Google Ads and Merchant Center changes to act on before Black Friday week

Introduction

Google Ads and Merchant Center are changing, and you might not know what has changed. In the past few weeks, Google has made announcements that will impact your business.

We compiled a list of the changes already in place and upcoming updates so you are ready for deadlines or behaviour shifts.

Budget-limited tCPA and tROAS campaigns now bid to the target you set

Since 17 August 2026, budget-limited campaigns on Target CPA or Target ROAS perform more consistently towards your bid target, including when you make budget adjustments. A merchant running Shopping or PMax campaigns on Target CPA or Target ROAS may have seen ROAS fall or CPA rise toward their target since mid-August without changing anything.

Before raising peak budgets, use the Bid Target Adjustment Tool to reset targets to recent performance. The tool opens from the "Review your campaign targets" banner in the account, or from the bidding section of a campaign's settings. Google names no country limits for the change.

We covered this announcement in our article about Google’s 17 August Smart Bidding update.

Google has also opened promotion mode in beta for Search and PMax campaigns. It schedules a temporary change to ROAS tolerance and extra daily budget for a set window, such as a sale event, then returns the campaign to its normal settings. As a beta, it may not be available in every account yet.

The AI Max migration window for broad match and ACA closes on 30 September

If you also run Search campaigns, Google is replacing three older automation settings with one bundle called AI Max. Since 3 August, new campaign-level broad match and Automatically Created Assets (ACA) setups can no longer be created, and existing ones were migrated to AI Max between 1 and 30 September. Broad match campaigns already matched widely, so the new setting does the same job under a new name.

The biggest change is for ACA campaigns: they keep the Google-written ad text they already had, and now also have search term matching on, so their ads can show for a wider set of searches than before. Spend can shift without anyone changing the campaign.

Check the AI Max settings in each migrated campaign, starting with former ACA campaigns, before raising peak budgets. Dynamic Search Ads (DSA) were also due to migrate in September, but Google postponed the migration to February 2027 after advertiser feedback. Until then, DSA campaigns will keep running as they are. Upgrading them yourself before February lets you set up AI Max on your own schedule and check the settings first.

PMax channel reporting shows Shopping under "ads using product data"

The channel performance report has been available in all PMax campaigns since November 2025. The report has no Shopping row; instead, its channels are Search, Search partners, Display, YouTube, Discover, Gmail, and Maps, and Shopping shows as the "ads using product data" segment across them. Gmail and some YouTube and Discover formats are not included yet.

To find Shopping's numbers, segment the report by ads using product data. If most of your PMax revenue comes from Shopping ads, the feed is what drives it, and the feed changes in the next section affect most of the campaign. Check this before setting peak PMax budgets.

Merchant Center feed changes run from April 2026 to early 2027

Most of this year's Merchant Center changes are feed attributes, and they only matter if your products use them. Product videos carry the least risk: since 30 June, if a video_link fails Google's checks, only the video is disapproved. The Content API is the most urgent: since 1 September, requests can fail intermittently, so price and stock updates may not reach Merchant Center during peak. From 31 January 2027, Google will upscale some product images below 500x500 pixels so the products stay approved, and flag those images in Needs attention. The warnings have been shown since 14 April, so any affected images are already listed in your account.

In Merchant Center, check how your product data arrives. If it runs through the Content API, move it to the Merchant API, or confirm your feed provider already has. If you offer in-store pickup in the UK, Switzerland or the EEA, add pickup_cost and minimum_order_value where your website applies them. Then filter the Needs attention tab for "Image too small for upcoming enforcement" and replace those images before 31 January.

Merchants selling subscriptions can also promote discounts on recurring fees in Shopping. Subscribe and save has been available since January 2026: select it in Merchant Center, or setredemption_restriction to subscribe_and_save in the promotions feed. Promotions are available in France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain and the UK.

Open deadlines run from 30 September 2026 to 28 February 2027

Most of the dates below have already passed, so much of the October work involves checking what has changed in your accounts.

Three deadlines are still ahead: image enforcement on 31 January, the DSA migration in February, and the Content API shutdown in early 2027.

All four changes can be checked in October, before peak budgets go up. Feed audits like these are standard practice within Managed Ads.