Google Ads Campaign Types in 2026: What Exists and What Is Retiring

Google’s own pages cannot agree on how many campaign types there are, or when the next one disappears.

Google’s main help page on campaign types lists six. Performance Max, Search, Display, Video, App and Shopping. It does not mention Demand Gen at all (Google Ads Help 2567043). Demand Gen is the type that absorbed Discovery, then absorbed Video Action Campaigns, and is currently absorbing Display. Google’s own API documentation lists it. The help page does not.

It gets worse on dates. Three Google properties currently give three different answers about when Dynamic Search Ads goes away:

Three Google sources, two answers, checked 14 September 2026

Be precise about what is and is not wrong here, because the September date is correct for part of it. Campaign-level broad match and standalone automatically created assets genuinely are auto-upgrading in September 2026. It is Dynamic Search Ads specifically that moved to 2027, and business.google.com still lists DSA alongside the other two in the September group. blog.google is not clean either: it carries the correct date in an update note at the top while the body below it still says September.

We read 31 pages ranking for campaign types. None carries the revised DSA date, and none flags the contradiction. The strongest page in the category, an 8,200-word reference published in May 2026, still tells readers DSA auto-upgrade begins September 2026, because Google moved it a month after that page went live.

So if you have been told your DSA campaigns are being upgraded this month, that came from a Google page that has not been updated since before the extension. The correct answer is January 2027 for creation, February 2027 for migration.

Everything below is sourced, dated and checkable. Where Google contradicts Google, we show you both.

Last verified: 14 September 2026.

How many Google Ads campaign types are there in 2026?

Seven general-purpose types you can create and run today, plus a handful of vertical types covered further down.

The current campaign types

Local Services Ads sits awkwardly in every count. It has its own auction and pay-per-lead model and is usually managed separately, yet it does appear in the Google Ads API as LOCAL_SERVICES. We treat it as adjacent rather than one of the seven, and that choice alone explains part of why published counts range from six to ten.

The reason the counts in this category disagree so wildly is that most pages are counting different things. We found pages claiming six types, seven, nine, ten, and one claiming 22. One page presents a list of nine as “according to Google” when Google’s page lists six and the nine includes two types that no longer exist. The fix is a taxonomy, which is the next section.

Campaign type, setting, format or asset?

This is the confusion underneath almost every wrong list in this category, and no page we read draws the distinction.

Four levels, frequently mixed up

AI Max is a setting, not a campaign type. One page we read lists it as one of “7 Google Ads campaign types”, which is like listing “automatic transmission” as a type of car. Google describes it as a suite of targeting and creative enhancements applied to a Search campaign.

Dynamic Search Ads was an ad group type inside a Search campaign, not a campaign type of its own, which is why the sunset affects ad groups rather than campaigns.

Four pages we read still say “ad extensions”, including two updated in the last two months. Google renamed extensions to assets in September 2022. It is a small thing, but it dates a page instantly for anyone who works in the interface daily.

Which campaign types no longer exist?

Six retired or retiring types, with the date and the source for each. No page we read has assembled this.

The campaign type graveyard

Sources: Help 11576060 for Smart Shopping and Local, Help 15110871 for Video Action Campaigns, blog.google, 26 May 2026 for Display, and the Developer Blog entry above for DSA.

Against that list, here is what the ranking pages still publish. Of 29 commercial pages we read:

• Six still list Discovery as a live campaign type, including one updated two days before we ran this research.
• Four still list Local campaigns, including one updated three weeks ago that explains how to configure their setup requirements.
• Three still describe Video Action Campaigns in the present tense.
• Eight omit Demand Gen entirely, and so does Google’s own top-ranking help page.
• Twenty-five say nothing about Display being absorbed into Demand Gen.
• Twenty-two do not mention AI Max at all, including several updated within the last two months.

One page states that Google “hasn’t officially announced a sunsetting of dynamic search ads”. Google announced it on 15 April 2026.

When is Dynamic Search Ads actually going away?

January 2027 for creation. February 2027 for the migration. Not September 2026, whatever you may have read, including on one of Google’s own sites.

