Microsoft Advertising is taking AI Max for Search out of pilot and rolling it out globally, several months after opening it to advertisers in May. The move follows Microsoft’s original April 21 announcement of the feature suite, and it lands at the same time Google is pushing its own advertisers toward AI Max in a much more aggressive way — replacing Dynamic Search Ads with AI Max outright. Microsoft’s approach is more cautious, and the differences between the two rollouts say a lot about where each platform thinks automation is safe to force and where it isn’t.
What AI Max actually automates
AI Max bolts three automation features onto existing Search campaigns. Search term matching goes beyond an advertiser’s keyword list, using signals pulled from keywords, ad copy, landing pages, and inferred user intent to catch conversational and long-tail queries — including the kind of natural-language searches happening inside Bing and Copilot rather than a traditional search box. Text customization generates additional ad messaging by pulling from an advertiser’s existing assets and site content. Final URL expansion lets Microsoft redirect a click to a different landing page on the advertiser’s own site when it judges that page a better match for what the searcher actually wants.
Microsoft is recommending advertisers test all three together, though each can be isolated and tested individually through optimization experiments — a meaningful concession to advertisers who want to measure the incremental effect of, say, URL expansion without also absorbing changes from search term matching at the same time. Ad group-level settings are staying intact, too, which means advertisers keep granular control over exactly which ad groups get AI Max treatment rather than an all-or-nothing account-level switch.
Controls arrived before the wider rollout, not after
What stands out about this launch is the order of operations. Brand inclusion and exclusion lists, term exclusions for generated text assets, and URL rules limiting where final URL expansion can send traffic are all live from day one of the global rollout — not features bolted on months later after advertiser complaints, which is roughly how similar controls arrived for other AI-driven ad automation in the past.
Microsoft Ads Liaison Navah Hopkins credited advertiser feedback directly for that sequencing, saying the company “heard your feedback it’s a really critical tool to include.” That framing matters for agencies that got burned by automated match types or broad-match expansions in the past without adequate exclusion controls — the kind of episode covered in whether the industry is repeating past automation mistakes. Having brand and term exclusions available at launch, rather than as a later patch, is a meaningfully different posture.
Some advertisers already have AI Max on without opting in
Not every AI Max feature requires an active decision. Microsoft is folding predictive matching and autogenerated text assets — two features that already existed under different names — under the AI Max umbrella. Any campaign already using either one will have the corresponding AI Max setting switched on automatically as part of this rollout. Every other AI Max feature stays off unless an advertiser turns it on directly.
That distinction is worth checking manually rather than assuming. Advertisers who haven’t touched their campaign settings recently may find AI Max components already active simply because they were using an older feature that got absorbed into the new naming, not because they opted into the new suite.
How Google Ads imports behave differently
Advertisers who import campaigns from Google Ads into Microsoft Advertising will see AI Max settings carry over — if a Google Search campaign had a supported AI Max feature enabled, the equivalent Microsoft campaign inherits that setting on import.
There’s one notable exception. If the imported Google campaign originally started life as Dynamic Search Ads and was later upgraded to AI Max — which is now mandatory on Google’s side, as covered in Google’s move to replace Dynamic Search Ads with AI Max — Microsoft will convert it back into a standard DSA campaign on import, while it continues building out its own AI Max functionality to match. The reasoning is straightforward: Microsoft hasn’t set an end-of-life date for Dynamic Search Ads the way Google has, and Google’s own DSA migration deadline has already shifted once, so there’s no urgency on Microsoft’s side to force a conversion its platform isn’t yet built to fully support.
Why the pacing difference matters
Google and Microsoft are both pushing Search advertisers toward query matching that goes well beyond a fixed keyword list, but they’re getting there on different timelines. Google has set a hard sunset for the old model; Microsoft is expanding availability while leaving the legacy option in place and building AI Max out gradually. Third-party performance data on the Google side, like the findings covered in what SMEC’s data reveals about AI Max performance, has shown mixed results depending on account structure and vertical — a reminder that “generally available” does not automatically mean “safe to enable everywhere without monitoring.” Advertisers running the same accounts across both platforms should expect the transition to look and feel different on each, and should treat Microsoft’s slower pace as an opportunity to test with less pressure to migrate everything at once.
What advertisers should do with this rollout
The practical move is to check account settings rather than assume nothing has changed. Confirm whether predictive matching or autogenerated text assets were already active, since those campaigns now carry AI Max settings without any action taken. Set brand exclusions and term exclusions before scaling AI Max across more campaigns, not after seeing an unwanted result. And for agencies managing both platforms — a growing group given how Microsoft is also expanding its own AI visibility and testing tools — treat the Google and Microsoft rollouts as separate migrations with separate timelines, not a single automation shift to manage once and forget.
Frequently asked questions
What is AI Max for Search on Microsoft Advertising?
It’s a set of three automation features — search term matching, text customization, and final URL expansion — that can be added to existing Search campaigns to reach queries and generate ad content beyond what an advertiser’s keyword list and static assets cover.
Will AI Max turn on automatically for existing campaigns?
Only the features that predictive matching or autogenerated text assets already covered. Since those are being folded into AI Max, campaigns already using them will have the matching AI Max setting enabled automatically. Every other AI Max feature requires opting in.
What happens to imported Google Ads campaigns that use AI Max?
Supported AI Max settings carry over to the equivalent Microsoft campaign. The exception is a campaign that originated as Dynamic Search Ads and was later upgraded to AI Max on Google — Microsoft converts those back to standard DSA campaigns on import.
What controls are available for advertisers worried about losing control over targeting?
Brand inclusions and exclusions, term exclusions for AI-generated text assets, and URL rules restricting where final URL expansion can send traffic — all available from the start of the global rollout rather than added later.