# Google Ads Updates October 2026 for NZ Advertisers Source: https://www.lucidmedia.co.nz/blog/google-ads-updates-october-2026/ Digital Marketing Google Ads updates October 2026 for NZ advertisers: what to switch off, switch on and check this week, from automated promotions to channel prioritisation. [Jason Poonia](https://www.lucidmedia.co.nz/blog/google-ads-updates-october-2026/#author) | 24 October 2026 | 13 min read ![Google Ads Updates October 2026 for NZ Advertisers](https://www.lucidmedia.co.nz/images/blog/google-ads-updates-october-2026-featured.webp) Three Google Ads changes this month deserve a look from a New Zealand advertiser this week. First, the automated promotions setting: Google told some advertisers that from 12 October it would pull offers from their websites into Search and Performance Max ads unless they opt out. Second, any Search campaign with the Display Network switched on, because Google is changing how that works from February 2027. Third, if you run AI Max, the Search terms and ad combinations view in your search terms report. Customer Match and the Google Ads API have updates too, but most small accounts can ignore both. I checked every item below against Google’s help pages, its Ads and Commerce blog and its developer documentation, and left out claims I could only find in trade press. The one exception is the 12 October date and opt-out default, which come from a Google email that Search Engine Roundtable published, and I flag it where it appears. We already covered Direct Offers, self-serve Conversion Lift and the September spam update in [our 14 October roundup](https://www.lucidmedia.co.nz/blog/digital-marketing-news-october-14-2026/), so I will not repeat them here. ## Should You Leave Google’s Automated Promotions On? For most New Zealand service businesses, I would turn automated promotions off unless you run real, dated offers and keep your website’s offer pages current. Google’s help page says the feature [identifies and extracts promotional offers directly from your website](https://support.google.com/google-ads/answer/18057626?hl=en-GB) and shows them in your ads. The email Google sent to some advertisers, [as published by Search Engine Roundtable on 5 October](https://www.seroundtable.com/google-ads-automated-promotions-october-12-42223.html), said it starts on 12 October 2026 and is opt-out. Google’s help page says this about who it applies to: - It covers Search and Performance Max campaigns only. - Campaigns must have location assets attached, and campaigns with manual promotions are skipped. - Automated promotions are labelled “Google AI” in the Added by column of your Promotion assets. - Google says each automated promotion is eligible to serve for less than 24 hours, then can be re-enabled while its systems keep verifying the offer is still visible on your site. The location asset requirement matters. A pure online store with no location assets attached may not be affected at all, while a local trade, workshop, clinic or shop with its locations linked to the account may well be. Google’s help page does not list countries, so look in your own account. To check it, go to Assets in the Campaigns menu, open the three-dot icon in the filter bar and choose Account-level automated assets, then the three-dot icon again and Advanced settings. The Automated promotions drop-down is there. Google’s opt-in instructions say to choose “On (recommended)”. Choosing Off is the opt-out. ### My Opinion on Leaving It On This is my opinion and I have not measured it. Google recommends On, and Google earns money from ad clicks, so its recommendation is not a neutral one. An ad is a promise, and the words in it should be ones you chose. If your site has a “10% off your first service” banner that someone forgot to take down, an automated system reading your page cannot know it ended last month. Google says it checks the offer is visibly available on your site, so the check is only as good as your site. Where I would leave it on: a business that publishes genuine, dated offers, keeps them current on the page, and has someone who looks at the Promotion assets list every week. Where I would turn it off: everyone else, and anyone who has never looked at that list. Switching it off costs you little, because you were never relying on promotions you did not write. Leaving it on and forgetting it can put a wrong offer in front of a buyer. The middle route is to upload your own promotions manually, which lets you set the dates and content. A campaign with a manual promotion is skipped by the automated system anyway. ## Who Should Own Your Offers If Google Can Read Them? Someone in your business, by name, before a machine does it for you. The Cookie Collective shows why. Their year runs on a handful of gifting moments: Father’s Day, Valentine’s Day, Halloween, Black Friday Cyber Monday and Christmas. In [that case study](https://www.lucidmedia.co.nz/case-studies/gourmet-cookie-meta-ads/), each moment ran as its own campaign with its own creative and offer, such as percentage-off and countdown messaging for Black Friday Cyber Monday. Across four of those seasonal campaigns on Meta the account drove 748 purchases at a blended 7.1x return on ad spend. On Google, a lean Performance Max campaign returned 11.6x blended across 2024. I am not saying those figures relate to this month’s changes. What matters is how the work was organised. Because each season was its own campaign, an offer’s start and end sat with that