Google has emailed Google Ads advertisers to say local inventory ads will now be turned on by default in Shopping campaigns. The "Local products" drop-down is being removed from the campaign's "Other settings" section, and control moves to the "Inventory" filter setting instead. Advertisers who want online and local budgets kept apart are told to review their Shopping campaigns before 08/31/2026 and set the Inventory filter using Channel = Local or Online.
Search Engine Roundtable surfaced the notice on 16 July 2026, from an advertiser who received the email and posted it publicly. Worth being precise about what this is: an account email, not a post on a Google blog. The deadline in it is specific, but the message is landing in inboxes rather than on a public changelog, so plenty of the people it affects will never read it.
What is changing in Shopping campaigns
A Shopping campaign currently has two settings that control whether local inventory ads run in it. Google says it is removing one of them to avoid duplication. The "Local products" drop-down under "Other settings" goes away. The "Inventory" filter stays, and that is where the control lives from now on, with Channel set to Local or Online.
Google's email, quoted by Search Engine Roundtable, says recipients are getting it because their Google Ads manager account has Shopping campaigns associated with a Merchant Center account that has the local inventory ads add-on turned on.
Who this applies to
According to the advertiser who received and published the notice, it applies to manager accounts with Shopping campaigns linked to a Merchant Center account that has the local inventory ads add-on enabled. If that describes your setup, the deadline is yours. If your Merchant Center has no local inventory ads add-on, this one is not about you.
Why a default-on change with a deadline matters
Defaults decide the outcome for everyone who does not act, and most people do not act. That is what makes a default a default.
The specific risk here is budget drift. If you deliberately built separate Shopping campaigns for online and local, that separation existed for a reason, usually clean budget control and clean channel reporting. A campaign you scoped to online only could start serving local inventory ads inside it. The spend still comes out of the same daily budget. What changes is what the budget is buying, and whether the number you report as online performance is still online performance.
Nothing breaks loudly. The campaign keeps running, the budget keeps spending, and the split you thought you had quietly stops being the split you have. That is harder to notice than an outage, which is why the date matters more than the mechanic does.
What to check before 31 August 2026
- Look at Merchant Center first: is the local inventory ads add-on enabled? If not, there is nothing to do.
- If it is, list every Shopping campaign under the manager account.
- For each campaign, decide whether it should serve local, online, or both.
- Set the Inventory filter to Channel = Local or Channel = Online wherever a campaign is meant to be scoped to one of them.
- Do it before 08/31/2026, the date given in Google's email.
Budget separation is the case the email calls out by name. If you have never separated online and local budgets and have no intention of starting, this is closer to housekeeping than to a fire.
What this means for Thai marketers
The source makes no Thailand-specific claim, and there is no point pretending otherwise. What the notice defines is a scope, not a geography: manager accounts whose linked Merchant Center has the local inventory ads add-on turned on.
So for a Thai advertiser this is a scoping question rather than a market question. Omnichannel retailers with real store footprints and an LIA-enabled Merchant Center should audit their Shopping campaigns before 31 August. That includes anyone who has split local and online into separate campaigns to keep store-driven spend legible next to ecommerce spend, which is a reasonable way to structure things when the two carry different margins and answer to different people internally.
For Thai advertisers running online-only Shopping with no local inventory ads add-on on the Merchant Center account, this does not apply. No action, no deadline, nothing to change.
One more thing worth flagging. The notice went out by email to manager accounts. If a Google Ads account is managed by an outside party, or the notification address is an old one, the email may not reach whoever actually owns the budget decision. Checking the setting takes less time than working out why the split moved in September.
FAQ
What is the deadline?
Google's email says to review Shopping campaigns before 08/31/2026, which is 31 August 2026, if you want to separate online and local budgets.
Where did the "Local products" setting go?
Google says the "Local products" drop-down is being removed from the "Other settings" section of the campaign to avoid duplication. The "Inventory" filter setting replaces it.
Does this affect every Google Ads account?
Per the advertiser who received the notice, it applies to manager accounts with Shopping campaigns linked to a Merchant Center account that has the local inventory ads add-on enabled.
Is this an official Google announcement?
It is an email Google sent to advertisers, reported by Search Engine Roundtable. It was not published as a post on a Google blog.
If you run Shopping campaigns in Thailand with local inventory ads in the mix, the audit is short and the deadline is fixed. Relevant Audience can review how your Shopping campaigns are scoped before the change lands.