The Google Ads Developer Blog, dated 11 June 2026, gives the milestones plainly: “January 2027: Ability to create DSAs is removed” and “February 2027: Automigration begins. Any remaining active DSA campaigns will be automatically upgraded to Performance Max or AI-powered Search campaigns.”

Note that last clause, because it is doing more work than it looks. Google says migrated DSA campaigns go to Performance Max or AI-powered Search. Those are very different outcomes. One keeps you in a Search campaign with keyword-level visibility. The other puts your budget across every Google surface. If you have DSA campaigns, you want to make that choice deliberately rather than discover it.

This date moved, and there is a detail worth knowing if you have live DSA campaigns. The original announcement put the DSA sunset in September 2026. On 11 June 2026 Google both extended the timeline and, per the same Developer Blog post, restored DSA campaign creation, having previously blocked it. So if you tried to create a DSA campaign earlier this year and could not, you can now, until January. That extension is also why so much published advice, including the strongest page in this category, still says September.

What to do before February 2027

1. Export your DSA search terms now, and keep exporting monthly. Once the campaigns migrate, the historical view changes and the queries that drove your performance become much harder to recover.
2. Identify which DSA targets actually convert. Page feeds, categories, specific URLs. This becomes your keyword and asset list in whatever replaces it.
3. Decide now: Search with AI Max, or Performance Max. If keyword-level control and search term visibility matter to you, you want Search. If you sell products and already run PMax, consolidating may be cleaner.
4. Rebuild deliberately rather than waiting for the automigration. A migration you control happens on your timetable with your naming and your budgets. One Google performs happens in February whatever else is going on.
5. Check your scripts, rules and third-party tools. Anything keyed to DSA ad groups breaks. So does anything keyed to campaign names, for reasons in the next section.

Bidding behaviour changes too once you are in AI Max, and what does and does not reset the learning period is in our guide to Google Ads bidding strategies.

Is Display being discontinued?

Effectively yes, though Google has not used that word.

Google announced on 26 May 2026 that Display inventory moves into Demand Gen: “We’ll provide updates and a migration tool to guide your transition, expected to complete by 2027.” The migration tool began a phased rollout in June 2026 (Help 17051545).

Twenty-five of the twenty-nine pages we read say nothing about this, and several present Display as a permanent standalone type you should plan around.

What happens to your data when Google migrates a campaign?

Nobody covers this, and it is the question every practitioner actually has when a migration is announced.

For the Display to Demand Gen migration, Google documents exactly what happens:

• The original campaign is not deleted. “Your original Google Display Ads campaigns will be set to ‘Removed’ status but will remain in your account for reporting purposes for up to 5 years.”
• The new campaign gets a new name. “Migrated campaigns will follow the naming convention ‘[Original campaign name] #2.'”
• Status carries over. “Google maintains the status from the source Google Display Ads campaign. If your Google Display Ads campaign is paused, the new migrated Demand Gen campaign will be paused.”

The “#2” is the part that will cost you time. Every saved report, dashboard filter, automated rule, label convention and naming standard keyed to the exact campaign name now points at a Removed campaign while the live one has a suffix nobody planned for.

Three things to do before any migration you can see coming:

• Audit anything filtered by campaign name. Looker Studio and Data Studio filters, Google Ads automated rules, scripts, and your reporting templates.
• Decide your naming convention in advance and rename after migration rather than living with “#2” forever.
• Note the migration date in your change log, because performance either side of it is not directly comparable and someone will ask. The reporting method for exactly this is in our PPC reporting guide.

What is AI Max, and is it a campaign type?

No. It is a setting on a Search campaign. One page in this category lists it as one of seven campaign types, which is a category error that will lead readers to look for something that does not exist in the campaign creation flow.

Google describes it as a suite of targeting and creative enhancements: improved search term matching, text customisation of headlines and descriptions, and final URL expansion (Help 15910366).

