Dynamic Search Ads Best Practice and AI Max

Last updated: October 19, 2026

Executive Summary: Are Dynamic Search Ads Still Worth Using in 2026?

Yes—but selectively, with tight controls, and with a migration plan already in motion. Dynamic Search Ads remain a functional and productive tool for the right accounts through at least early 2027, but they are on a defined path to retirement. Google announced on April 15, 2026 that DSAs would be retired in favor of AI Max for Search, then delayed the DSA-specific migration in June 2026 after significant advertiser pushback. New DSA creation is currently expected to end around January 2027, with automatic migration of remaining campaigns beginning around February 2027.^[1][2]

The honest verdict is this: DSAs are still earning their place for large ecommerce catalogs, frequently updated service pages, and accounts that need systematic query discovery beyond their existing keyword structure. They are not worth building a major long-term dependency on. The right posture in late 2026 is to run DSAs where they produce incremental conversions, control them tightly through page feeds and negative keywords, and use the runway between now and February 2027 to test AI Max for Search side by side so migration happens on your schedule rather than Google’s.

Five principles govern everything that follows:

• Page feeds over auto-targeting. A custom page feed with commercial-only URLs and meaningful custom labels is the single most important control lever in a DSA setup.
• Smart Bidding when conversion tracking is reliable. Maximize Conversions or target CPA outperforms manual CPC in most DSA contexts; manual bidding wastes the auction-time signals DSA depends on.
• Start small, scale only what earns it. Launch DSAs at roughly 10–20% of equivalent keyword Search spend and increase budgets in 10–20% increments after confirming CPA or ROAS thresholds are met.
• Exclusions first, always. URL exclusions, dynamic ad target exclusions, and a seeded negative keyword list must be in place before the campaign goes live.
• Migration is not optional, only the timing is. Voluntary migration to AI Max before January 2027 gives you control; waiting for Google’s automatic conversion in February 2027 does not.

How Dynamic Search Ads Work

Dynamic Search Ads differ from standard Search campaigns in one fundamental way: there are no keywords. Instead of an advertiser-built keyword list, Google crawls and interprets your website content—or a page feed you supply—and uses that understanding to match relevant user searches to eligible landing pages at auction time.^[3][4]

The mechanics work in four steps:

• Google indexes your eligible pages. Google’s crawler reviews page titles, visible body text, site structure, and page themes to build an internal model of what each page is about. This is distinct from standard organic indexing, but it relies on the same crawlability requirements: pages must be publicly accessible, have clear HTML titles, and contain meaningful readable content.^[3][5]
• A search triggers a match. When a user’s query is closely related to the content of an eligible page, Google identifies that page as a candidate and enters an auction.^[3]
• The headline and landing page are generated dynamically. Google creates the ad headline automatically from the search query and the matched landing page’s content. The final URL is selected from your eligible pages—not from a keyword destination URL you pre-assigned.^[3][4]
• You supply the descriptions. The advertiser writes up to four description lines, each with a maximum of 90 characters. These are the only ad text elements under direct advertiser control; they should do the persuasive and qualifying work that the dynamically generated headline cannot guarantee.^[6]

This architecture makes DSAs powerful for coverage and discovery, but it also makes them inherently less controllable than keyword campaigns. The quality of matching is only as good as the quality of your site content and your exclusion structure. A page with a vague or poorly written HTML title will produce vague, low-relevance headlines. A site with substantial editorial, support, or careers content mixed into commercial pages will produce wasted spend unless those pages are explicitly excluded.

