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A Deep Dive into How AI Max is Redefining SEM Strategy
In May 2025, at the Google Marketing Live annual event, Google announced AI Max, a suite of optional features designed to enhance existing search campaigns. With the latest update, Google is “moving beyond simply matching to users’ queries—even on the most nuanced and complex questions—to predicting what they might need next.”
The question is: what is the impact of Google AI Max on SEM strategy? The growing transition from traditional keyword matching to intent-based queries, the expanded automation tools, and the real-time asset expansion together—at least on the face of it—signal a fundamental shift in Search advertising.
But before going any further, let’s define what Google AI Max is.
What is Google AI Max?
Google AI Max is a suite of features designed to enhance existing Search campaigns through advanced Artificial Intelligence (AI) capabilities for targeting and creative assets. Google describes it as a one-click power up for Search campaigns that help advertisers find new customers by understanding their intent rather than just the keywords they type, generating additional traffic and conversions that traditional, keyword-based search campaigns would otherwise miss.
Within the traditional search campaign framework, AI Max comes across as a blend of Performance Max (PMax) and Dynamic Search Ads (DSA), combining real-time bidding optimization, audience targeting, and campaign management from PMax and keywordless targeting and automated landing page selection from DSA.
Search Term Matching
Search term matching is a new form of keywordless targeting, combining the existing Broad match setting with keywordless matching technology. The Broad match setting, as you may already know, encompasses synonyms or related terms, singular or plural forms, misspellings as well as searches that include the words in your keyword in any order. Keywordless targeting, on the other hand, relies on various signals from your campaign, website, or feed to determine when, and for which ads, your ads should be shown. Google’s AI then learns from all this information to help surface more relevant searches.
Text Customisation
Text customisation, one could say, is a rebrand of automatically created assets. Google uses generative AI along with text from existing ads, landing pages, and assets to create customised headlines and descriptions. This customisation takes place in real-time, tailoring the ad copy to the users specific query and matching the emerging intent.
Final URL Expansion
As outlined earlier, Final URL expansion, like in DSA campaigns, allows Google to direct traffic to the most relevant specific page on your site, if its AI predicts better performance there, even if it differs from the landing page originally selected.
Potential Benefits of AI Max
Google introduced AI Max to help businesses navigate the modern search landscape where users are prone to asking complex, nuanced questions, occasionally with images or voice. Whether the new feature-set delivers on that promise is one thing, the bigger question, especially to the marketer, is this: does AI Max really help? Are there any benefits to using AI Max? The answer is, yes. Let’s dive into some of them.
Boosted Conversions
According to Google’s internal data, advertisers who use AI Max typically see 14% more conversions or conversion value at a similar cost per acquisition (CPA) or return on ad spend (ROAS). For campaigns that are still using exact and phrase keywords that uplift was as high as 27%, sometimes more. Results may vary depending on factors such as industry and account maturity, but under the right conditions, it can be a meaningful driver of incremental growth.
Improved Efficiency
Automating the optimization of ad copy, bidding, and landing pages, if done correctly (important caveat) with high quality inputs, conversion data, and strategy, has the potential to help achieve similar or even better results with less manual effort.
Superior Creative Relevance
Dynamically generating, testing and optimising ad variations in real-time to match user intent and behaviour, across both ad content and landing pages, is, to put quite simply, a compelling advantage. It represents a reduction in bounce rates, improved conversion potential, and increased engagement.
Adaptive Destination Matching
Rather than funnelling every click to a static page, AI Max intelligently directs users to the destination that best fits their intent, based on their search query. You can also maintain control by setting exclusions for certain URLs. It serves to refine the path between interest and action, turning each click into a more deliberate, better-matched interaction.
Expands Reach Beyond Keywords
Through search term matching and keywordless targeting, AI Max, as previously mentioned, can help businesses tap into high-performing queries that may have otherwise been missed. The system also captures complex, nuanced queries, sometimes 50+ words long, or queries based on photos through Google Lens.
Taps into Modern Search Behaviour
In line with evolution of modern search behaviour from keyword-based queries to more conversational, visual, and multi-platform experiences driven by a demand for immediate, direct answers, AI Max, through its AI-powered features, seeks to help advertisers move beyond the constraints of manually selected keywords and meet customers who are using complex, nuanced multimodal, and highly intent-driven queries.
Uncover New Audiences
The system’s ability to move beyond manually selected keywords, besides tapping into modern search behaviour and expanding reach, can also help uncover new audiences. And that’s not all, Google’s AI analyses vast amounts of contextual and behavioural data such as location intent, time of day, user history, e.t.c, which allows it to predict customer needs and identify high-intent audiences.
