VP, Search
If you watched Google Marketing Live 2026 this week, you heard Google say something they’ve been dancing around for years. Vidhya Srinivasan, VP of Google Ads, said it plainly from the stage: “You can’t choose keywords anymore.”
That’s not a warning. That’s a eulogy.
For the better part of two decades, paid search has been built on the idea that you pick the words, set the bids, and control who sees your ads. Keyword lists, match types, negative keyword exclusions, search query reports — entire careers have been built around mastering that craft. And to be fair, it was real craft. But Google just told you the game has changed, and September 2026 is the deadline to get on board.
Dynamic Search Ads — the first big step toward keyword-less search — are being retired and automatically migrated to AI Max. After that, if you want your ads to appear in AI Mode, which now has over one billion monthly users, you must run AI Max for Search or Performance Max with text customization. There is no opt-out. There is no hybrid path that lets you keep one foot in the old world.
So, what does advertiser control look like now?
This is where most are going to get it wrong. The instinct when you lose keyword control is to panic, pull budget, or start stacking negative keywords like a security blanket. That instinct will cost you.
The advertisers who will win in this environment are not the ones fighting automation. They are the ones who feed it better. Google’s AI is only as smart as the signals you give it. That means your conversion data needs to reflect real business outcomes, not just form fills. It means your pipeline data should be flowing back into Google Ads through Offline Conversion Tracking. It means your bidding strategy should be weighted toward the conversion events that predict revenue. And it means the guardrails you set inside tools like AI Brief — your brand constraints, your audience definitions, your messaging parameters — become your primary lever of competitive advantage.
The new battleground is not keywords. It is the quality of your inputs.
Here is something that does not get enough attention in the keyword conversation: the new ad formats Google announced are not just a structural change. They are a reflection of how complex, high-consideration buying decisions actually happen.
B2B buyers do not search the way they used to. They are not typing “enterprise data security software” into a search box and clicking the first result. They are asking AI Mode long, specific, contextual questions — comparing vendors, evaluating use cases, trying to understand which solution fits their specific environment. Google says searches in AI Mode now run on average three times longer than traditional searches, and brainstorming queries such as “which” and “what is the best way to” are growing 30 percent faster than overall AI Mode usage.
Three new ad formats were built directly for this behavior:
Conversational Discovery ads dynamically generate creative tailored to a user’s specific query. If a buyer asks a detailed question about, say, data protection in a hybrid cloud environment, the ad does not serve a generic headline — it builds a response relevant to that exact question. For B2B marketers who have always struggled to match ad copy to the full range of buyer queries, this is a meaningful shift.
Highlighted Answers place your ad inside AI Mode’s recommendation lists. When a buyer asks which vendors to consider for a specific problem, your brand can appear as part of that answer. This is essentially Google-native share of voice inside the AI research layer — and it matters enormously for categories where buyers are evaluating multiple vendors at once.
Business Agent for Leads is the most directly relevant format for B2B. It allows a prospect to ask a question inside the ad and receive an answer drawn from your own website content. Think of it as an always-on SDR living inside the search result. Google is currently testing this in education, automotive, and real estate, but the implications for enterprise software, cybersecurity, and other high-complexity B2B categories are obvious. When a buyer is researching at 10 pm and your competitors are not available, your Business Agent is.
All three formats require AI Max or Performance Max with text customization to be eligible. Which brings us back to the same point: the entry fee to this new environment is giving Google the inputs it needs to generate relevant, dynamic creative on your behalf. That is not a loss of control. It is a reallocation of where your strategic effort goes.
Google also announced Ask Advisor, a unified Gemini-powered agent across Ads, Analytics, and Merchant Center, and Meridian is now moving into Analytics 360 with predictive conversion signals. Attribution is shifting away from last-touch toward forward-looking, pipeline-tied measurement. The platforms are aligning around outcomes, not clicks.
The brands that treat this moment as a loss of control are going to fall behind. The brands that treat it as an opportunity to build smarter measurement infrastructure and better audience strategy are going to pull away from the field.
Keywords were a great proxy for intent. But they were always just a proxy. Now Google can read intent directly — and your job is to make sure it knows exactly which intent matters to your business.
That is not a threat. That is an upgrade, if you are ready for it.
Most marketing teams don’t have an AI problem. They have a workflow problem. This piece explains why agencies still matter in the AI era: not as tool operators, but as partners who help brands turn experimentation into clearer operations, better decisions, and healthier marketing teams.
B2B marketers have a rare chance to get ahead of a fast-emerging ad channel. ChatGPT Ads are not a paid search replacement, but they can help brands reach users during research and exploration moments.
Just Global | Trilliad and NinjaCat are partnering to scale responsible AI across B2B marketing. Together, the teams have built more than 150 AI agents to streamline workflows, unlock efficiency, and help marketers focus on strategy, optimization, and client impact.