Four places to check in your Ad Grants account after AI Max

Step 1: Start in the Search campaigns you already have

Open your Search campaign list and confirm that no new campaign type has appeared.

Nothing new appears in your campaign list. Google Ads Help describes AI Max as an optimization layer within existing Search campaigns rather than a new campaign type, so the change, where it has happened at all, sits inside campaigns you already run.

One line has travelled further than the Help pages support: that every Ad Grant Search campaign is being auto-upgraded to AI Max in September 2026. Google's Help pages are narrower. Two campaign settings put a campaign on the upgrade path from September 2026, and Dynamic Search Ads campaigns follow from February 2027.

By the last station you'll have sorted your campaigns by upgrade path, read the Added by column in your asset report, checked the Final URL expansion setting, looked for the budget limited alert, and written down this month's account click-through rate. Google is upgrading Search campaigns to AI Max this month covers the announcement and the scope of the upgrade itself.

Step 2: Check which of your campaigns are on the upgrade path, and which date applies

Sort every Search campaign you run into one of the three rows below and write the date against it.

Two of the three paths are settings rather than campaign types. Google Ads Help puts campaigns using the campaign-level broad match setting, and campaigns using text customization, formerly called automatically created assets, on an automatic upgrade to AI Max starting in September 2026. Dynamic Search Ads campaigns sit on a later date: the DSA Help pages say those campaigns upgrade starting in February 2027.

The side effect to note. The broad match campaign setting does more than switch new keywords. Google Ads Help defines it as a setting that causes Search campaigns to use broad match as the keyword match type and converts existing phrase and exact keywords into broad match. A campaign of yours carrying that setting has already changed how its existing keywords match.

1. Open each Search campaign's settings. Note whether the campaign-level broad match setting is on. That setting is the first of the two September 2026 paths.
2. Check text customization. If it is on, or if you switched it on under the older name of automatically created assets, the same September 2026 start applies.
3. List your Dynamic Search Ads campaigns separately. Those carry February 2027, so the September date does not apply to them.

Step 3: Read the Added by column in your asset report

Open the asset report and list every headline and description marked Google AI.

You can see text customization line by line in the asset report. Google says Google customized text assets are marked Google AI in the Added by column, so you can see which headlines and descriptions in your account you did not write.

1. Open the asset report and find the Added by column. It separates what your team wrote from what Google customized.
2. Read the value against each headline and description. Note every row marked Google AI.
3. Write down which campaigns those assets sit in. Those campaigns are running text customization, one of the two settings carrying the September 2026 start.

Step 4: Check where Final URL expansion can send your traffic

Check the Final URL expansion setting, then list the pages on your own site it could send grant traffic to.

Final URL expansion decides which page a visitor lands on. Google says it sends traffic to the most relevant URLs on your website when that is likely to improve performance, and only to URLs that are query relevant and themed to the ad group.

The control does not stand on its own. Google says Final URL expansion requires text customization to be turned on, so turning text customization on is also the decision that opens a wider set of your pages to campaign traffic.

1. Find the Final URL expansion setting in the campaign. Note whether it is on, and whether text customization is on alongside it.
2. Read your own site the way the setting reads it. Go through your pages and mark, for each ad group you run, which ones are query relevant and themed to it.

Step 5: Check whether the account is showing a budget limited alert

Look for the budget limited alert on each campaign and read it against the grant ceiling.

Google's AI Max Help page says the feature will not be effective if campaigns are limited by budget, and that an alert appears when a campaign or portfolio is limited by budget.

The alert points at budget, and the grant ceiling is not one you can raise. Google for Nonprofits says Ad Grants accounts are limited to $10,000 USD per month, equivalent to $329 USD per day, and that this is a limit rather than a guarantee of spend. Read the alert against that number before you change anything else in the campaign.

Read it per campaign. Google's page says the alert appears when a campaign or portfolio is limited by budget, so check at that level instead of waiting for one account-wide notice.

Other settings can hold an Ad Grants account below that ceiling. Find the budget settings throttling your Ad Grants account covers them.

Step 6: Check the two compliance numbers the change moves

Read this month's account click-through rate, then sort your keyword table by Quality Score.

A campaign on the broad match campaign setting matches broader queries than it did, since that setting converts existing phrase and exact keywords into broad match. Two numbers in the Ad Grants policy are worth reading after a campaign changes how its keywords match.

1. Read this month's account click-through rate. Ad Grants accounts must maintain a 5% click-through rate each month, and failing that for two consecutive months can lead to temporary deactivation. The requirement sits at account level, not on each keyword, ad group or campaign.
2. Sort your keyword table by Quality Score. Ad Grants policy requires keywords with a Quality Score of 1 or 2 to be paused or removed, so the sorted column tells you what needs a decision this week.

The dash is exempt. A keyword showing a dash instead of a number in the Quality Score column is exempt from that rule. Act on the rows that show a number.

Date both readings. When you read the click-through rate again next month, you'll want to know which month a campaign changed how its keywords match.

Step 7: Set the checks that repeat next month

Diary two readings for next month: the account click-through rate and the Added by column.

Two of these stations repeat. Ad Grants accounts must hold the 5% click-through rate every month, so this month's figure is one reading in a series. The asset report keeps filling while text customization is on, so the Added by column will show Google AI against headlines you have not seen before.

• Account click-through rate, read once a month against the 5% requirement.
• The Added by column in the asset report, read for Google AI assets added since your last look.

Run the whole worksheet again when a campaign changes its match type or its asset settings, since the upgrade paths are keyed to those two settings. Google is removing the campaign-level language setting from Search covers another recent change to a campaign-level Search setting.

What the next reading tells you

The dates in the table tell you whether anything changed. The Added by column, the Final URL expansion setting, the budget limited alert and this month's click-through rate tell you what it did.

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