What matters operationally:

• Search campaigns using campaign-level broad match or standalone automatically created assets are being auto-upgraded through September 2026, so this is in progress as we publish.
• Creation of those legacy structures was blocked on 3 August 2026 across the interface, Google Ads Editor and the API. That date comes from trade reporting rather than a Google page we could find, so treat it as well corroborated rather than first-party.
• Your negative keywords still work. Google: “Yes. Negative keywords will be respected even with AI Max turned on” (Help 15913066). What changes is the breadth of queries they are policing. The full treatment is in our negative keywords guide.

Twenty-two of the twenty-nine commercial pages we read do not mention AI Max at all, including several updated in the weeks around the auto-upgrades starting.

The campaign types, one by one

Search

What it is for: capturing existing demand. Someone is looking for what you sell.

Requires: keywords, or AI Max, plus conversion tracking if you want Smart Bidding.

Use it when: there is search volume for your category. This is almost always the first campaign any account should run, because intent is already there and you are not creating it.

Watch for: match type behaviour under Smart Bidding, and the AI Max upgrade changing what your keywords reach.

Performance Max

What it is for: goal-driven reach across every Google surface from one campaign.

Requires: conversion tracking, and a product feed if you are retail. Asset groups. Patience through learning.

Use it when: you have conversion data, a feed, and enough budget that the system has something to optimise with. It is not a starter campaign.

Watch for: brand traffic absorption, limited search term visibility, and asset group structure doing more work than people expect. Our structure guide is at Performance Max asset group structure for ecommerce, and the diagnostic order when it underperforms is in Performance Max not performing.

Shopping (Standard)

What it is for: product ads driven by your Merchant Center feed.

Requires: a Merchant Center account and a compliant product feed. The feed is the targeting.

Use it when: you sell physical products and want control that Performance Max does not give you.

Watch for: feed quality deciding everything. Titles, identifiers, images and price accuracy do the work keywords do elsewhere. That is covered fully in product feed optimization.

Demand Gen

What it is for: creating demand rather than capturing it, on YouTube, Shorts, Discover, Gmail and now Display.

Requires: genuinely good creative. This is the type where creative quality is the constraint rather than targeting.

Use it when: your category has limited search volume, or you have saturated search and need to build demand upstream.

Watch for: it now carries three former campaign types inside it, with Display becoming the fourth. If you are reading older material about Discovery or Video Action Campaigns, this is where that content went.

Display

What it is for: reach and remarketing across the Google Display Network.

Status: being migrated into Demand Gen, with a tool available from June 2026 and completion expected by 2027.

Use it when: you have an existing remarketing setup, but plan the migration rather than being migrated.

Video

What it is for: YouTube, across awareness and consideration formats.

Watch for: Video Action Campaigns are gone. If a guide recommends them, it predates April 2026.

App

What it is for: app installs and in-app actions.

Requires: app conversion tracking, and Google does most of the rest. There is very little manual control by design.

Which campaign type should you use?

The honest answer depends on four things, and most “how to choose” sections in this category depend on only one.

The decision logic

The condition nobody states: conversion volume. Performance Max and Demand Gen are both systems that learn, and a campaign with four conversions a month is not giving them anything to learn from. If your account is below roughly 30 conversions a month, Search with tight control will usually beat an automated type, not because automation is bad but because it has nothing to work with.

The second condition nobody states: whether you have a feed. For a retailer, feed quality is the single largest input into both Shopping and Performance Max performance, and no amount of campaign type selection compensates for a broken one.

Which campaign type wins when several match the same auction?

A genuine practitioner question, and one this category mostly skips. Google does publish rules for the Performance Max case, and they are more specific than most people realise.

From Google Ads Help 13810170:

• “A Search campaign with a keyword that exactly matches or is spell-corrected to a person’s query will be preferred over Performance Max.” Note it covers spell-corrections too, so [plumbers] as exact match takes precedence over Performance Max on a search for “plumbrs”.
• “If there are no keywords that exactly match the person’s query across keyword match types, the campaign with the higher Ad Rank will serve.”

