AI Max for Search vs. Performance Max: What's the Difference?

AI Max for Search is an automation layer inside your existing Search campaigns — it expands keyword matching, generates additional text assets, and broadens final URL expansion, all within the Search campaign structure you already have.

Performance Max is a separate, fully automated campaign type that spans Search, Display, YouTube, Discover, Gmail and Maps at once, optimized entirely against the signals and creative assets you provide.

In practice, many accounts benefit from running both — AI Max sharpening Search performance, and Performance Max capturing incremental reach across other Google inventory — provided both have proper guardrails and are fed clean conversion data.