Performance Max gets new channel controls in Google Ads

Google announced two new Google Ads settings in October: channel prioritisation and budget allocation. They let you rank where a campaign spends its budget and put a percentage cap on the channels you care least about, including the Google Display Network and Search partners.

Google is pitching this as a way to test Display and Search partners without switching them fully on. Our view hasn't changed. On Search campaigns, both stay off. We've run them across enough accounts to know the traffic is cheap for a reason, and the leads rarely hold up once they reach the CRM.

The update is still worth knowing about for two reasons. It adds a little more control to Performance Max (PMax), a campaign type that has never been transparent about where your money goes. And a February 2027 change affects any Search campaign that still has Display switched on.

What Google released

The update was announced on 14 October 2026 and is rolling out to accounts over the coming months. It covers Search, Shopping, Performance Max and Demand Gen campaigns.

Channel prioritisation. You mark each channel High or Low priority. High priority channels are funded first and Low priority channels get what's left. Everything defaults to High.

Budget allocation. For a Low priority channel you can cap its spend at a percentage of the campaign's average daily budget. Set it to 0% and the channel stops spending. Google calls the cap best effort, so expect the odd day where it goes over.

The channels you can rank depend on the campaign type. Search campaigns split out Google Search, Search partners and the Display Network. Performance Max groups Search, YouTube, Maps, Gmail and Discover together as "Google channels" and lets you rank that group against Search partners and the Display Network.

One catch: if a campaign uses Target CPA or Target ROAS and isn't limited by budget, Google says prioritisation generally won't change anything. The percentage cap is what does the work there.

Why we keep Display and Search partners off Search campaigns

Someone typing a query into Google is about as close to buying intent as paid media gets. That's what you pay for with a Search campaign. Display expansion takes that budget and shows ads to people browsing websites and apps who weren't searching for anything. Search partners puts your ads on third-party sites with their own search features, where you have very little visibility over traffic quality.

In the accounts we manage, both channels bring the cost per click down and the in-platform conversion count up, then fall apart when you check lead quality in the CRM. A percentage cap means you waste less on them. You're still wasting it.

Both are switched on by default when you create a new Search campaign, so they're easy to miss. Google's Recommendations tab also regularly suggests turning Display on to spend unused budget, and it's one of the recommendations we routinely ignore. If you want display reach, run a dedicated Display or Demand Gen campaign with its own budget, creative and targeting. Don't let it borrow from your Search budget.

The February 2027 change

From February 2027, Google is removing the current spend setup for Search campaigns that have the Display Network switched on. Those campaigns move to the new system and spend may shift between channels. Google's suggestion for keeping things roughly as they are is to set the Display Network to Low priority with a 50% allocation.

Half of a Search budget going to Display isn't a setting we'd sign off on. Before February, go through every Search campaign in the account and check the network settings. If Display or Search partners is ticked, untick it.

Performance Max has never been transparent

Since Performance Max replaced Smart Shopping and Local campaigns in 2022, it has worked as a black box. You give Google a budget, creative assets and a conversion goal, and Google decides where the money goes across Search, Shopping, YouTube, Display, Gmail, Discover and Maps. For most of its life you couldn't see how spend split across those channels, couldn't see the full list of search terms and couldn't add campaign-level negative keywords without going through a Google rep.

Google has been chipping away at that. Through 2025 it rolled out campaign-level negative keywords, full search terms reporting and channel performance reporting, which finally showed how much each channel was spending and what it returned. All useful, but reporting only tells you where the money went after it's gone.

Channel prioritisation and budget allocation are the first controls that let you decide how Performance Max splits its budget between channels. It's a small step. You still can't separate YouTube from Gmail or Discover, the cap is best effort and Google's algorithm still makes almost every other call. But if you've watched Display soak up Performance Max budget with nothing to show for it in the CRM, this is a lever that didn't exist a few months ago.

How to use the new controls in Performance Max and Demand Gen

With the new settings you can set the Display Network and Search partners to Low priority in any PMax campaign and cap their share of the daily budget. A 0% cap should stop those channels spending, which wasn't possible before. For lead generation accounts running Performance Max, it's the first thing we'll test as the rollout reaches our clients. Pair it with the channel performance report so you can see whether the shift in spend changes lead quality, and make sure the campaign has the right Performance Max assets for the channels you do want it to run on.

What about Demand Gen?

Demand Gen benefits less, because it already has channel controls. At ad group level you can choose which of YouTube, Discover, Gmail, Maps and the Display Network your ads run on, so you can leave Display out entirely today. The new update adds prioritisation on top, ranking Google channels against the Display Network, but Google's help page says budget allocation isn't supported for Demand Gen and its own communications describe Demand Gen support as coming soon.

If you run Demand Gen for lead generation, check the channel settings in each ad group. If the Display Network is selected and isn't producing qualified leads, deselect it.

Two practical points

The settings can't be applied from a manager account, so they need to be set account by account. And Google's documentation is inconsistent at launch about which options apply to shared budgets, so check what's available in each campaign before you plan around it.

What to do now

• Check the network settings on every Search campaign and turn off Display and Search partners.
• When the controls appear in your account, set the Display Network and Search partners to Low priority in Performance Max and test a 0% or very low allocation.
• In Demand Gen, check each ad group's channel controls and deselect the Display Network if it isn't earning its place.
• Judge the result on qualified leads and revenue in your CRM, not conversions in Google Ads.

If you'd like us to check your account before the February change, get in touch. Our Google Ads team does this kind of review every week.