What Your Site Needs for DSAs to Perform

• Clear, descriptive HTML page titles. Google uses page titles prominently when generating ad headlines and identifying targeting themes. A product page titled “Widget Pro X 500 – Industrial Conveyor Components” will generate far more relevant headlines than one titled “Product Detail” or “Page 1.”^[3]
• Crawlable, visible body text. Content locked inside JavaScript rendering, images, or inaccessible elements cannot be reliably used by Google’s DSA crawler. The key commercial information on each page should exist as readable HTML.^[5][7]
• Coherent, specific page architecture. Each target page should address one product, service, category, or offer. Thin pages, duplicate content, and pages that cover multiple unrelated topics give Google weaker signals and produce less relevant ad-to-query matching.
• Current, accurate content. Discontinued products, expired promotions, and outdated pricing create both wasted spend and a poor user experience. Pages must reflect what the business actually sells or offers at the time the ad runs.
• Accessible to Google’s crawler. Pages blocked by robots.txt, login walls, or technical errors cannot be used as DSA targets regardless of how good their content is.^[5][7]

Where DSAs Fit in the Account Architecture

DSAs are most productive as a complement to keyword campaigns, not a replacement. Keyword campaigns give you precise control over high-value, branded, regulated, or strategically important queries. DSAs catch the long-tail, newly emerging, and previously unknown queries that your keyword structure does not yet cover. The search-term data those DSA queries produce is also one of the most reliable sources of keyword expansion ideas available in a mature account.^[3][4]

Targeting Options and Page Feeds

DSA offers four principal targeting approaches, ranging from fully automatic to tightly controlled. Understanding the tradeoffs is essential because the wrong choice here is the most common cause of wasted DSA spend.

Targeting Option	How It Works	Best For	Key Risk
Entire website	Google targets all crawlable pages on your domain	Small, clean, predominantly commercial sites; broad discovery	Includes blog, support, careers, login, and discontinued pages without explicit exclusions
Google-identified categories	Google classifies your site into content categories; you select which to target	Quickly targeting logical site sections without maintaining a URL list	Category definitions may not match your commercial taxonomy; can shift when Google recrawls
URL or page rules	Target pages whose URL, title, or content matches a defined pattern (e.g., URLs containing /services/)	Controlled targeting without a separate feed for structured URL architectures	URL string rules can accidentally include non-commercial pages that share the pattern
Custom page feed	Upload a spreadsheet of specific landing-page URLs with optional custom labels	Maximum control; ecommerce catalogs; segmentation by margin, region, or priority	Requires ongoing maintenance as inventory, URLs, and site structure change

For most accounts in 2026, the custom page feed is the recommended default. It is the only option that gives you a defined, auditable list of eligible landing pages and the ability to segment performance by meaningful commercial dimensions.^[8][9]

Building an Effective Page Feed

A page feed is a spreadsheet with one landing-page URL per row and optional custom label columns. Google’s feed documentation allows up to 20 labels per URL using semicolon-separated values.^[8] The critical implementation details are:

• Use final destination URLs, not redirect chains. Replace any redirects with the actual landing-page URL to avoid feed crawl failures.^[8]
• Do not include unnecessary tracking parameters in the feed URL itself; apply tracking templates separately.
• Remove URLs for out-of-stock products, discontinued services, expired promotions, and pages with crawl errors before uploading.
• Apply custom labels that reflect meaningful commercial or operational groupings. Useful label schemes include product category, margin band, geographic region, inventory status, business unit, and lead type.
• In campaign settings, select “Use URLs from my page feed only” when the goal is strict control. The alternative—allowing both feed URLs and Google’s broader site index—reintroduces the coverage risks of auto-targeting.^[9]

Recommended Ad Group Structure Using Custom Labels

Do not build one ad group targeting all feed URLs. Instead, segment ad groups by the distinctions that matter to bidding, messaging, and conversion goals:

Ad Group Name	Page Feed Label Target	Purpose
High-margin products	High_Margin	Prioritize profitable inventory; justify higher CPA targets
Core service pages	Lead_Gen	Dedicated messaging for lead-generation pages
Enterprise solutions	Enterprise	Higher-value B2B audience; distinct call to action
Regional pages (US)	USA	Geographic landing-page coverage; location-specific offers
Long-tail discovery	NonBrand	Broader coverage; mine for new converting queries

Group pages within an ad group when they share intent, economics, and ad copy. Creating a separate ad group for every individual URL is rarely worth the management overhead unless the page requires genuinely unique messaging or bidding logic.^[9]

Google-Identified Categories: Practical Caveats

If you use Google’s auto-generated categories, select only the categories that appear in the Google Ads interface; do not enter category names manually, because manually typed categories may not map to Google’s classification system and may fail to target correctly.^[7] Category coverage can also change when Google recrawls your site, so monitor this option more actively than a static page feed.

