Google Ads AI Max is appearing automatically enabled in some Google Ad Grants accounts, according to Search Engine Land, in a change first spotted by digital advertising specialist Dan Kabakov on LinkedIn. Advertisers managing nonprofit Search campaigns say they found the AI Max setting switched on without anyone in the account turning it on, raising a control question for a programme where performance is tied directly to compliance.
Search Engine Land reported the sightings on October 19. Google has not confirmed that the behaviour is a new, Ad Grants-wide rollout, and the report does not claim that it is. What is documented is narrower and still important: in at least some Ad Grants accounts, AI Max for Search is on, and the advertisers who found it did not opt in themselves.
AI Max in Ad Grants Accounts: What Was Spotted
Kabakov described finding AI Max on in all Search campaigns in a nonprofit account, with no one having switched it on. His working explanation was the automatic upgrade Google began on September 1, which moves Search campaigns that use campaign-level broad match or automatically created assets onto AI Max. He noted that he could find nothing in Google’s materials saying Ad Grants accounts were either included in or excluded from that upgrade.
That mechanism is confirmed in Google’s own Ads Help documentation. Google describes AI Max not as a new campaign type but as an optimisation layer inside existing Search campaigns, notes that new Search campaigns have it turned on by default, and documents how to activate, edit or disable it. The September auto-upgrade programme is therefore official; what remains unconfirmed is whether Google intended it to sweep Ad Grants accounts, or whether Grants campaigns carrying the legacy settings were simply caught by it. PPC Land, reporting PPC News Feed’s coverage, also recorded the same sightings in Ad Grants accounts.
How AI Max Changes A Search Campaign
AI Max is a bundle, not a single switch. Its best-known component is search term matching, which uses broad match, asset-based signals and landing page content to find relevant searches beyond an advertiser’s existing keywords, including keywordless matching. The second is asset optimisation, centred on text customisation, which generates or adapts headlines and descriptions from landing pages, existing ads and other campaign information, and can be paired with final URL expansion, which sends a searcher to the page Google judges most relevant rather than the advertiser’s chosen final URL.
Google’s documentation lists the surrounding controls as well: brand inclusions and exclusions, URL inclusions and exclusions, and locations of interest. Those controls are how an advertiser who keeps AI Max can still fence it, and AI Max as a whole can be toggled off in campaign settings, as this week’s separate change to Local Services Ads presentation also reminded advertisers to check what Google has changed in-account.
Why The Click-Through Rate Rule Makes Grants Different
For a normal advertiser, an unwanted broadening of matching is a performance problem. For an Ad Grants advertiser, it can become a compliance problem. Ad Grants accounts must maintain a minimum click-through rate, and Kabakov put the figure at 5 percent each month, with deactivation following two consecutive months below it. A setting built to match an account to more searches will tend to generate more impressions, and looser searches usually convert those impressions into clicks at a lower rate.
Search Engine Land made the same point: AI Max may help nonprofits reach new audiences around donations, volunteering or services, but broader matching could also produce impressions without clicks, pushing an account close to the threshold towards a breach. In the account Kabakov described, the immediate risk was small: every search term in the previous 30 days had come from his own keywords, none from AI Max, and click-through rate sat above 30 percent. That is one small account, not a sector-wide finding.
The practical response is an audit, not a panic. Check the AI Max toggle, review recent search terms, watch click-through rate against the threshold, and decide deliberately whether to keep, fence or disable the setting, in the same spirit as advertisers had to review the earlier automated promotions opt-in and the new business-name rules.
Why It Matters
The central entity here is AI Max, and its key attribute is not its matching technology but its default state: a powerful automation layer arriving in accounts whose owners did not choose it, inside a programme whose rules punish the exact side effect, diluted click-through rate, that expanded matching can cause. Its neighbours are the nonprofits that depend on the grant for visibility they cannot buy, the agencies and volunteers who manage those accounts, and Google itself, whose September upgrade was documented for Search campaigns generally but never clearly scoped for Grants. Until Google clarifies whether Grants accounts were meant to be included, every Grants manager has to treat the AI Max toggle as something to verify, not assume.
Background
Google introduced AI Max for Search campaigns in 2025 as its AI-driven optimisation layer for Search, then announced that legacy automatically created assets and campaign-level broad match would be upgraded to it automatically from September 1, 2026, with Dynamic Search Ads following in February 2027. Ad Grants, Google’s long-running programme giving eligible nonprofits free Search advertising, has always operated under stricter account rules than paid accounts, including the click-through rate requirement, which is why an automation change that is routine elsewhere carries extra weight there.
Source: Search Engine Land; Google Ads Help, Set up AI Max for Search campaigns; PPC Land
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