Google announced two new Google Ads controls on October 14, 2026 that let you rank your channels and cap how much of your daily budget the low-priority ones can take. There is also a date attached. In February 2027, Google removes the existing spend allocation setup for Search campaigns that have the Display Network turned on, and if you do nothing, your spending can shift between networks on its own.
What Google Actually Announced
The announcement came from Tal Akabas, Director of Product Management for Google Ads. Two optional controls are rolling out to Search, Shopping, Performance Max, and Demand Gen campaigns.
- Channel prioritization. You label each channel or channel grouping as High priority or Low priority. Google funds the high-priority channels first, then sends whatever budget is left to the low-priority ones.
- Budget allocation. For any channel you set to Low priority, you can set a maximum percentage of your daily budget it is allowed to take. Google describes this as best effort, so it is not a hard cap.
Google's own framing for the launch was "Say goodbye to all-or-nothing channel targeting." That is the real point of this. Until now your options on Search partners and the Display Network were on or off. Now you can leave them on at 10 percent and see what happens.
How The Channels Group Together
The groupings are different depending on the campaign type, and this part matters more than it sounds.
- Search. Google Search, Search partners, and the Google Display Network can each be set to a different priority level.
- Shopping. Google Search and Search partners.
- Performance Max. Google channels, Search partners, and the Display Network.
- Demand Gen. Google channels and the Display Network.
For Performance Max and Demand Gen, "Google channels" is one bucket holding Search, YouTube, Maps, Gmail, and Discover together. You cannot prioritize YouTube separately from Search inside PMax here. Search Engine Journal reported a separate small alpha with more advanced PMax channel controls running alongside this.
Keep in mind, Search Engine Journal also reported that a 0 percent allocation is available, which blocks a channel entirely, including inside Performance Max. That is the detail most PMax advertisers have been asking for since the campaign type launched.
The February 2027 Deadline
Right now, if you run a Search campaign with the Display Network enabled, Google prioritizes Search inventory over Display for you automatically. That behavior goes away in February 2027.
Here is the part that catches people. Every channel defaults to High priority. So if the old automatic prioritization disappears and you have not touched the new settings, Display sits at the same priority as Search, and your spend can move.
To keep your current setup
- Set the Google Display Network to Low priority.
- Set its budget allocation to 50 percent.
- Google says a one-click migration option will be offered at launch, so check for that before doing it by hand.
I would not wait until February on this one. Not because the deadline is tight, but because the settings will land in accounts long before then, and it is easier to set them while you are already looking at the campaign than to go hunting through 40 campaigns in a panic week.
What This Does Not Fix
Both Search Engine Land and Search Engine Journal made the same point, and it is worth repeating. If your campaign is not budget-limited, prioritization alone will not do much on Target CPA or Target ROAS. Google is already spending what it wants to spend. Telling it which channel to fund first does not change the total.
Budget allocation is the control that still works when you are not limited by budget, because a percentage cap applies either way. If you are trying to stop Search partners from quietly eating a quarter of your spend, that is the setting you want, not the priority label.
When You Will Actually See It
This is the part I want you to read carefully, because the headlines make it sound live. It is not in most accounts yet.
Google says the controls are rolling out globally over the next several months. Search Engine Journal saw an early demo at a virtual roundtable and reported limited feature testing for Demand Gen in November 2026. API support arrives at launch, priorities can be set at the account level with per-campaign-type defaults that campaign settings override, and expanded Search channel reporting is expected in Q1 2027.
Question to Answer:
Do you have any Search campaigns with the Display Network turned on, and do you know what percentage of those budgets Display is taking today?
In Summary
Google is replacing on-or-off channel targeting with priority tiers and percentage caps across Search, Shopping, Performance Max, and Demand Gen. The genuinely useful piece is the budget allocation cap, including a 0 percent option inside PMax, because it works whether or not your campaign is budget-limited.
The one thing with a date on it is February 2027, when the current Search and Display allocation goes away. Pull a list of your Search campaigns that have Display enabled and note what Display is costing you now, so you have a baseline to compare against when you set the new priority yourself.
0 comments