Setup and Bidding Best Practice

Campaign Structure

A dedicated DSA campaign—separate from keyword-based Search campaigns—is the baseline requirement. Mixing DSAs and keyword ad groups in the same campaign makes budget allocation, search-term attribution, and performance analysis significantly harder. Within the DSA campaign, segment ad groups as described above rather than using a single broad “all pages” ad group that obscures which targets are working.^[3]

A practical two-campaign model works well for accounts with both commercial objectives and discovery goals:

• Controlled DSA campaign: page feed only, set to “feed URLs only,” organized by commercial labels, with aggressive exclusions. This is your revenue-focused setup.
• Discovery DSA campaign: URL rules or selected Google categories, lower budget, focused on finding queries and themes not yet covered by the controlled campaign or existing keyword campaigns. Treat this as research, not production traffic.

Bidding: Smart Bidding Is the Default

When reliable conversion tracking is in place, use Smart Bidding rather than manual CPC. Manual bidding prevents Google from using its auction-time signals—device, location, time of day, search context, and user behavior—effectively, and makes broad DSA discovery harder to govern without overpaying.^[3]

The recommended bidding progression is:

• Launch with Maximize Conversions (or Maximize Conversion Value for revenue-based accounts). This allows Google’s bidding model to learn without an artificial CPA constraint that could restrict delivery before the campaign has sufficient data.
• Transition to target CPA or target ROAS once conversion volume is consistent and the CPA or ROAS from the Maximize phase gives you a reliable baseline to set a realistic target. Set the initial target near recent account economics—not an aspirational number that immediately throttles impressions.
• For lead generation: count only meaningful primary conversions such as qualified form completions, phone calls with minimum duration, or sales. Counting every micro-action as a conversion degrades Smart Bidding’s optimization signal and produces a misleading efficiency picture.
• Do not evaluate Smart Bidding during the learning period. Assess performance only after sufficient spend and conversion volume have accumulated for the algorithm to stabilize.

Budget Phasing: Numbers That Apply

A conservative launch prevents DSA spend from running ahead of your ability to control query quality:

• Start DSA at approximately 10–20% of your equivalent keyword Search spend during the initial discovery phase.^[9] This is a meaningful constraint, not a token gesture—DSA can absorb budget quickly once Google’s crawl identifies a large eligible page set.
• Review search terms, landing pages, conversion quality, CPA, and ROAS frequently during the first 30 days. Daily review is not excessive for a new campaign at meaningful spend.
• Reallocate budget toward page-feed labels and dynamic targets that meet your predefined CPA or ROAS thresholds.
• Increase budgets in 10–20% increments, allowing performance to stabilize between each increase before making the next. Aggressive budget jumps reset Smart Bidding learning and make it difficult to isolate what caused a performance shift.
• Cap, pause, or move underperforming labels or targets to the discovery campaign rather than letting the entire DSA budget absorb their waste.

Writing Effective DSA Descriptions

Because DSAs generate the headline and select the landing page automatically, descriptions carry all the persuasive, qualifying, and differentiating weight. Generic descriptions are a meaningful performance risk: a description appropriate for a product page may be confusing or inaccurate on a category or service page within the same ad group.

Best practices for DSA descriptions:

• State the core customer benefit specific to the pages in that ad group.
• Include a differentiator—expertise, range, delivery speed, warranty, or transparent pricing—that the dynamically generated headline will not reliably provide.
• End with a clear call to action that is accurate for every URL eligible within the ad group.
• Avoid generic superlatives or claims that apply to nothing in particular.
• Review descriptions against every URL in the target before publishing. A call to action of “Request a Custom Quote Today” is accurate on a B2B service page but wrong on a self-serve product page with a standard checkout flow.
• Use natural, compliant language. Do not force keyword insertion into descriptions; the keyword role is handled by the dynamic headline.

