This week Google Ads loosens the reins on measurement and AI copy generation, giving advertisers more self-service control but also more rope to verify before they commit.
Google rewrote its Conversion Lift help documentation to confirm advertisers can now set up Conversion Lift studies themselves for Search and Performance Max without needing a Google rep. Eligibility requires at least 1,000 observed conversions, a minimum $5,000 campaign budget, and at least one compatible conversion action. Supported formats include Display, Search, Video, Demand Gen, App and PMax, with iOS App campaigns and Travel Ads excluded. A campaign can only be part of one lift study at a time.
Search Engine Roundtable reports this based on Hana Kobzová's spot on PPC News Feed, who noted the shift from rep-gated to self-serve access for Search and PMax specifically. This matters because incrementality testing has been a bottleneck reserved for larger accounts with account management support. Opening it up self-serve is useful, but the 1,000 conversion and $5,000 budget thresholds still gate out smaller advertisers. For lead gen accounts running PMax, this is exactly the kind of causal measurement that should sit alongside offline conversion data before trusting PMax reported conversions at face value; lift studies test true incrementality rather than platform-attributed conversions, which is the safer way to validate spend.
Google Ads added a new help page section letting advertisers preview sample AI-generated headlines and descriptions for AI Max text customization before opting in or launching a campaign. Google states previews generate in under 30 seconds, support multiple languages including English, French, German and Japanese, and respect text guidelines such as excluded words or themes, with a prompt to loosen rules if guidelines block all generated assets.
Flagged by Hana Kobzová on PPC News Feed and covered here by Search Engine Roundtable, this addresses a real concern: advertisers opting into AI-generated copy with no visibility into what Google's AI will actually produce for their brand. Letting advertisers see sample assets before committing is a sensible guardrail, though it remains Google's own preview of Google's own AI, so treat it as a sanity check rather than full quality assurance. Brand tone and compliance risks in automatically generated copy are real, particularly for regulated lead gen sectors.