Google’s Terms of Service Update Puts Advertiser Responsibility In Focus

The recent update to the Google Ads Terms of Service places much emphasis on advertiser inputs and the advertiser’s responsibility for the campaigns and assets in question.

The updated Google Ads Terms of Service became effective on 1 July 2026. Among the changes are provisions covering how advertiser-supplied inputs and URLs can be used across Google Ads features. 

What’s interesting for marketers is the relationship between the fine print and the account itself. Google Ads can use advertiser-provided information in more of its automated features, while responsibility for reviewing the resulting campaigns and assets remains with the advertiser.

The practical question then becomes one of account visibility. Which inputs are being supplied? Which features can use them? What can Google generate from them? Where can a marketer review, guide, or remove the resulting output?

And this calls for advertisers to continually learn about and keep up to date with platform knowledge. Advertisers need to know which automated features are enabled, what outputs they are capable of producing, and which controls are available to help them.

What The Terms Update Puts On The Marketer’s Radar

The Terms of Service update brings several aspects of account management into the same conversation. Advertiser-supplied information, URLs, and automatically generated assets each deserve a place in a routine account review.

For marketers, the consideration now is how those provisions come through into everyday account management. Review the information being supplied to Google Ads, understand which automated features can use it, and check the campaigns and assets those features generate.

An account audit needs to look beyond the settings a marketer deliberately selected and examine how Google Ads can use the inputs available within the account.

How The Terms Update Connects To Automated Features

The Terms update sits within a wider set of Google Ads features where automation can use advertiser inputs and generate campaign elements. For practitioners, the practical task is to understand which automated features are active within an account, what information they can use, and what they can produce.

Google is at the same time transferring a number of its older Search settings into AI Max. 

Campaigns that are eligible for automatic upgrades due to the use of Automatically Created Assets and broad match at the campaign level will be upgraded automatically from September 2026 onwards, with Dynamic Search Ads following in February 2027 after Google had extended the original timeline as a result of advertiser feedback.

For marketers reviewing their accounts, the migration provides another reason to check which settings are active and how automated features can affect campaign elements.

The Settings are Becoming Part of Campaign Strategy

Previously, when carrying out a Google Ads audit, it placed a strong emphasis on the settings that the marketer had intentionally chosen.

The audit should now examine what Google is able to do with those settings when automation is introduced.

Automated assets at the account level are able to produce more creative content. AI Max has the capability of affecting search term matching, text customization, and the choice of landing page. Performance Max can optimize the assets and destinations across Google’s inventory. Demand Gen can generate additional creative content from the existing campaign inputs.

Since each feature has its own settings and controls, knowing where to look becomes an aspect of campaign management.

The updated Terms of Google assign responsibility for automatically created campaigns and assets to the advertiser.

For a performance marketer, the practical audit starts with three questions:

• What automated features are currently turned on for this account?
• What does each feature produce or alter?
• What guardrails are available, and have they been set up on purpose?

Automation Needs An Audit Trail

The first thing to do is to locate the settings.

Start with account-level automated assets, Search campaign settings, AI Max controls, Performance Max asset optimization, Final URL expansion, and Demand Gen asset generation.

The next stage involves putting in the guardrails.

Google has been introducing controls that give advertisers greater influence over the automated outputs, with the AI Max text guidelines enabling advertisers to specify the language they want to exclude from the generated copy and AI Brief offering further guidance regarding messaging, matching, and audiences.

The third step involves looking over the output.

The search terms, the generated materials, and the landing pages that are automatically chosen can show marketers how the system is interpreting the information given to it. Looking at these outputs alongside campaign results gives advertisers a comprehensive view of how automation is functioning within the account.

For Q4 planning, the reliable sequence is to find the settings, review the available controls, and then examine the outputs. Each stage brings the responsibility described in the updated Terms of Service into the day-to-day work of campaign management.

What Should Advertisers Do Before Q4?

The answer starts with an audit of a Google Ads account.

Look through each account to see if any automated settings have been turned on in the past or have been introduced as a result of new campaign features. Check the settings that are used to generate automated content. Review the exclusions, guidelines, and all the other guardrails that are available. Finally, look at the outputs that those systems are producing.

The practical checklist covering account-level, Search, Performance Max, and Demand Gen has been prepared by Bijal Shah, our Search Director, APAC, with advice on where to locate the automated settings and how to set up the appropriate guardrails.

With the latest updates, if you want to carry out an audit to manage the Automatically Created Assets and control how the creatives render, check out Bijal Shah’s checklist on LinkedIn. 

The Marketer Still Owns the Brief

Google’s systems are now able to make more campaign decisions than they could a few years ago, and the marketer’s role is in a more upstream position, where strategy, the inputs and the boundaries determine what the system can do.

The July Terms of Service update brings advertiser responsibility in relation to automated outputs into clearer focus, since Google is still introducing more automation and is now providing advertisers with more methods of guiding it.

The practical benefit arises from being familiar with the platform sufficiently to be able to deal with both sides of that equation.

• Understand what is enabled.
• Set the available guardrails.
• Review what gets produced.
• Make the outputs connected to business performance.

For performance teams heading into Q4, the first task is an account audit. Once marketers know which automated features are active, what inputs they can draw from, and what they can produce, campaign strategy can account for the platform’s current capabilities.

Automation can take over more of the campaign mechanics, but the strategy remains the marketer’s.

The July Terms update places advertiser responsibility alongside a wider set of automated campaign capabilities. For marketers, keeping track of both sides starts with knowing what is active inside the account and reviewing what comes out of it.

Contact Us