campaign, and not with whatever a web page said on a given day. An offer that outlives its window teaches a customer that your pricing is vague. I have not checked whether that account has location assets attached, and the feature may never touch an online store, but the lesson holds for any business with time-limited offers. ## Does Channel Prioritisation Change How You Run Search? For a small account, mostly no, but there is one dated change to act on before February 2027. Google announced channel prioritisation and budget allocation on [its Ads and Commerce blog on 14 October](https://blog.google/products/ads-commerce/channel-prioritization-budget-allocation/). Its [help page](https://support.google.com/google-ads/answer/18385152?hl=en-AU&ref_topic=16431239) says the controls become available progressively from 15 October 2026 across Search, Shopping, Performance Max and Demand Gen campaigns, so your account may not show them yet. The mechanics, from Google’s documentation. In Search campaigns the channels are Google Search, search partners and the Google Display Network. - Each channel is set to High or Low priority, and by default all channels are High. High-priority channels are funded first. - For a Low channel you can add an optional budget allocation, a best-effort limit as a percentage of the campaign’s average daily budget. Google’s own example is 5% of a $1,000 average daily budget, which means aiming to keep that channel at or below $50 a day. - A 0% allocation means Google will not spend on that channel. - You set them at account, shared budget or campaign level, but not from a manager account. - Prioritisation has no effect on a campaign that is not limited by budget, though budget allocations still apply. ### The February 2027 Display Network Change This part has a deadline. Google says that from February 2027, Search campaigns with Display expansion enabled migrate automatically, the current spend allocation setup goes away, and you may see spending shift between Google Search, search partners and the Display Network. To keep your current configuration, you set the Google Display Network to Low priority with a 50% daily budget allocation. Google also says the Display Network will no longer serve on Search campaigns that use the target impression share bid strategy. So the task this week is to open your Search campaigns and see whether the Display Network is on. If it is, decide deliberately. For a lead generation campaign where a phone call or a form is the goal, my starting position would be Low priority with a small allocation, or 0%, then watching the search terms and the conversions that follow. I have not tested that, and a campaign that sells online may rightly decide differently. What I would avoid is letting the migration decide for you. ## How Do You Audit an Account for Changes Like These? You audit it the way we audited Turbo & Diesel Automotive Services, a Hamilton workshop: find out what is actually running, and cut it back to what you can explain. When we first looked at their account, spend was spread across more than 30 legacy campaigns. We paused them and built a single Hamilton search campaign with three tightly themed ad groups, three dedicated landing pages, and call tracking so every click to call was counted. From 1 April to 30 September 2026 that campaign recorded 358 calls and enquiries, with a click-through rate of 7.90%. The full story is in the [Turbo & Diesel case study](https://www.lucidmedia.co.nz/case-studies/turbo-diesel-google-ads/). I am not claiming this month’s changes affected their account. The relevance is how it is run. With one campaign, three ad groups and a known set of assets, you can read the Promotion assets list, the channel settings and the search terms in an afternoon. An account with 30 campaigns takes far longer and still hides something. After a month like this one, I would do this on any account: 1. Open Assets, filter by Promotion, and look at the Added by column for “Google AI”. 2. Check Account-level automated assets and decide, deliberately, what is on. 3. Open each Search campaign’s settings and note which have the Display Network on. 4. Read the search terms report for the campaigns that matter, then decide what to exclude. None of those steps needs an agency. If you want a second pair of eyes, that is what [our Google Ads service](https://www.lucidmedia.co.nz/services/paid-ads/google-ads/) is for. ## What Is the Search Terms and Ad Combinations Report? It is a view inside your search terms report for AI Max campaigns that shows each search term next to the headlines and landing pages that served for it. Google’s [AI Max reporting help page](https://support.google.com/google-ads/answer/16470459?hl=en) says the view lists “the search terms that triggered your ads” and shows the headlines, landing pages, campaigns and ad groups that made up the full customer ad journey. The page says it was formerly known as “Search terms and landing pages from AI Max”. To find it, open the Search terms report, use the Search terms drop-down above the table and choose “Search terms and ad combinations”. It opens in the landing page view by default, and you can switch views with the toggle at the top right. Two things from Google’s page are worth knowing before you act on it: - Google recommends waiting at least two weeks after enabling AI Max before making changes such as adding negative keywords. - From the view you can select a row and use “Add as negative keyword” or “Add as