Google AI Max and Meta Advantage+: what is on by default and what you can still block

Key findings

Terms used in this article

Google AI Max: new Search campaigns start with it on

The Google Ads setup documentation says that "new Search campaigns have the AI Max feature turned on by default." Turning on AI Max switches on the three features below together, and each can be turned off separately.

The documentation describes five behaviors that are easy to miss when you leave AI Max on.

• Pinned assets are not honored. With both text customization and final URL expansion on, pinned assets in responsive search ads are ignored. The same applies if you set URL inclusions, which add pages that final URL expansion missed as landing page candidates. Google advises: if pinning is a necessity, do not use final URL expansion or URL inclusions. If you have been pinning mandatory notices, check this first.
• Generated copy cannot be edited by hand. Asked in the FAQ whether there is any option to create, edit or customize the assets, Google answers: "No, these assets will fully be automated." All an advertiser can do is remove generated assets in reports, or limit what gets generated with the text guidelines described in the next section.
• Turning AI Max off turns off its controls too. Google's example: if a campaign is running brand exclusions and AI Max is turned off, brand exclusions are disabled. Turning AI Max back on restores the original settings.
• Logos may be generated by AI. With dynamic business information turned on at the account level, AI Max pulls brand logos from your business information or generates them with generative AI.
• Tracking templates can conflict. Google notes that if a tracking template contains a static URL without {lpurl}, users may land on that static URL instead of the page final URL expansion picked, and that nonstandard uses of {lpurl} can cause 404 errors.

Advertisers can still limit AI Max in several documented ways. Negative keywords are still respected with AI Max on (FAQ). Brand inclusions and exclusions associate your ads with, or separate them from, specific brand searches, and URL exclusions keep specific pages from being used as landing pages. Locations of interest is an ad group setting that selects people by the geographic intent shown in their searches, and it also applies to queries matched without a keyword. The search terms report now has an "AI Max" match type value and a source column showing whether a match came from broad match or keywordless matching.

Limiting generated copy: text guidelines

To limit the copy that text customization generates, Google offers text guidelines. They are available in Search campaigns with AI Max on and in Performance Max, and as of 2026-10-06 the Help Center labels them a beta. Text customization must be on to use them.

Google's Korean Help Center translates "term exclusions" with the Korean phrase for "search term exclusions". That is a different feature from negative keywords, which block search terms; the Korean original of this article uses a separate word for it.

The documentation lists three cautions. First, adding guidelines applies them retroactively to generated assets already serving: assets that do not comply stop serving and are marked as removed. Second, Google warns that inefficient or counterintuitive guidelines can remove a large number of good assets and lower campaign performance. Third, prices cannot be blocked with term exclusions. Excluding "$" can still let an asset like "Shoes for less than $50" be generated, so to block prices you need a messaging restriction such as "Don't generate assets with prices".

For anyone running Korean-language ads, the most important practical point is to enter term exclusions in Korean. A list of banned words written in English does not stop Korean ad copy.

Performance Max: negative keywords cover only Search and Shopping inventory

Performance Max gained campaign-level negative keywords and negative keyword lists in 2025 (Google Ads announcement, 2025-08-07). The Help Center, however, repeatedly states that Performance Max negative keywords apply only to Search and Shopping inventory.

The Performance Max search terms report shows data only from March 2023 onward, and store visit and store sales conversions do not appear in it. Because these campaigns can drive conversions without direct clicks, Google advises looking at conversion data before click-through rate or CPM. The FAQ also notes that when a query is eligible for both an AI Max Search campaign and Performance Max, the one with the higher Ad Rank serves.

Meta Advantage+ audience: four things it never expands, and age limits

Meta's Marketing API documentation describes Advantage+ audience this way: it expands the audience the delivery system can search, but not the advertiser's non-negotiable constraints. It names four: location, minimum age, language and custom audience exclusions. For age range and gender, related documentation also describes a setup that passes them to delivery as "suggestions" rather than hard targeting limits.

For a product that may be shown only to people aged 30 and over, for example, you cannot fix the minimum age at 30 while Advantage+ audience is on. To make age a hard condition you have to turn Advantage+ audience off explicitly (set advantage_audience to 0).

The defaults for the individual expansion settings are documented too. For supported objectives, Advantage lookalike and Advantage custom audience are on by default, while Advantage detailed targeting is not. For placements, Advantage+ placements (automatic placements) are the API default.

Campaign structure has changed as well. Since v25.0 (2026-02-18), Meta no longer lets you create Advantage+ shopping campaigns and Advantage+ app campaigns through their separate APIs. Instead, sales, app and leads campaigns in which all three automations (campaign budget, audience and placements) are on are labeled "Advantage+ sales (app, leads) campaigns". If any one of the three is off, the state value becomes DISABLED. Migrating an existing campaign to the new structure sends it back into the learning phase, and Meta writes that "there is not a workaround for the learnings."

