specific keywords, match types, bidding strategies, and ad placements.

With AI Max, you give the system a broader input (like keyword themes) and it automatically decides which queries and placements to use.

Instead of separate ad groups, you provide asset groups made up of headlines, descriptions, images, and videos. The AI tests different combinations across multiple channels and will push your budget to the ads that perform best.

This means your performance relies on Google’s AI accurately choosing the right terms and relevant placements for your ads – something we’ll come to shortly.

How is AI Max different from Performance Max?

Core differences

At a glance, AI Max and Performance Max seem pretty similar.

Both run across Google’s full range of channels and use AI to optimise performance, but they have some crucial differences you should be aware of:

• Performance Max is designed for full-funnel marketing. It often uses product feeds, making it a good option for eCommerce businesses that want to drive direct online sales from their ads.
• AI Max is designed primarily for search campaigns, but it can be extended to other Google channels if the algorithm believes it will improve your ad results.

In short, Performance Max starts with a broad retail or conversion-driven approach, while AI Max starts with search intent and builds outward.

When to use AI Max or Performance Max

Performance Max is often the better choice for retailers or brands with a large product catalogue and an online shop. It uses a product feed and automatically creates Shopping ads alongside other formats.

AI Max suits service-based businesses, B2B lead generation, and campaigns that don’t rely on a product feed. It focuses on search queries but uses AI to place ads on other channels that might reach potential customers.

Using AI Max and Performance Max together

You don’t have to choose between one and the other.

For an eCommerce business, running both side by side can be a good way to cover your inbound marketing funnel, using AI Max for lead generation or brand awareness and Performance Max for product sales.

If you do this, make sure each campaign has its own set of audience signals and assets to avoid overlapping or competing against each other.

Should you be using AI Max?

Advantages of AI Max

The main benefits of AI Max include:

• Time savings: Less manual setup and fewer campaigns to maintain
• Wider reach: Exposure on multiple Google platforms from one campaign
• AI-driven optimisation: Budget and placements shift automatically to what works best

For some smaller businesses or busy marketers, AI Max can deliver some great results with minimal effort and workload.

Limitations of AI Max

There are also some limitations and challenges with AI Max to keep in mind:

• Less manual control: You can’t choose specific placements or targeting in the same way as traditional search campaigns
• Accuracy issues: Google’s AI isn’t always accurate when choosing relevant search terms or placements
• Transparency gaps: Automated budget decisions aren’t always clear at a granular level
• Creative combinations: Because ads are built from mixed assets, AI Max can create weak or inconsistent creatives that dilute your message

If you want to prioritise control over your budgets and manually optimise your ad content and targeting, AI Max won’t be a good fit for you.

When to use AI Max campaigns

AI Max campaigns are a good fit for service providers, consultants, and local businesses that rely on leads rather than direct product sales.

It’s especially useful if your main advertising goal is to capture the right search intent and tap into the wider Google advertising network with minimal effort and management required due to the machine-learning automation.

With that automation comes the limitation of how much you can control and optimise yourself.

So, our PPC specialists only recommend AI Max for businesses that lack the expertise or resources to manually optimise and manage multiple campaign types.

Scaling considerations

If you’re advertising for the first time, AI Max can be a good way to quickly reach a broader audience with minimal setup and management.

But over time, your strategy will often need to become more segmented, closely controlled, and manually optimised to fuel your long-term growth, which is where traditional search campaigns are a better option.

A phased approach can work well if you want to incorporate AI Max into your advertising strategy. Use AI Max for reach at the start, then layer in targeted search, display, or video campaigns to maximise your ROI.

Making the most of AI Max campaigns

How to set up AI Max campaigns

The process of setting up AI Max campaigns generally follows the steps below.

1. Create a new Search campaign in Google Ads
2. Toggle the AI Max option in the campaign’s settings
3. Choose features: Search Term Matching, Text Customisation, Final URL Expansion
4. Adjust AI features at the ad group level (e.g. disable search term matching)
5. Set up Location of Interest targeting and Brand Controls
6. Add URL inclusions or exclusions for AI-selected landing pages
7. Monitor campaign performance using enhanced reporting tools

You can read Google’s official AI Max setup guide here for more detailed step-by-step instructions.

Monitoring your ad performance

While AI Max will autonomously optimise your campaigns, they’re certainly not perfect.

Once your AI Max campaign is up and running, it’s important to review the campaign reporting regularly.

If you see a lot of ad spend in a channel that isn’t converting, you should look at updating your assets or adjusting your conversion signals to improve your ad performance.

Your AI Max campaign will only be as good as the input you give it. The more relevant your assets and audience signals, the more accurately they can optimise for relevant search terms and audiences.

Keeping your messaging consistent

Because AI Max mixes and matches creatives, all your assets should reflect the same value proposition, tone, and call to action. This means any combination of these assets shown to a user feels consistent, clear, and has the right impact.

Inconsistent messaging will just confuse your audience and lower your conversion rates, especially if AI Max uses your assets in placements that require different formats, like YouTube or Gmail.

Testing and refining your ads

Even with AI Max’s automated optimisation, manual testing still matters.

Try asset variations that focus on different selling points, let the algorithm identify the stronger performer, and then use that insight for future campaigns.

The more assets you give AI Max to test, the better it will understand what works and where to send your budget.

Key takeaways on Google’s AI Max Ads

• AI Max is a search-led campaign type that places ads across Google channels and automatically shifts budgets to the best-performing placements.
• It differs from Performance Max because it focuses on search intent, while Performance Max uses product feeds and is better suited to eCommerce.
• AI Max is most effective for service-based businesses and smaller teams that want broader reach and simpler campaign management.
• The main limitations are reduced control and transparency, less accurate targeting at times, and the risk of inconsistent ad creatives.

If you’re short on time and want to broaden your reach without adding multiple campaigns to your workload, AI Max may be worth a look.

But for advertisers who need deeper control, or operate complex multi-channel strategies, traditional search campaigns with focused management might be the better option.