Google Ads in 2026... What You Need to Know

Welcome to the wild world of Google Ads in 2026. And the reason why I call it the wild world of Google Ads is because this year the AI revolution has finally started to bite inside of Google Ads. What I'm talking about there, the actual users who are driving the search results that we bid on for Google Ads has started to skyrocket. It was only back at the end of 2024 where those numbers released that 350 million searches were using AO overviews or AO mode, whereas right now, since the end of 2024 to where we're sitting right now, has grown to over 2 billion searches or 2 billion instances per month. Data released in the Search Engine Journal at the start of this month in March 2026 was that in some business niches, that AO overviews were popping up well over 80% of the time for. So 80% of searches had an AO overview element in it. And this is a massive shift that businesses need to be aware of if if you want to make sure that you're still going to see success with Google Ads in 2026. Now, even despite all these changes happening inside of Google Search and the way that users actually interact with Google Search, I'm by no means worried about the future of Google Ads. And the reason for that is because, yes, there will be increased spend in large language models like ChatGPT and also other tools, but the reason for why Google will still be a core player in this market is because Google is in a very, very unique position. And that position is that not only does it have its own search network in Google Search, it's also got its own social or video platform in YouTube. It's also got the ability to show ads across the general website in the Display Network, also in Gmail, and also in local map placements. But above all, it's also got its own large language model, which is called Gemini, obviously. And that growth is growing once again month on month. So by no means, if you're using Google Ads, do you need to be worried about the future of Google Ads. But success with Google will look very, very different in the months and years to come. That's why in this video I wanted to break down the 5 core changes that you need to be focusing on to make sure that you're still going to be able to see success with Google Ads in 2026. Now, I do also want to highlight that this video is brought to you by Define Digital Academy's Google Ads Mastery. And Google Ads Mastery is a program that we put together for people like you who want to stay up to date with Google Ads. Now more than ever, Google Ads is changing really, really rapidly. So what we offer inside of Google Ads Mastery Not only do you get live support, so between Monday to Friday there are coaches based all over the world who are live in our support feed and they are there to answer your questions whenever you need them. Also, we run weekly live group coaching calls which are hosted either by me or my highly qualified Google Ads coaches. We also share monthly masterclasses. And then above all of that, if you ever are stuck with Google Ads, you can get 24/7 coaching with AI Aaron, who you can call or text at any time. And AI Aaron has access to all of my teaching, all of my paid content and all of my public content so that you can get specific answers to your questions about Google Ads. And the best thing above everything else is that all of that support comes for less than the price of a cup of coffee per day. If you want to get more information about Google Ads Mastery, follow that link in the description below, and you can also use the coupon code YOUTUBE for a 20% lifetime discount. All right, with all that said, let's get into these 5 core changes that you need to be aware of for continued success with Google Ads in 2026. And the first thing that you need to be aware of is that keyword targeting is not keyword targeting anymore. For a couple of years now, Google has been talking about how they target the meaning of the keyword, not just the keywords that you're targeting. But I have noticed a distinct change in their language over the last 2 to 3 months where they started to talk about keyword signals, not keyword targeting. And what I really need you to understand, Google no longer targets the keywords that you have in your phrase. So whether you're using exact match or phrase match, Google is not targeting those keywords anymore. It's targeting the meaning of those words that are placed together. One of the ways that Google has explained this is that they're no longer targeting the syntax or the actual words, they're targeting the meaning. And they've taken it further this year, they're targeting the intent— what that person is looking at searching. We can all get up in arms and complain about it, but ultimately the reason for why this is happening is because, as I've been saying for a long time now, Google had to make these changes because the way that people are interacting with search is changing rapidly. So more and more now, people aren't just searching one phrase keywords or a couple of keywords to find what they're looking for. They're having a conversation with Gemini, or they're diving into AI mode, or even when they do complete a search, they are utilizing the AI overview rather than the individual ad placements. So what does this mean for you and your Google Ads campaign setup? For the last 3 years, I've been saying that you should not be using single keyword ad groups, or SKAGs as they're known, for a really long time, well over a decade. And you should be using thematic-based ad groups, so single-themed ad groups. And I want to give you a perfect example of this, is that we're doing some coaching with a client at the moment, and when we first looked at their account, they had some different ad groups around acupuncture and dry needling. We now actually moved those 2 core themes into one ad group, and the reason for that is because whether the user was searching acupuncture or dry needling, Google is throwing up ads to both of those ad groups. So what the recommendation there is, as I said, you bring it into the same theme. So what the messaging is there is that with a thematic ad group, what you're doing is, you know, historically you would have two separate ad groups. You would have one for acupuncture and then one for dry needling. But what we're seeing more and more for success