Preventing Cannibalization of Keyword Campaigns

An exact-match keyword in another campaign may take precedence over a DSA at the same query, but a DSA can win over a broad- or phrase-matched keyword when its Ad Rank is higher.^[4] Do not assume that adding a keyword to a Search campaign fully shields that query from DSA participation. A reliable protection system requires:

• Adding brand, exact-match, high-margin, regulated, and strategically controlled query themes as negative keywords in the DSA campaign.
• Keeping DSA targets focused on uncovered page groups and long-tail discovery, not on the same commercial themes your keyword campaigns already cover precisely.
• Promoting high-performing DSA queries into dedicated keyword campaigns once conversion quality is validated—then adding those queries as negatives in the DSA campaign.

Controlling DSAs: Negatives, Exclusions and Search Terms

URL and Dynamic Ad Target Exclusions

Exclusions must be in place before a DSA campaign goes live, not added reactively after wasted spend accumulates. Google allows exclusions based on URL pattern, page title, page content, or category.^[9] Apply exclusions at the campaign level for universally unsuitable pages and at the ad group level when only a specific target needs restriction.

Standard pre-launch exclusion list:

• /blog/ and /news/
• /careers/ and /jobs/
• /support/ and /help/
• /login/ and /account/
• /cart/, /checkout/, and /order-confirmation/
• /privacy/, /terms/, and /shipping-policy/
• Pages containing “sold out,” “unavailable,” or “discontinued”—Google explicitly recommends this exclusion^[9]
• Internal search results pages (typically containing ?q= or /search/)
• Faceted navigation and filter URLs that create near-duplicate thin pages
• Duplicate, temporary, or staging pages
• Locations or service areas your business does not actually serve

Negative Keywords for DSAs

DSA does not use positive keywords, but negative keywords remain fully functional and are one of the most important control mechanisms available.^[10] Build a seeded negative keyword list before launch using known irrelevant intents, then expand it from actual search-term data.

Pre-launch negative keyword categories to include:

• Employment intent: jobs, careers, hiring, salary, internship, apply now
• Free or no-cost intent: free, free trial, no cost—unless your offer includes these
• Informational intent when the campaign is transaction-focused: definition, meaning, how to, tutorial, course, guide, what is
• DIY and self-service: instructions, repair, troubleshooting, manual, template—unless commercially relevant
• Used or secondary market: used, second-hand, refurbished, wholesale—unless you sell these
• Competitor terms where the campaign strategy excludes competitors
• Products, services, or categories the business does not offer

Use negative keywords at the narrowest sensible level: ad-group negatives for themes specific to one product or service group, campaign negatives for themes irrelevant across all DSA targets, and shared negative lists for account-wide exclusions. Check for conflicts before adding negatives—an overly broad shared negative list can suppress converting commercial traffic across the entire account.^[3]

Importantly, do not add every non-converting query immediately. Consider conversion lag, assisted conversion value, query volume, and whether the query belongs in a separate page-feed label group rather than being excluded entirely.

Search Terms Report: The Operational Core of DSA Management

The search terms report is the primary operational tool for managing DSA quality. It shows the user’s actual query, the dynamically generated headline, and the landing page selected—giving you visibility into three variables that keyword campaigns only show you one of.^[5]

Review cadence:

• Daily for the first 30 days: this is not optional for a new campaign at meaningful spend. The first weeks generate the data that sets the trajectory of the campaign.
• Weekly after the initial month: for campaigns at moderate spend and stable conversion volume.
• Daily again after any significant budget increase, site change, or seasonal event.

