TL;DR
- Microsoft Advertising began rolling out AI Max to all advertiser accounts globally on 19 August 2026, announced by Microsoft Ads Liaison Navah Hopkins in a LinkedIn post rather than the company blog.
- The single toggle covers three checkboxes: search term matching, text customization and final URL expansion, and each one can be unticked separately.
- Brand controls shipped on day one, including brand exclusions capped at 20 brand lists per campaign and term exclusions that keep named phrases out of machine-written copy.
- Microsoft confirmed on 18 December 2025 that exact match keywords hold absolute auction priority, so an AI Max expansion sits behind any qualifying exact match keyword.
- Microsoft published no per-market rollout schedule, no opt-out deadline and nothing about Thai-language query expansion.
Microsoft Advertising began rolling out AI Max to all advertiser accounts globally on 19 August 2026, putting the feature in front of every account that runs Search campaigns. Microsoft Ads Liaison Navah Hopkins announced the rollout in a LinkedIn post rather than through the company blog, and the trade publication PPC Land documented what the setting contains.
AI Max is one toggle inside a Search campaign that switches on three separate checkboxes: search term matching, text customization and final URL expansion. Each checkbox can be unticked on its own, Hopkins said the toggle itself can be switched off, and Microsoft announced no forced conversion date.
What the AI Max toggle actually turns on
The three checkboxes do different jobs, and an advertiser who treats them as one decision will give away more control than they intended. They are worth reading one at a time.
Search term matching
Search term matching expands the query pool beyond the keyword list. Microsoft described the expansion as drawing on the keywords, ads and landing pages already in the campaign, plus intent and contextual signals, to surface ads on queries the advertiser never added. Hopkins tied this directly to conversational queries in AI experiences on Bing and Copilot, which is the part of the announcement that matters most for anyone tracking where search demand is moving. A long, spoken-sounding question typed into an assistant does not match a tidy keyword list, and this is Microsoft's mechanism for reaching it.
Microsoft had already confirmed in late-July documentation that Predictive Matching would be folded into AI Max search term matching. PPC Land reported that no effective date was given for that transition and that no action was required from advertisers at the time of the announcement.
Text customization
Text customization lets Microsoft generate and test additional ad copy variations built from assets already in the account and from the advertiser's own website content, with combinations selected at auction time. The interface says the feature automatically adjusts to better match how people search. The practical reading is that your website becomes a copy source whether or not it was written to be one.
Final URL expansion
Final URL expansion routes a click to whichever page on the site best matches the query intent, described in the interface as applying when it is likely to improve ad performance. An Exclude specific URLs control ships with it, so pages that should never receive paid traffic can be fenced off.
Brand controls ship on day one, and that is the real news
Microsoft shipped brand safety controls at the same time as the feature rather than after it. PPC Land reported brand exclusions capped at 20 brand lists per campaign, a separate brand inclusions control that defines which branded queries are permitted, and term exclusions that stop named phrases entering machine-written copy. The panel also prompts advertisers whose campaigns have no brand list attached, and states that optimised content can be reviewed and removed at any time.
The table below sets each part of the toggle against the control Microsoft gives you over it, using what the source reported.
| Setting | What it changes | Control available |
|---|---|---|
| Search term matching | Expands queries beyond the keyword list using keywords, ads, landing pages, intent and contextual signals | Checkbox can be unticked; brand inclusions define permitted branded queries |
| Text customization | Generates and tests extra copy variations from existing assets and website content | Checkbox can be unticked; term exclusions block named phrases; optimised content can be reviewed and removed |
| Final URL expansion | Sends clicks to the page that best matches intent instead of the set final URL | Checkbox can be unticked; Exclude specific URLs list |
| Brand exclusions | Keeps named brands out of the expanded query pool | Up to 20 brand lists per campaign |
Exact match keywords still hold auction priority
This is the structural difference between the two platforms and it decides how much control an advertiser actually keeps. Microsoft confirmed on 18 December 2025 that exact match keywords hold absolute auction priority over other campaign types competing for the same placement. An AI Max expansion therefore sits behind any qualifying exact match keyword in the same account rather than competing with it.
Read as our own analysis rather than as something Microsoft stated: that ordering means a Microsoft Ads account with a well-built exact match layer has a floor under it. The queries you have deliberately bought stay bought, and expansion picks up what falls outside them. An account built almost entirely on broad match has no such floor, because there is little exact match coverage for the priority rule to protect. If you want a defensive move before enabling the toggle, building out exact match on your proven converting queries is it.
How this arrived
Microsoft said on 17 June 2026 that AI Max would expand to an open pilot within a month. Global availability on 19 August 2026 followed roughly two months after that statement. Between the two, late-July documentation confirmed the Predictive Matching transition. The whole sequence took about nine weeks from open-pilot signal to worldwide availability, which is fast enough that an advertiser who checked their Microsoft Ads account in July and saw nothing may find the setting there now.