with Google Ads is that you bring those into the same ad group because ultimately the user is looking for the same thing, whether it's acupuncture or dry needling. It's the same intent and the same meaning that Google is looking for. The one thing to also think about there is you do want to make sure that your landing page and your ad copy is relevant for someone if they'll search either acupuncture or dry needling. But that is a perfect example of how historically you would have two ad groups, but now you would only have one ad group. So the first thing is you need to remember that keyword targeting is no longer keyword targeting, and it's more about targeting the meaning or the intent of search themes. And you want to group those search themes together, and you're grouping those search themes together, even if they are actually different words. Like I said in the example, dry needling and acupuncture, you would put together. Now the second thing you need to also think about, and that's changing inside of Google Ads, and this is more actually what's changing inside of Google Search, is that AI Overviews and AI Mode are actually changing ad placements and the way and how many ads are actually shown inside of results. So for so long historically inside of Google Ads, when someone would complete a search inside of Google Search, they would 4 ad placements at the top, and then there'd be all the organic listings, and then there'd be those 6 placements down at the bottom. Whereas that is now actually moving away, and very, very rarely will you see those 4 ad placements at the top. And so that can be really, really clear on this, let's jump into a screen share because I do want to make this as practical as possible. All right, so what I'm going to show you in through here is I will also take you through what that looks like inside of Google Ads and the structure that we would recommend. But What I first wanna show you is the reason for why you need to make these changes is because we just did the search for physiotherapy in Brisbane, which is where I'm based now. Historically, you would see up to 4 different placements, but you can see through here, there's just the one placement. Then it goes into your map listings, and then these are the organic results. The big thing that you really need to be aware of more and more is that there's gonna be less placements. So this is why it becomes more and more important that you've got full coverage across these different areas that you can see ads. The other thing I want you to note is that I just slightly changed this search where it says physiotherapy near me, and you can see that this sponsored result has actually come up as a map listing, which means in this case I would say that this advertiser has a Performance Max campaign active. So that's what you really need to be starting to think about more and more when it comes to Google Ads, is that there is a changing nature of placements. We know straight away that Google has made it clear in order for your ads to appear in AO overviews or in AI mode, you need one of 3 things to be true. You need to either have AI Max active in your account. At the moment, I've been pretty vocal that while I do believe that that has a lot of potential, right now at the start of 2026, I'm not recommending this for wide usage. Or you could be using Performance Max if you're especially— you're a local-based business, that's not going to be the first go-to move. Or you need to be using broad match. And that's why we're recommending that broad match becomes that first step to make sure that your ads are appearing inside of any AI overview ads or placements. So what I want to do I want to show you, you know how we said before about the acupuncture and the dry needling? This is how we would set that up inside of an actual individual ad group. So just want to show you in through here, there's only one ad group running and you can see we've got two longer tail broad match keywords and then we've built out some different exact match keywords. Now I have gone through and hidden the exact match keywords, but they're all different variations of these two core broad match keywords. But what I do want to show you in through here, a lot of people get scared that if they do this, they're going to see poor results. We've built this out with this business and they're seeing really, really good results using broad match. Now, what I do want to stress with your broad match keywords, we like to use at least 3 words. Generally, we don't like the near me, but we couldn't find any other variations there that would work for this business, and these ones have worked for them. But the other reason why we want to pair broad match with exact match in the same ad group is it's important to note that one of the core signals, or one of the core targeting signals, that Google uses for broad match keywords is the other keywords that are targeted inside of the same ad group. That's another way that you can make sure that you're not adding any wasted spend. You also want to add in some negative keywords in there, and that's how you can still see good results with broad match keywords, even for local service businesses. So now that we've gone through those first two core changes, the third one is that you need to understand your conversion data is now not only the king, but it's also the queen of your targeting inside of Google Ads. This is not to say that keyword targeting is not important. And that your audience targeting and all of those different levers you've got to target inside of Google Ads is now no longer important. But your conversion data is fast becoming the most important part of data that you can feed back into Google Ads. And the reason for why that's so important is because remember we spoke about how Google is now targeting the meaning of search terms. And also as well as we know that there's a lot more usage of maximized bidding and conversion-based bidding. So not only inside of your account, but obviously competitors are focusing on more and more smart smart bidding through Maximize Conversions, Maximize Conversion Value, and also Performance Max campaigns. For success with Google Ads, you need to make sure that you've got the right conversion data happening inside of Google Ads so that you can confidently switch over to smart