How is AI Max Poised to Reshape SEM Strategy
The new features introduced in AI Max, whether it’s keywordless matching or dynamic and personalised creatives, have the potential to redefine how we think about SEM strategy. Are they welcome? Yes. Should you embrace them? Depends.
Intent is the Name of the Game
AI Max marks a shift from a keyword-centric approach to an intent-centric approach in SEM strategy. Google itself has emphasised that Search is “evolving beyond simply matching users’ queries…to predicting what they might need next,” by capturing richer signals of intent.
In practice, AI Max uses broad match and other signals to interpret query meaning and show ads whenever the intent aligns with what you offer, even when the query doesn’t exactly match your set keywords. For marketers, this means focusing more on addressing user needs and questions as opposed to exhaustively listing every keyword variation.
The Evolving Role of the SEM Manager
If AI Max handles more of the heavy lifting in matching queries and craftings ads, where does that leave the marketing professional? In a word: strategy.
With routine tasks such as keyword selection and basic ad copywriting being automated, SEM managers will shift from hands-on tacticians to strategic orchestrators.
In practical terms, this means more emphasis on oversight, data analysis, and creative direction. Yes, it can automate optimisations, but it still requires expert oversight to guide strategy, monitor signals and fine-tune campaign controls over time.
Embracing a Hybrid Strategy
It’s important to recognise that AI max is not an all or nothing proposition, it’s best to view Google’s AI enhancements as an additive layer, a force multiplier to your existing SEM strategy rather than a wholesale replacement.
We recommend introducing it, gradually and strategically. For example, enabling it on one campaign or running it in a controlled environment, and comparing against your standard setup.
This lets you gauge its incremental impact, work out any kinks such as irrelevant query matches or off-brand auto-generated text, before rolling it out wider. You could also maintain manual controls over mission critical or brand sensitive keywords and let the system explore new queries in less sensitive areas.
Caveats and Considerations for Using Google AI Max
While AI Max introduces tangible benefits, its adoption is not without complexities. The same features that make it powerful, whether its dynamic targeting or generative automation, can also make it unpredictable. Below are some of the considerations to keep in mind before and during implementation.
Negative Keywords
Google’s AI-driven campaigns, at least when they first launched, lacked negative keyword controls, which were essential for preventing wasted ad spend on irrelevant searches. Google has since introduced the feature, but important caveats remain. One of them being that negative keywords apply only to shopping and search queries, not to Display and YouTube placements.
AI Max tends to generate a lot of junk queries as it optimises broadly. Negative keywords are vital as guardrails to guide the automation to prevent bad matches, such as competitor terms or misinterpreted keywords. The key is balance; avoid over restricting so that the algorithm has room to find new converting keywords.
When AI Max Might Not Be the Best Choice
AI Max is a powerful tool, however, as previously mentioned, it’s not a one-size-fit-all solution. There are certain scenarios where it might not be ideal. And it’s important to recognise these situations and consider alternative SEM strategies.
Very Small Budgets
If your ad budget is limited, AI Max may not be the best solution. The algorithm needs sufficient data and will continuously optimise (spend) to find conversions. On small budgets this could exhaust funds on learning with little return.
Niche or Data Scarce Markets
If you’re in a niche market with specific keyword variables, AI Max may not be the best option for you. Niche markets, besides requiring a large sample size of conversions (which, of course, are likely to be limited), also may not generate enough signals, leading the algorithm to search broadly to find volume, which can reduce relevance.
Highly Regulated Industries
In industries such as healthcare, finance and legal services, strict compliance rules make AI Max risky. With automated asset creation and mix and match ad generation, you can’t be certain that required disclaimers and disclosures will appear every time. You lose granular control over how and where messages appear and in what contexts, which may violate industry regulations and brand guidelines.
Final Thoughts
There’s much to be learned from the trajectory Google is charting with AI Max. Beyond the features themselves lies a broader insight: a shift towards predictive, intent-led advertising where campaigns learn as they run, and relevance becomes algorithmic rather than manual.
While the promise of these innovations is evident, realising their full potential demands tactical precision and strategic foresight. Understanding how, when, and where to implement AI Max is what separates automated campaigns from intelligent ones.
As a full-service digital marketing agency, Rogue Digital is equipped to help your business navigate this new landscape with clarity and control.
Beyond SEM and SEO, our expertise spans adjacent domains such as Display and Video Advertising, Social Media Marketing, Website Design, and Content Management, allowing us to deliver cohesive, data-driven strategies tailored to your brand’s goals.
Need guidance? Schedule a digital assessment and find out how Rogue Digital can help your business harness AI-powered advertising to achieve sustainable, measurable growth.