During each search-term review, work through these checks:

• Add clearly irrelevant queries as negative keywords at the appropriate level.
• Add negative URL exclusions for landing pages that consistently attract poor-quality traffic.
• Flag recurring high-value queries for promotion to dedicated keyword campaigns.
• Verify that the dynamically selected landing page matches the user’s apparent intent—a mismatch here is both a quality score issue and a conversion rate problem.
• Identify search themes suggesting missing page-feed labels or gaps in your exclusion structure.
• Record converting queries separately from merely spending queries; the distinction matters for budget reallocation decisions.
• Segment by device, location, and ad group where spend is sufficient to draw conclusions.

Google allows you to select a search term or landing page directly from the report and add it as a negative or exclusion without leaving the interface.^[5]

Optimization Cadence After Launch

• Every 2–4 weeks: reallocate budget among page-feed labels and targets based on CPA, ROAS, and conversion rate; promote strong DSA queries to keyword campaigns.
• Quarterly or after major site changes: audit the page feed for discontinued URLs, redirect chains, thin pages, and new commercial pages that should be added; review category targeting for any changes in Google’s site classification; update description copy to reflect current offers and pricing.

The DSA Retirement and AI Max Migration Timeline

The timeline for DSA retirement has changed once already, so treat the dates below as the current best understanding as of October 2026 rather than as fixed certainties. Where your account’s in-platform notifications or API behavior conflict with this timeline, follow the account-level notice—it reflects Google’s current operational plan for your specific account.

Date	Event	Who Is Affected
April 15, 2026	Google announces DSA retirement and planned upgrade to AI Max, originally targeting September 2026 completion[1]	All advertisers running DSA campaigns
June 11, 2026	Google delays the DSA migration; announces new DSA campaigns can be created again from June 15, 2026[2]	All advertisers; DSA campaigns continue serving
September 1–30, 2026	Separate auto-upgrade begins for Search campaigns using campaign-level broad match and/or standalone Automatically Created Assets—not DSA campaigns[1][11]	Advertisers with campaign-level broad match or ACA enabled outside DSA
~January 2027	Creation of new DSA ad groups expected to end permanently across Google Ads UI, Editor, and API[1]	All advertisers
January 15, 2027	Google plans to send final reminder notifications to affected advertisers[1]	Advertisers still running DSA campaigns
February 1–28, 2027	Automatic migration of remaining DSA campaigns to AI Max for Search begins; dynamic ad groups convert to standard Search ad groups with AI Max enabled[1][2]	Any DSA campaign not voluntarily migrated before this window

The September 2026 Change Is Separate From the DSA Migration

This distinction matters operationally. The September 2026 auto-upgrade affects Search campaigns using campaign-level broad match and Automatically Created Assets, not DSA campaigns.^[1][11] A campaign can be affected in September because of those settings even if it contains no DSA ad groups. Review all campaigns with either setting before September and document their current configuration, search-term quality, and asset behavior before Google’s automatic change takes effect.

What Happens When a DSA Campaign Is Migrated

Google’s stated migration process converts dynamic ad groups into standard Search ad groups, ports campaign settings and historical data into the upgraded structure, and enables AI Max features including search term matching, text customization, and final URL expansion.^[12] Legacy URL controls are stated to be preserved in migration, which reduces but does not eliminate risk—verify every important control after migration regardless of Google’s assurances.^[12]

The Recommended Migration Plan

The practical migration sequence for a US advertiser operating in late 2026 is:

• Now through November 2026: audit every DSA campaign. Document spend, conversions, CPA, ROAS, top converting queries, page-feed structure, exclusions, and negative keywords. Identify which DSA use cases produce genuinely incremental conversions versus conversions that keyword campaigns would have captured anyway.
• Before September 2026 (if not already done): separately audit all campaigns with campaign-level broad match or Automatically Created Assets and decide whether to constrain or allow their auto-upgrade.
• October–December 2026: run AI Max for Search experiments side by side with active DSA campaigns. Use comparable budgets, conversion goals, and evaluation periods. Do not simultaneously change bidding, creative, and landing pages—isolate the AI Max variable.
• Before January 2027: complete voluntary migration for DSA use cases where AI Max experiments have shown acceptable or better performance. Document everything.
• February 2027: treat any remaining automatic migration as contingency only. If you still have DSA campaigns at this point, you are operating without the controls that voluntary migration provides.

