Google Ads has started rolling out a small reporting change that addresses one of the loudest complaints about AI Max for Search: advertisers could switch the automation on, but they could not easily see what it was doing. According to coverage of the October 7 rollout, three new columns are appearing in AI Max reporting tables — Locations of interest, Optimized targeting, and Brand inclusions — so media buyers can compare targeting settings against performance without opening every campaign one by one.
Each column maps to a real control inside AI Max. Locations of interest shows whether a campaign counts people based on where they show interest rather than only where they physically are. Optimized targeting reveals whether Google is allowed to reach beyond the audiences an advertiser defined. Brand inclusions shows which brands a campaign is set to appear alongside or avoid. None of this changes how AI Max bids or targets; it is a visibility fix. But visibility is exactly what buyers have been asking for since Google began folding more automated targeting into Search campaigns in August, when it emailed advertisers about the AI Max upgrade of automatically created assets and campaign-level broad match.
The timing matters because a second automated feature lands days later. From October 12, Google Ads will automatically identify promotions on an advertiser’s own website — coupons, discounts and deals — and apply them as promotion assets to eligible Search and Performance Max campaigns with linked location assets that do not already carry promotion assets. Advertisers are opted in by default. The only way to stop it is to open the account-level automated asset settings and turn Automated Promotions off before the rollout reaches the account.
Read together, the two updates describe Google’s current bargain with advertisers. The platform will keep automating the parts of campaign management that used to be manual — finding offers, expanding targeting, assembling assets — and in exchange it is slowly adding the reporting needed to audit what the machine did. Search Engine Roundtable and PPC Land both documented the October 12 email to advertisers, while the new AI Max columns were spotted as they began appearing in accounts this week.
For performance teams, the practical work this week is unglamorous but important. First, check whether the three new columns are available in your accounts and add them to saved views, because comparing an AI Max campaign against a standard Search campaign is misleading until you can see which automated settings differ. Second, decide deliberately whether automated promotions should stay on. A retailer with clean, current offers on its site may welcome the free asset creation; a business with old sale pages, dated terms or pricing it no longer honors should switch the setting off and archive stale pages before Google turns them into live ad copy. Third, brief clients now: from mid-October, some of the promotions appearing in their ads may have been written by Google’s systems reading their website, not by their agency.
Automation is not slowing down. The only real choice advertisers have is whether they watch it closely or find out what it did from their results.
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