Meta's generative creative features: previewing before launch is the advertiser's job

Meta's Advantage+ creative is a bundle of features that automatically vary ad creative. Per the Marketing API documentation, advertisers enable most of these features individually, and the only one documented as on by default is adapt_to_placement, which adjusts images to fit placements (labeled Image touch-ups in the English Ads Manager). Features such as background generation, image expansion, image animation and voiceover translation are marked in the documentation as "generated with AI".

• Ads with AI-generated features must be created paused. The API documentation says that if the opted-in features include AI-generated ones, you must create the ad with PAUSED status, check the generated result in a preview, and only then set it to ACTIVE. Text generation follows the same procedure.
• Meta does not warrant the output. Meta writes that "advertisers are responsible for previewing ad creative featuring AI-generated creatives before publishing their ads," and that it makes no warranties regarding the completeness, reliability and accuracy of generated text, backgrounds or expanded images. Using these features through the API also brings the Ad Creative Generative AI Terms into effect.
• Generated output you don't like cannot be fixed. The documentation says that if the generated result is not acceptable, you should turn the feature off and create the ad or creative again. For voiceover translation it separately notes that the translated voiceover cannot be edited or regenerated.

This procedure is based on the API documentation. We could not verify how each feature's default appears in the Ads Manager interface, because Meta's Help Center articles did not open without logging in.

Labeling AI-generated ad creative: platform labels and Korean guidelines

Separately from automation, the disclosure rules for ads that use AI-generated creative became more specific in 2026. Here is what we confirmed in the original sources.

The labeling duty for generative AI output under Korea's AI Basic Act, and the scope of fines, are covered separately in our article on the AI Basic Act's text. This article covers only the KFTC guidelines and platform policies that apply directly to ad creative.

How to read vendor performance figures

The Google Ads Help Center says that "advertisers that activate AI Max in Search campaigns will typically see 14% more conversions or conversion value at a similar CPA/ROAS," citing "Google internal data, 2025; for non-Retail advertisers." The measurement method, comparison baseline and sample size are not published. This article treats the figure only as a vendor claim.

Instead, both platforms document tools for running the comparison in your own account.

• Google: An AI Max experiment splits traffic and budget within a single campaign, without copying it, and compares a control arm with AI Max off against a treatment arm with it on. All three features are on in the treatment arm by default. Asset optimization (text customization and final URL expansion) can be turned off at the campaign level when you create the experiment, but search term matching, an ad group setting, cannot be turned off during initial setup; you have to edit the treatment campaign directly after the experiment is created. Eligible accounts see a "1-click experiment" recommendation that splits traffic 50/50.
• Meta: Split testing in the Marketing API divides people into non-overlapping audiences and recommends testing only one variable at a time. You would, for example, compare an ad set with Advantage+ audience on against one with it off, on the same budget.

When designing an experiment, check Google's stated conditions as well. Search term matching does not work with manual CPC, and Google says AI Max won't be effective if a campaign is limited by budget. Concluding that AI Max "had no effect" in a campaign that does not meet those conditions may reflect a flaw in the experiment design.

Checklist

What is not settled yet

• This article rewrites an initial note published on 2026-06-16. That note summarized uses, tools and prompts for AI in marketing in general, without sources. On 2026-10-06 we narrowed the topic to what can be checked against official documentation (ad platform automation defaults and controls, and labeling of AI-generated ads), rewrote it, and dropped what could not be verified.
• We did not run any ads. Everything here comes from reading and cross-checking Google's and Meta's official documentation and government announcements. We did not measure whether the documented behavior appears the same way in real accounts, or how performance changes when automation is turned on.
• Meta coverage is based on the API documentation. We could not check defaults and wording in the Ads Manager interface because the Help Center articles did not open without logging in. Meta's documents also disagree in places: the detailed targeting expansion page says it is not on by default, while the Advantage Targeting overview in the same set says detailed targeting and lookalike expansion are enforced for some optimization goals. We followed the individual feature pages.
• Documentation changes often. Google's AI Max Help Center pages show no update date, and part of the FAQ ("AI Max is not yet available in the API and Editor; support is expected later in 2025") conflicts with other pages and appears outdated. Text guidelines are in beta. All settings are as of 2026-10-06.
• Vendor performance figures are unverified. Google's "14% more conversions" is internal data with no published method or baseline. We did not cover Meta's Advantage+ performance figures.
• We confirmed only part of the Korean legal picture. The KFTC guideline amendment was confirmed in the KFTC press release, but we could not confirm whether the legislative amendments needed for the 2025-12-10 government measures have passed, or when they take effect. We also did not check whether Google imposes an AI-generated content disclosure duty on ordinary commercial ads.
• Naver and Kakao ads are not covered. Naver runs Korea's largest search portal and Kakao runs the KakaoTalk messenger; their ad platforms matter to advertisers in Korea, but we could not check them against official documentation of the same quality.

References

All sources were opened and cross-checked on 2026-10-06. We read the English versions of the Google Help Center pages; the Korean original uses the feature names from Google's Korean Help Center.

The 2026-06-16 initial note was rewritten to the current standard on 2026-10-06. If Google's or Meta's documented defaults change, or an AI-generated content labeling system takes effect in Korean law, we will revise this article and note the date.