DSA vs AI Max for Search vs Performance Max

Understanding where each format sits in Google’s current product architecture helps you choose the right tool for each use case rather than defaulting to whichever Google is currently promoting most aggressively.

Dimension	Dynamic Search Ads	AI Max for Search	Performance Max
Format type	Dynamic ad groups within a Search campaign	Enhancement layer applied to a standard Search campaign	Standalone goal-based campaign type
Query matching	Website content and page feed match to relevant searches; no keywords	Keyword-based matching expanded by AI search term matching and broader signals	AI-driven matching across all Google inventory; no keywords
Ad text control	Headlines generated dynamically; advertiser controls up to 4 descriptions of 90 characters[6]	Text customization can generate or adapt assets; advertiser retains review capability	Advertiser provides asset inputs; Google assembles and tests combinations across channels
Landing page	Dynamic final URL selected from site content or page feed	Final URL expansion routes to relevant site pages; can be controlled by feed and exclusions	Final URL expansion applies by default; can be restricted but not eliminated
Network reach	Google Search only	Google Search only	All Google channels: Search, Shopping, Display, YouTube, Gmail, Maps, Discover
Advertiser control	DSA targets, page feeds, URL exclusions, negative keywords; no keyword control	Brand controls, URL inclusion/exclusion lists, text guidelines, negative keywords, location and language controls[13]	Asset groups, audience signals, URL exclusions, brand exclusions; limited query-level control
Reporting granularity	Search term, dynamic target, landing page, ad group	Search term, asset, landing page, standard Search ad group dimensions	Asset group, channel, search term categories; less granular than Search campaigns
Best current use case	Large or changing catalogs; query discovery; gap filling; sunsetting in early 2027	Search campaign expansion with more control than broad match alone; DSA successor	Full-funnel, multi-channel conversion campaigns; retail feed integration; brand awareness at scale
Status in 2026	Active but sunsetting; no new creation after ~January 2027	Active and expanding; Google’s primary search automation investment	Active and expanding; Google’s primary cross-channel automation investment

The critical distinction between AI Max and DSA is structural: DSA is primarily a dynamic targeting and ad-generation format that replaces keyword campaigns with site content. AI Max is a broader Search-campaign enhancement layer that expands matching, customizes text, and broadens landing-page selection on top of an existing keyword framework.^[2] Advertisers who valued DSA for its keyword-free operation should understand that AI Max still works best with some keyword and ad structure as its starting point.

Google reports that activating AI Max’s full feature suite—search term matching, text customization, and final URL expansion—produces an average 7% increase in conversions or conversion value at a similar CPA or ROAS compared with search term matching alone.^[12] This is a Google-reported average across accounts, not a guaranteed result, and it should be validated against your own experiment data before committing budget.

Who Should Still Use DSAs (and Who Should Not)

Strong Candidates for DSAs in 2026

• Large ecommerce catalogs with thousands of frequently changing products. Manually maintaining keyword coverage for a catalog that changes daily or weekly is operationally impractical. A well-structured page feed with labeled product categories lets DSA provide coverage while you maintain control at the label level rather than the individual product level.^[3][4]
• Sites with genuinely good HTML architecture and commercial-first content. DSA’s headline generation quality is directly proportional to your page title and content quality. Sites that invest in structured, descriptive, crawlable page content get materially better headline relevance than sites with thin or template-heavy content.
• Accounts with consistent gaps in keyword coverage. If your search term reports from keyword campaigns regularly surface relevant converting queries that your keyword structure did not anticipate, DSA is the right tool for systematic gap-filling.
• Advertisers with reliable conversion tracking and sufficient conversion volume. Smart Bidding on DSA requires quality conversion data. Accounts with strong conversion tracking setups, realistic CPA or ROAS targets, and sufficient volume to train the bidding model will get significantly better results than accounts running on thin or unreliable conversion data.
• Teams using DSA search terms as a keyword research pipeline. The search terms DSA generates are among the best quality keyword expansion sources available because they are actual converting queries rather than keyword tool estimates. If you are systematically mining DSA data to improve keyword campaigns, the format is earning its keep even if its direct conversion contribution is modest.