negative URL” to stop underperforming terms or pages. The same page states that from February 2027, campaigns using Dynamic Search Ads will automatically be upgraded to AI Max. If you have a DSA campaign, that is your second date for the diary. The report is the reason to use AI Max. A match type that finds searches you never listed is only safe if you can read the searches it found and the ad text it wrote for them. Read it weekly and use the negatives. ## Does Customer Match Need Your Attention? Probably not. Google’s [Customer Match upload help page](https://support.google.com/google-ads/answer/7659867?hl=en) now lists “User IP address” and “User interaction timestamp” as data file headers alongside email, phone and address. It says IP addresses and timestamps should be unhashed, that a timestamp cannot be sent without an IP address, and that IP matching is not supported for end users in the EEA, UK or Switzerland. The page gives no date for the change, so I have not put one on it. My opinion, untested: for a small advertiser, a clean list of customer emails and phone numbers is the useful part, and I would not add raw IP addresses without a reason. Unhashed data passes through whoever prepares your audience, so check who handles the file and what your privacy policy says first. This is general information, not legal advice. ## Do You Need to Care About Google Ads API v26? Probably not, unless a developer or reporting tool connects to your account. Google released [v26 of the Google Ads API on 14 October](https://ads-developers.googleblog.com/2026/10/announcing-v26-of-google-ads-api.html), and the [release notes](https://developers.google.com/google-ads/api/docs/release-notes) list 15 new Search Lift metrics, a new read-only Search Lift keyword bundle resource and some breaking changes for developers. Search Lift is a measurement study type, and I would not expect a small account to need one. If someone maintains your dashboards or reporting connectors, ask whether they are on a supported API version. If not, ignore this item. ## What Could We Not Confirm? Two details did not survive a check against Google’s own pages, so I have not built advice on them. - **The 12 October start and the opt-out default for automated promotions.** Google’s help page documents the setting and how to turn it off, but does not state a start date or the default. Those come from the Google email as Search Engine Roundtable published it, which is why I wrote “told some advertisers”. - **A 13 October rollout date for the Search terms and ad combinations view.** The view is documented by Google, but the date appears only in secondary coverage. I would rather leave a claim out than pass on a rumour, and I will update this post if Google publishes either. ## Frequently Asked Questions ### What are the new updates for Google Ads in 2026? For October 2026, the ones that matter to a small advertiser are automated promotions (from 12 October, per Google’s email), channel prioritisation and budget allocation (from 15 October), and the Search terms and ad combinations view for AI Max. Google Ads API v26 mainly affects developers. Direct Offers and the September spam update are in [our 14 October roundup](https://www.lucidmedia.co.nz/blog/digital-marketing-news-october-14-2026/). ### Are Google Ads automated promotions on by default? Google’s email to some advertisers, as published by Search Engine Roundtable, says the feature is opt-out from 12 October 2026, so eligible accounts are switched on unless you turn it off. Eligible means Search or Performance Max campaigns with location assets and no manual promotions. Google’s help page does not state the default, so check the setting in your own account. ### How do I turn off automated promotions in Google Ads? Go to Assets in the Campaigns menu, open the three-dot icon in the filter bar, choose Account-level automated assets, then open the three-dot icon and choose Advanced settings. Set the Automated promotions drop-down to Off, and give a reason if prompted. Promotions already added show “Google AI” in the Added by column of your Promotion assets. ### What is channel prioritisation in Google Ads? It lets you mark a channel as High or Low priority and optionally limit what a Low channel can spend as a percentage of the average daily budget. Google says it becomes available progressively from 15 October 2026, and prioritisation alone has no effect on a campaign that is not limited by budget. ### Where is the Search terms and ad combinations report in Google Ads? It is in the Search terms report. Use the Search terms drop-down above the table and choose “Search terms and ad combinations”, which Google says was formerly “Search terms and landing pages from AI Max”. It covers AI Max campaigns. --- If you would like someone to look at your account’s settings with you, you can [book a call](https://www.lucidmedia.co.nz/book-a-call/) and we will go through them together. Written by ### Jason Poonia Jason Poonia is the founder and Managing Director of Lucid Media, helping New Zealand businesses grow online since 2018. With over 7 years delivering results for clients across New Zealand and internationally, Jason combines technical expertise with proven marketing strategies to help businesses attract more customers and build scalable systems. Background in Computer Science from the University of Auckland. [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/jasonpoonia/) [Instagram](https://www.instagram.com/jason.poonia/)