The Standard Shopping rule changed, and a lot of published advice has not caught up. Performance Max used to be automatically prioritised over Standard Shopping for the same product. Google changed that in October 2024 so that normal auction dynamics apply and the higher Ad Rank serves. If you read that PMax automatically wins against Shopping, that was true and is no longer.

What Google does not publish is a complete precedence table across every combination of campaign types. So the practical answer stays structural rather than clever: separate what you want to control.

• Brand in its own Search campaign, with brand excluded everywhere else. Otherwise Performance Max absorbs brand searches and reports them as conversions it created.
• Products you want tight control over in Standard Shopping, excluded from Performance Max, so the Ad Rank contest does not decide it for you.
• Exact match keywords for the queries that matter most, since that is the one case where Google guarantees Search wins.

Brand separation and the reporting case for it is in branded vs non-branded search.

What each campaign type actually requires

Minimum viable conditions, which most “which type” sections skip entirely.

We have deliberately not put dollar figures in that last column. Minimum viable budget depends on your CPA and your conversion cycle, and any guide giving you a single number for “the minimum PMax budget” is guessing. The way to work yours out is in how much Google Ads costs.

The API enum, and why it is not the test people think it is

When Google’s help pages and blog posts disagree, the Google Ads API reference is a useful cross-check, because it is generated from what the system actually supports. But it is not the simple test it looks like, and we want to be straight about why.

The full AdvertisingChannelType enum is: UNSPECIFIED, UNKNOWN, SEARCH, DISPLAY, SHOPPING, HOTEL, VIDEO, MULTI_CHANNEL, LOCAL, SMART, PERFORMANCE_MAX, LOCAL_SERVICES, TRAVEL and DEMAND_GEN (Google Ads API v21 reference).

Three things to take from that list, and one trap.

What it settles. DEMAND_GEN is there, despite being absent from Google’s own help page on campaign types. DISCOVERY is not there at all, which is consistent with Discovery having become Demand Gen. If you were unsure whether Demand Gen is a real campaign type, that is your answer.

What surprises people. There is no APP value. App campaigns are MULTI_CHANNEL. There is also no CALL_ONLY; call-only is an ad format inside a Search campaign rather than its own channel type.

The trap, and it is worth stating plainly because we nearly fell into it ourselves. SMART and LOCAL are both still in the enum, and neither is a campaign type you can create today. Smart Shopping and Local campaigns were migrated to Performance Max in 2022. An enum value persisting is not evidence that a type is available, because the API has to keep returning values for historical campaigns and for accounts that still hold them in reporting.

So the honest version of the test is narrower than “check the enum”:

• Absent from the enum, as DISCOVERY is, means the type is genuinely gone.
• Present in the enum means only that the API can return it. It does not mean you can create one.

That distinction is exactly the create-versus-run problem from earlier in this article, and it is why the status matrix above has three states rather than two.

One operational note for anyone running scripts or third-party tooling. Trade reporting indicates that legacy campaign-level broad match and standalone automatically created asset entities are being removed from newer API versions, though we could not find this stated on a Google property, so treat it as expected rather than documented. If a bid management tool or script breaks in the next year, it is worth checking against.

Can you create it, or only run it?

A distinction nobody makes, and it matters because “retired” means three different things depending on which type you are asking about.

Campaign type status matrix

The three states are genuinely different. A type you can still run but not create means your existing campaigns keep working and you cannot add more, which is a slow squeeze rather than a cliff. A type with an automigration date is a cliff with a date on it. A type that is already gone is a documentation problem, not an account problem. Most guides in this category collapse all three into “no longer available”, which tells a reader with live DSA campaigns nothing useful.

Which campaign types suit which business?

Campaign type selection is really a business model question, and organising by funnel stage, which is what almost every page does, obscures that.

By business model

The B2B row is worth expanding, because it is where the most money gets wasted. Performance Max optimises toward whatever you tell it a conversion is. If that is a form fill, it will find you form fills, including from people who will never buy. Without feeding qualified leads back as conversions, it optimises confidently toward the wrong outcome. The mechanics of doing that properly are in the conversion tracking guide.

What about Hotel, Travel, Call-only and Local Services?