Poor Candidates for DSAs in 2026

• Sites with mixed commercial and editorial content that cannot be cleanly separated. If your site combines a product catalog with a large blog, resource library, or support section and you cannot maintain a clean commercial-only page feed, DSA will consistently surface the wrong pages for commercial queries.
• Businesses with regulated content requiring precise ad copy control. Legal services, financial products, healthcare, and similar categories require exact compliance review of ad text. DSA’s dynamic headline generation makes per-ad compliance review impractical.
• Accounts without reliable conversion tracking. Running DSA without dependable conversion data means Smart Bidding cannot work effectively, and you have no meaningful basis for evaluating search-term quality or making budget reallocation decisions.
• Small sites with fewer than 20 to 30 distinct commercial pages. The overhead of DSA setup, feed maintenance, exclusion management, and daily search-term review is difficult to justify when the potential page coverage is so limited. Standard keyword campaigns offer better control at this scale.
• Advertisers planning to build long-term DSA dependence. Given the January 2027 end of new DSA creation and February 2027 forced migration, building new large-scale DSA structures in late 2026 is inadvisable. The investment in feed architecture and exclusion management would be better directed toward AI Max for Search.^[1]

Common Mistakes to Avoid

• Launching without exclusions. Running DSA against an entire domain without URL exclusions or dynamic target exclusions is the single most common cause of wasted DSA spend. Blog posts, careers pages, support articles, and login pages will all be eligible landing pages and will attract irrelevant traffic from day one. Build the exclusion list before the campaign goes live, not after the first week’s search terms reveal the problem.
• Using the entire website as the only target. Entire-website targeting is appropriate only for very small, clean, commercially focused sites. For any site with mixed content, the lack of targeting specificity leads to poor query relevance, low conversion rates, and difficulty diagnosing where performance is coming from.
• Neglecting the search terms report. DSA is not a set-and-forget format. The search terms report is the primary management tool, and failing to review it daily during the first month is the fastest path to a DSA campaign that spends without converting. The dynamic nature of the format means new page content or seasonal search shifts can introduce irrelevant traffic quickly.
• Starting with an aspirational CPA or ROAS target. Setting a target CPA significantly below recent account CPA before the campaign has learned its baseline effectively prevents delivery. Start with Maximize Conversions, establish a realistic performance baseline, then introduce a target near observed economics rather than a goal the campaign cannot achieve without starving itself of traffic.
• Using generic descriptions across all ad groups. A single set of descriptions applied to an ad group covering both enterprise software pages and self-serve small-business product pages will be inaccurate for at least one audience. Match descriptions to the specific intent and audience of each ad group’s page feed label.
• Building a large new DSA structure in late 2026. Investing heavily in DSA architecture after mid-2026 is operationally unwise given the January 2027 end of new creation and February 2027 forced migration. Any major DSA investment made now should be structured so it either informs AI Max testing or can be migrated without rebuilding from scratch.
• Assuming keyword campaigns will always win over DSA. The misconception that adding a keyword to a Search campaign fully protects that query from DSA is common and incorrect. A DSA can outrank a broad- or phrase-matched keyword when its Ad Rank is higher.^[4] Protect strategic queries with explicit DSA negatives, not only keyword additions.
• Ignoring the September 2026 broad match and ACA auto-upgrade. Many advertisers will see changes in September 2026 that have nothing to do with DSA but will materially affect Search campaign behavior. Treating this as a DSA-only issue and failing to audit campaign-level broad match and Automatically Created Assets settings before September is a significant oversight.
• Waiting until February 2027 for AI Max migration. Allowing Google’s automatic migration to handle the transition means losing control over timing, exclusion review, budget sequencing, and the ability to run a controlled experiment. The forced migration is the contingency, not the plan.^[1]
• Mixing page feed URLs with redirect URLs. Feed URLs must be final destination URLs. Redirect chains in the feed cause crawl failures that silently remove pages from DSA eligibility, leaving gaps in coverage without any obvious error alert.^[8]