bidding. For e-commerce, this is quite easy because you can just attach the revenue data that's coming in. But for lead generation, especially if you're just starting out in lead generation, this can be a little bit harder. Now, once you get to a level of spend, you can integrate your CRM so that you've got that conversion data flooding back in. But if you're just starting out, what I would recommend, if you are tracking phone calls, to really look to extend the call duration before you count a phone call a conversion. So that would mean we would generally move it out to either 60 seconds or 90 seconds. By default inside of Google Ads, it's usually 30 seconds. And also, if it comes to form inquiries, very rarely are we tracking just normal form inquiries. We are going into a multi-step form inquiry. So that would be something like even a product like Typeform. Or if it's just a simple form, rather than just asking for their name and phone number, we're putting some extra questions in there, so making it a longer form that needs to be filled out. And that is stopping a lot of that spam activity. So the third thing is really, really understand that your conversion data is highly, highly important when it comes to making sure you're targeting the right people inside of Google Ads. All right, number 4. We spoke on it before, but smart bidding. And what we're recommending is that you move over to maximize conversions or maximize conversion value as fast as possible, but then you're very slow to add in a target ROAS or a target CPA. Now let me explain the reason for why you want to move over to maximize conversions or maximize conversion value as fast as possible is so that you can— you really utilize Google's automatic learning. Once it knows who are your target conversions and who's converting, you're allowing Google's bidding to bid more for those people. Now, there are some frameworks that we do use inside of Define Digital Academy, and this comes from not only our own data and testing, but also Google's own documentation. And what we are still recommending at the moment as guidelines, that before you move over to smart bidding, you want to be seeing at least 30 conversions in a 30-day period. We do get this question a lot. What happens if you're not at that benchmark and you just can't get 30 conversions over 30 days? We have seen some instances where after 2 to 3 months of people getting 15 to 20 conversions, we will sometimes switch over to maximize conversions and we still see that it does pick it up. Now the reason for why that can happen is because when it comes to conversion data inside of Google Ads, it does reach back 90 days, but the last 30 days is the most important. So if you look back and you've only got to that 15 conversions over the last 30 days, but if you reach back to the last 90 days and you've got a collection of somewhere between 30 to 45 conversions, we are starting to see that in most cases, a switch over to Smart Bidding is still positive for that business. But when it comes to adding in a Target CPA or a Target ROAS, you want to be really, really slow in doing that. And the reason for that is because remember that when you add a Target CPA or a Target ROAS, that can actually be a break that limits the performance of your account. Let me show you what I mean. All right, what I want to show you in through here now for this business, you can see this is a Performance Max campaign. And you can see that we're getting a good run of conversions coming through. And you can see here with the cost per conversion, when we first started Performance Max, this was jumping in and around. So when we're looking on a weekly basis, went from $2.85, then down to $0.87, then it peaked back up to $4.85, then it went down, then it went down to $1.11, then it went back up again. And we resisted adding in a target CPA until we saw this steady flow. This is what we call stability inside of your Google Ads campaign. For Smart Bidding. And what you want to be seeing is you want to be seeing a good 4 weeks where 2 things don't change. One, your cost per conversion stays about the same. So you can see here, $1.40, $1.66, $1.35. It did jump up, but obviously that was early January. And also the conversions stayed pretty stable. So you can see in this section here, everything was just jumping around far too much. And when you see, you know, your conversions going up and down, and your cost per conversion going up and down week on week, it's too early to add in a target CPA goal. So what you would do through here, as you can see through this period of 4 weeks, we saw a good level of stability ranging from $1.40. We'll take out that last week because that was obviously early January, from $1.40 through to $1.65. So in that situation, that's when we'd look to add in a target CPA of somewhere around about that $1.70, $1.75. Once again, because we saw a good leveling out of conversions and also the cost per conversion. Now that Brings us to the fifth core change, and it's actually not really a change. And the reason why I wanted to include this is that it's really, really easy to assume that because of all of these changes inside of Google Ads, that the core starting point for Google Ads is no longer search or search and shopping if you're an e-commerce brand. But it actually is the opposite, that regardless of all these changes to how people are starting to see ad placements and interact with Google Search, and even with all of the AI features and AI learning we are still seeing the best fix to success to start out with Google Ads is starting with those search and/or combination of search and shopping. And the reason for that is it all comes down to initial learning and building up that conversion data, which we just spoke about. Now, because this is such a large topic, what I do want to do is to put you over some extra resources and some extra videos that you can learn more about this right now. And if you're an e-commerce brand and you want my complete blueprint on how to start, I want you to go through and watch this video right here. Or if you're a lead generation business and you want to know the best way to get started with Google Ads, go through and watch this video right here. Hey, thanks for joining me. And I look forward to seeing you in one of these two videos real soon. See ya.