This is the Microsoft product, not the Google one
Relevant Audience has published repeatedly on Google's AI Max, including Google's auto-upgrade dated 1 September 2026 and the block on broad match settings reported on 3 August 2026. None of that applies here. AI Max now exists as two separate implementations of the same idea, one on each of the two major search engines, built by different companies with different defaults and different control surfaces. Do not carry a Google timeline, a Google opt-out date or a Google setting name into a Microsoft Ads account, and do not assume the reverse either.
PPC Land noted one difference in how the two arrived: Google's AI Max entered beta in May 2025 with controls following later, while Microsoft shipped its brand controls at the same time as the feature. If you manage Google Ads campaigns alongside Microsoft Ads, treat the two AI Max settings as unrelated line items in your checklist.
What to check in your account this week
- Audit your tracking templates before final URL expansion reroutes anything. A tracking template that does not contain an lpurl tag breaks when the destination page changes, because there is nothing for the platform to substitute the new URL into. This is the single most common way an expansion feature silently destroys measurement. Check every template at account, campaign and ad group level, not only the ones you remember writing.
- Set brand and term exclusions before text customization writes anything. Text customization draws from website content, so any phrase on your site that legal, a franchisor or a distribution agreement does not allow in an ad is now a live risk. Term exclusions exist for this and cost nothing to configure. Brand exclusion lists are capped at 20 per campaign, so plan which brands go on them.
- Build the Exclude specific URLs list. Career pages, thin blog posts, out of stock product pages, legacy landing pages left up for old campaigns and anything gated all belong on it before the first expanded click lands.
- Decide per campaign, not per account. Query expansion is reasonable on a broad prospecting campaign and questionable on a tightly controlled account with a small approved query set, regulated messaging or a narrow service area. The checkboxes are independent, so a campaign can take text customization while refusing search term matching.
- Add a search term review to your weekly routine. Expansion without a review cadence is just spend with a longer tail. If your account has no negative keyword list worth the name, that gap gets more expensive from this week.
What Microsoft did not say
The reporting is clear about its own limits and so should we be. Microsoft did not publish a per-market rollout schedule, so there is no way to tell from the announcement when a specific account in a specific country receives the setting beyond the statement that the rollout is global. Microsoft set no opt-out deadline and announced no forced conversion date. Microsoft said nothing about how search term matching behaves on Thai-language queries, nothing about performance benchmarks from the pilot, and nothing about whether the three checkboxes will remain independently controllable in future. No effective date was given for the Predictive Matching transition into AI Max search term matching.
What this means for Thai marketers
Microsoft Ads is a smaller buy than Google Ads in Thailand, and it tends to sit in B2B, travel, export and enterprise accounts where the audience skews toward Windows desktops at work. Our reading, not something the source reported: those are exactly the accounts where a global rollout with no per-market schedule arrives quietly and gets noticed a month later in a search term report.
Thai-language query expansion is untested in public. Microsoft published no evidence about how intent and contextual signals perform against Thai queries, which mix Thai script, transliterated English and English brand names inside a single search. Thai also does not use spaces between words, and word segmentation is the step where machine matching on Thai text usually goes wrong. That is a reason to enable search term matching with a short review loop rather than a reason to refuse it, but the honest position is that nobody has published Thai results yet.
The Copilot and Bing angle is the part worth watching for anyone working on visibility inside AI answer engines. Microsoft is explicitly pointing paid expansion at conversational queries in AI experiences, which is the same demand that organic search work in Thailand is now competing for. Paid and organic teams reading the same query data have an advantage here that siloed teams do not.
Frequently asked questions
Is AI Max live in Thailand?
Microsoft said the rollout to all advertiser accounts is global as of 19 August 2026, but it did not publish a per-market schedule, so the source does not confirm any specific Thailand timing. The reliable check is to open a Search campaign in your own Microsoft Ads account and look for the toggle.
Do I have to do anything?
Nothing is required, since Microsoft announced no forced conversion date and no opt-out deadline. The work worth doing anyway is checking tracking templates for an lpurl tag, setting term and brand exclusions, and building the Exclude specific URLs list before expansion starts.
Can I turn AI Max off?
Yes, Hopkins said the toggle can be switched off and the individual checkboxes can be unticked, so search term matching, text customization and final URL expansion are separate decisions. Microsoft did not state whether that will remain true in future releases.
Is this the same as Google's AI Max?
No, this is Microsoft's own product with its own controls and its own timeline, and it shares only a name and a general idea with Google's version. Google's dates, settings and upgrade schedule do not apply to a Microsoft Ads account.
Will AI Max override my exact match keywords?
No, Microsoft confirmed on 18 December 2025 that exact match keywords hold absolute auction priority over other campaign types competing for the same placement, so an expansion sits behind any qualifying exact match keyword. That priority rule is the main structural protection an advertiser keeps.
Working out whether to enable it
The decision is not ideological. It comes down to whether your account has the exact match coverage, the negative keyword hygiene and the tracking setup to absorb expanded queries without losing the thread. If you want a second opinion on your Microsoft Ads and paid search setup before you tick the boxes, Relevant Audience runs that review as part of ongoing account management.