Nearly absent from every page in this category, which is why people assume they do not exist.

• Local Services Ads has its own pay-per-lead model, verification requirements and auction, and is usually managed as a separate product, though it does carry its own API channel type. Whether a guide counts it is the main reason type counts differ. For eligible trades it frequently outperforms Search on cost per lead.
• Call-only is documented by Google as a Search campaign configuration rather than its own channel type. The ad drives a phone call with no landing page click.
• Hotel campaigns exist as a vertical type for accommodation providers, with their own feed and bidding requirements.
• Travel appears in the API as its own channel type, TRAVEL, alongside HOTEL.

If you are in one of those verticals, a generic campaign type guide will quietly leave out the type you most need.

Does campaign type affect AI Overviews eligibility?

Worth addressing because it is asked constantly and answered badly.

Two pages we read touch it, both in a sentence, neither with a source. We are not going to do better by guessing, so here is the honest position.

Google has been placing ads within AI-powered search experiences, and ads eligible for those placements are drawn from existing campaign types rather than requiring a new one. The practical implication is that there is no “AI Overviews campaign” to opt into, and a guide telling you to create one is describing something that does not exist.

What we will not tell you is which campaign types get what share of that inventory, or how performance compares, because Google has not published it and neither has anyone else with data we could verify. If you see a percentage attributed to Google on this, ask for the source.

How account structure changes with budget

Campaign type advice that ignores budget is advice for an account that does not exist.

Structure by budget tier

Two rules that hold at every tier:

• Do not add a campaign type to solve a problem that is actually a tracking problem. Adding PMax to an account with broken conversion tracking makes the damage faster, not smaller.
• Every new campaign type you add divides the budget and the data. Three campaigns at 10 conversions each learn worse than one at 30. Consolidate before you diversify.

The campaign type migration checker

Across the 31 pages we read, not one ships an interactive tool. Every “which type should I use” answer in this category is a static table, and not one page anywhere tracks the migration deadlines.

So we built the thing that was missing. Tick what you are running and it returns, for each type: whether you can still create it, whether you can still run it, what it becomes, a live countdown to the deadline, the specific actions to take before that date, and the Google announcement behind every claim.

It also flags the contradiction. If you tick Dynamic Search Ads, it tells you that Google’s Developer Blog says January and February 2027 while Google’s own business site still says September 2026, and links both so you can see for yourself.

Ungated, no email. It is on this page.

Common mistakes

• Choosing Performance Max first. It is a scaling type, not a starting type. Below roughly 30 conversions a month it has nothing to learn from.
• Running Standard Shopping and PMax on the same products with no separation. PMax absorbs the traffic and you lose the control you set Shopping up for.
• Running PMax without brand exclusions. It will take your brand searches and report them as its own performance.
• Treating AI Max as a campaign type. It is a setting on a Search campaign.
• Planning around Display as a permanent type. It is migrating into Demand Gen by 2027.
• Waiting for the DSA automigration. February 2027 will arrive with whatever Google decides. Rebuild on your own timetable.
• Keying reports and rules to campaign names. Migrations rename campaigns, and Google’s documented convention adds “#2”.
• Reading any campaign type guide without checking its date. Six of the 29 commercial pages we read list Discovery as live, and four list Local campaigns.

Frequently asked questions

How many Google Ads campaign types are there?

Seven you can create and run today: Search, Performance Max, Standard Shopping, Demand Gen, Display, Video and App. Counts in published guides range from six to 22 because pages mix campaign types with ad formats, settings and assets, and because several still include types that no longer exist. Google’s own help page lists six and omits Demand Gen.

When is Dynamic Search Ads going away?

Creation is removed in January 2027 and automigration begins in February 2027, per the Google Ads Developer Blog dated 11 June 2026. Google’s own business site still says September 2026 because it has not been updated since the extension. Migrated campaigns go to Performance Max or AI-powered Search.

Is Display being discontinued?

It is being migrated into Demand Gen. Google announced this on 26 May 2026, a migration tool began rolling out in June 2026, and the transition is “expected to complete by 2027”.