What Changed Recently (Last 30 Days)

As of October 2026, the most significant recent developments affecting DSA strategy are:

The DSA migration delay remains in effect. Google’s June 11, 2026 delay of the DSA-specific migration continues to hold. New DSA campaigns can still be created through approximately January 2027, and existing DSAs continue serving normally.^[2] The September 2026 auto-upgrade that began this month affects campaigns with campaign-level broad match and Automatically Created Assets—not DSA campaigns—and advertisers should check their accounts to understand which campaigns were affected by that change.^[1][11]

AI Max ad-group-level page feed controls are now available. Google’s API documentation now supports page-feed inclusion lists at the ad-group level for AI Max campaigns, not just at the campaign level.^[13] This is the most important recent technical development for advertisers planning migration. The workflow is to create or maintain a page feed, link it to the campaign as a PAGE_FEED asset set, create WEBPAGE criteria at the ad-group level, and use URLs or custom labels to restrict which pages AI Max considers for each ad group. This granular control—separate ad groups with distinct approved URL subsets—addresses the primary concern advertisers had about AI Max’s broader URL expansion replacing DSA’s more focused targeting.

The timeline discrepancy between sources has not been fully resolved. Google’s earlier official announcements positioned September 2026 as the DSA migration deadline, while subsequent practitioner reporting and updated Google communications indicate February 2027 for DSA specifically.^[1][2] The research supporting this article reflects the February 2027 DSA migration date as the current operational expectation, but the discrepancy between sources is real. Do not rely solely on this article—check your account’s in-platform notifications and the Google Ads API release notes for your specific migration status. The conservative assumption is that DSA is a sunset format regardless of exactly when the final migration occurs.

Practitioners should now be in the testing phase. Based on the current timeline, October 2026 is the appropriate window for running controlled AI Max experiments alongside active DSA campaigns. Advertisers who waited for the June delay to resolve before beginning AI Max testing should launch experiments now to have sufficient data for voluntary migration decisions before January 2027. Use comparable budgets, conversion goals, and evaluation periods, and resist the temptation to simultaneously change bidding strategy, creative assets, and landing pages alongside the AI Max variable—isolate the test to make results attributable.

Outside the United States: migration timelines, feature availability, and account notification schedules may vary by market. Advertisers operating in the European Union should additionally consider whether AI Max’s text customization and URL expansion features are consistent with their consent and transparency obligations under applicable regulation. Verify your market-specific AI Max feature availability in your Google Ads account settings.

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References

1. [1] https://blog.google/products/ads-commerce/dsa-upgrade-to-ai-max-2026/ blog.google
2. [2] https://www.dojoai.com/blog/dsa-to-ai-max-migration www.dojoai.com
3. [3] https://support.google.com/google-ads/answer/2471185?hl=en support.google.com
4. [4] https://developers.google.com/google-ads/api/docs/dynamic-search-ads/overview developers.google.com
5. [5] https://support.google.com/google-ads/answer/9251092?hl=en support.google.com
6. [6] https://developers.google.com/google-ads/api/docs/dynamic-search-ads/create-dynamic-search… developers.google.com
7. [7] https://support.google.com/sa360/answer/14679491?hl=en support.google.com
8. [8] https://developers.google.com/google-ads/api/docs/dynamic-search-ads/dsa-page-feeds developers.google.com
9. [9] https://support.google.com/google-ads/answer/7166527?hl=en support.google.com
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