Google Deleted Dynamic Search Ads: Every Agency Has Until September to Migrate or Get Locked Out

Google announced at Marketing Live on 20 May 2026 that Dynamic Search Ads are being sunset. AI Max for Search, which entered general availability on 15 April 2026, will replace DSA across all accounts. No new DSA campaigns can be created from this point. All existing DSA campaigns will be automatically converted to AI Max by the end of September 2026. There is no opt-out mechanism.

For most marketing agencies, DSA has been the standard approach for managing client search campaigns across multiple products or large page inventories. The targeting mechanism, URL-based rules that tell Google which pages to use as the basis for ad matching, gave agencies a reliable way to control campaign scope and prevent irrelevant matches. AI Max removes that control.

How AI Max Differs From DSA

DSA targeting worked as follows: the agency set URL targeting rules (the pages Google could use), Google crawled those pages, identified the content, and matched search queries to the content it found. The agency controlled the page set. The algorithm did the matching within that set.

AI Max targeting works differently. The agency does not set URL rules. AI Max reads the entire client site and determines which content to use for which queries based on its own assessment of relevance and conversion probability. The campaign manager can exclude pages using negative keyword lists and URL exclusions, but cannot specify which pages to include. The algorithm decides the positive targeting; the manager can only restrict the negative.

This difference matters operationally for three reasons. First, ecommerce and multi-product clients who had carefully scoped their DSA campaigns to cover specific product categories, excluding promotional pages, login pages, or category pages with thin content, will find that AI Max may include those pages without the agency having set that parameter. Reviewing and configuring the exclusion list for each account requires understanding what the site contains and which content should not drive ad matching.

Second, reporting changes materially. DSA reporting showed which URLs drove impressions and clicks, which gave agencies visibility into which content was performing. AI Max reporting is less granular on the URL level: the campaign optimises at the query-and-intent level rather than the page level. Agencies need to rebuild their reporting frameworks to explain to clients why the performance breakdown looks different post-migration.

Third, the creative AI layer in AI Max, which generates responsive ad headlines and descriptions from site content and the search query, means the agency no longer controls the specific ad text that appears for individual query matches. The agency can provide AI Brief guidelines (brand tone, messaging priorities) but cannot write and approve each ad unit as it was possible to do in DSA. This changes how agencies document their creative contribution to clients and how they manage quality control.

The Migration Timeline Problem

The Performance Max migration of 2022, the previous forced transition that agencies navigated, ran from announcement to mandatory migration over approximately nine months. Agencies had time to test, learn from early movers in the industry, and develop transition playbooks before their own deadlines arrived.

The AI Max migration timeline is approximately five months from general availability (15 April 2026) to forced conversion (end of September 2026). That is 40% less time to develop institutional knowledge of how the new campaign type behaves, build negative keyword lists that actually work for each client, and develop the reporting frameworks to explain results in client-friendly terms.

The Performance Max migration also had a substantial industry knowledge base by the time mandatory conversion arrived. Agencies could draw on 18 months of published case studies, Google-supported best practices, and third-party performance analysis. The AI Max knowledge base is thinner: the product entered general availability less than two months before this article was written. Agencies migrating in May and June 2026 are generating the case study data that September migrators will learn from.

Which Accounts Are Most Complex

The accounts requiring the most intensive migration work are those where DSA's URL targeting provided the most campaign management leverage. Three specific account types are most complex.

Large ecommerce accounts with 200+ DSA landing pages. These accounts used DSA to efficiently cover a large product catalogue, with URL rules providing structure. The migration requires auditing the full product catalogue, identifying which pages should be excluded from AI Max targeting (low-quality pages, duplicate content, seasonal out-of-stock pages), and building the exclusion list systematically. This is an account-by-account manual process.

Multi-service professional services accounts. Law firms, accounting practices, and consulting firms that used DSA to cover service-specific pages, separate URL rules for each practice area, will find that AI Max cannot replicate the scoping precision. The migration requires restructuring the campaign architecture and rebuilding negative keyword lists to prevent cross-service-area matching.

Accounts with programmatic API workflows. Agencies using the Google Ads API to create and update DSA campaigns programmatically, dynamic inventory feeds, automated campaign creation based on product catalogue changes, need to rewrite those workflows entirely. AI Max has a different API structure and different available parameters. This is a development task, not just a settings change.

The Practical Migration Sequence

Agencies with client accounts in the above categories should begin the migration sequence now. The first step is an audit of each client's current DSA structure: which URL rules are set, what pages they cover, which searches they are currently matching, and what the negative keyword lists look like. This produces the migration map: the specific exclusions and configurations needed to approximate the current campaign scope in AI Max.

The second step is creating a test AI Max campaign alongside the existing DSA campaign, running them in parallel to compare performance. This parallel period generates the data needed to brief clients on expected performance differences and to identify any unexpected matches that the AI Max algorithm produces.

The third step is building the new reporting framework before the campaign goes live. AI Max's performance data looks different from DSA: the agency needs to be able to explain what the new metrics mean and how they relate to the business outcomes the client cares about, before the first post-migration report arrives.

The agencies that complete these three steps in June and July will have stable campaigns and clear reporting in place before the September forced conversion. The agencies that begin in August will be in a position where the forced conversion happens before the migration is optimised, meaning clients see performance volatility at the same moment the agency is trying to explain why the campaign type changed.

Google's September deadline is not negotiable. The only variable is whether the agency is ready before it arrives.