Is AI Max a campaign type?

No. It is a suite of targeting and creative enhancements applied to Search campaigns. Search campaigns using campaign-level broad match or standalone automatically created assets are being auto-upgraded through September 2026, and creation of those legacy structures was blocked on 3 August 2026 per trade reporting.

Do Discovery campaigns still exist?

No. Discovery became Demand Gen, with migration complete by March 2024. Six of the 29 pages we read still list Discovery as a live campaign type, including one updated in September 2026.

Do Smart Shopping and Local campaigns still exist?

No. Both were auto-upgraded to Performance Max in 2022. Four pages we read still list Local campaigns, including one that explains how to configure their requirements.

What happened to Video Action Campaigns?

They were migrated to Demand Gen. Creation was removed in April 2025 and Google completed the final upgrades by April 2026.

What is the difference between Performance Max and Demand Gen?

Performance Max is goal-driven and runs across every Google surface including Search and Shopping, so it captures existing demand as well as creating it. Demand Gen is visual and upper-funnel, running on YouTube, Shorts, Discover, Gmail and now Display, and its job is to create demand that does not yet exist as a search. If people are already searching for what you sell, Performance Max. If they are not, Demand Gen.

What is the difference between Performance Max and a Search campaign?

Search gives you keyword-level control and search term visibility across one surface. Performance Max gives you reach across all surfaces with far less visibility into where spend goes. Most accounts should run Search first and add Performance Max once there is enough conversion data for it to optimise against.

Which campaign type is best for a new account?

Search, in almost every case. It captures demand that already exists, works at low budget, and gives you the conversion data that every automated campaign type needs before it can work.

What happens to my reports when Google migrates a campaign?

The original is set to Removed status and kept for reporting for up to five years, and the migrated campaign is renamed with a “#2” suffix per Google’s documented convention. Anything filtered by exact campaign name, including saved reports, dashboards and automated rules, will need updating.

Do negative keywords still work in AI Max?

Yes. Google states that negative keywords will be respected even with AI Max turned on. What changes is the breadth of queries your campaign is eligible for, not whether the negatives apply.

How we checked this

We read 31 pages ranking across seven campaign type queries in full, not their meta descriptions, and recorded exactly which campaign types each one names. Two of those 31 are Google’s own properties, so the staleness counts below are over the 29 commercial pages. Where this article says 31, it means everything we read. Where it says 29, it means the commercial subset. That is where the staleness counts in this article come from, and they reflect that reading on 14 September 2026 rather than the whole internet.

Almost every date in this article was verified against a Google primary source: Google Ads Help, the Google Ads API reference, the Google Ads Developer Blog and blog.google. The two exceptions are named below. Where Google’s own properties disagree, we have shown you all of them rather than picking one quietly.

Four things we are flagging rather than asserting:

• Google publishes precedence rules for the Performance Max case but not a complete table across every campaign type combination. We have cited what is documented and marked the rest as structural advice.
• The 3 August 2026 creation block is corroborated by trade reporting rather than a Google page we could locate.
• The claim that newer API versions drop legacy broad match and ACA entities is trade reporting, not Google documentation.
• Google publishes no minimum budget figures per campaign type. Any guide giving you a single number is estimating, and we have not put one in the table for that reason.

Of the 29 commercial pages we read, none cites a primary source for any date it publishes. That is the reason this category has stayed wrong for so long: an error published in 2023 gets paraphrased forward indefinitely because nobody is checking against the announcement.

Last verified: 14 September 2026. The DSA date has already moved once, and the Display migration completes “by 2027” without a firm date, so both will need re-checking. We re-verify this page quarterly and the changelog below records what moved.

Changelog

Not sure which campaign types you should be running?

The two most common findings when we audit an account are a Performance Max campaign quietly absorbing brand traffic that Search was already winning, and a legacy campaign type nobody has planned the migration for.

Ask us to review your account structure, or work through it yourself with the 120-point Google Ads audit checklist. If you run an online store, our approach is at ecommerce PPC management.