{"type":"rich","version":"1.0","provider_name":"Transistor","provider_url":"https://transistor.fm","author_name":"Surfside PPC Podcast","title":"Google Ads AI Max | How It Works and Best Practices - Surfside PPC Podcast Episode 27","html":"","width":"100%","height":180,"duration":777,"description":"Google Ads AI Max in 2026 is out of beta and living inside your standard search campaigns, and it's essentially a fusion of Dynamic Search Ads and broad match technology that uses your own website content to find new buyers. This is episode 27 of the Surfside PPC podcast, breaking down how it actually works and when you should (and definitely shouldn't) turn it on.\nThe short version: AI Max only works if you're feeding it good conversion data. If you're an established account with clean data and around 30 or more monthly conversions, it can find you incremental volume beyond your existing targeting. If you have poor conversion data or none at all, avoid it entirely, because it will happily spend your budget on searches that have nothing to do with your business. I share a real example from a dog trainer client where turning it on pulled in cleaning and grooming searches instead of training leads.\nI walk through the two halves you need to understand: search term matching (which opens you up to longer conversational searches like \"large oak leaning on my roof after storm\") and asset optimization through text customization and final URL expansion, where Google writes headlines from your landing page copy and picks the pages most likely to convert. I also cover the guardrails that keep you in control, brand inclusions and exclusions so you don't cannibalize your branded traffic, URL exclusions so paid clicks never land on your careers or financing pages, locations of interest, and text disclaimers for compliance. Plus the honest take: this is largely a \"paid SEO\" play, where Google charges you to capture the long-tail traffic your content should already be earning.\nIf you're trying to figure out whether AI Max makes sense for your account, reach out to Surfside PPC. We do Google Ads consulting and management.\n━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━\nWORK WITH SURFSIDE PPC\n━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━\nNot sure if AI Max is right for your account? We help businesses with Google Ads, conversion...","thumbnail_url":"https://img.transistorcdn.com/ch9wP1_FaBYT3PWt5oqHZzyILXU0mypaF_bUOeWIGg0/rs:fill:0:0:1/w:400/h:400/q:60/mb:500000/aHR0cHM6Ly9pbWct/dXBsb2FkLXByb2R1/Y3Rpb24udHJhbnNp/c3Rvci5mbS9jMmM5/MjUwNWIwYjllZGU0/ZTM2OTJiNDcwNDdk/NTc5Ny5wbmc.webp","thumbnail_width":300,"thumbnail_height":300}