On this page · 11 sections
- What Google announced on 14 October 2026
- The 2026 to 2027 timeline for Search advertisers
- How channel prioritisation and budget allocation work
- Before and after February 2027: four configurations compared
- What Google has not said yet
- Decision table: what to set for each campaign
- Worked example: a ₹20,000-a-day Search campaign
- India and agency notes
- The February 2027 checklist
- How eCorpIT can help
- References
Summary. Google announced channel prioritisation and budget allocation controls on 14 October 2026, and they began rolling out progressively from 15 October 2026 across Search, Shopping, Performance Max and Demand Gen. The part that needs action is February 2027, when every Search campaign with the Google Display Network (GDN) on, which Google calls Display Expansion, moves onto the new controls automatically. Google's help page now says the old feature spent unused Search budget on Display with a 50% allocation applied in the backend. That setup goes away, and to keep today's behaviour Google says to set the Display Network to Low priority with a 50% daily budget allocation. Three details catch people out. Every channel defaults to High priority, and Google has not said it will write the 50% setting for you. The percentage is measured against average daily budget, is best-effort and resets daily, so 50% on a ₹20,000 budget aims for at most ₹10,000 of Display spend a day. And Search campaigns using Target Impression Share lose Display entirely. Our verdict: list every Search campaign with Display on, choose keep, cap or drop for each, and set an account default by 31 January 2027.
About this article. For advertisers and agencies running Search campaigns with the Display Network on, in India and elsewhere. Checked on 1 November 2026 against the Google Ads & Commerce Blog, Google Ads Help and the Google Ads API release notes; trade press appears only where Google has published nothing, and is attributed. Google changes ad products often, so re-check before committing budget. Worked figures are illustrative and not financial advice; no vendor paid for inclusion. Researched with AI assistance and reviewed by our editorial team.
What Google announced on 14 October 2026
The announcement came in a Google Ads & Commerce Blog post by Tal Akabas, Director of Product Management for Google Ads. It introduced two optional controls and one forced change.
- Channel prioritisation. You put each channel, or channel grouping, into High priority or Low priority. Campaigns fully fund High priority channels first (within your target if you use Target CPA or Target ROAS), then pass any remaining budget to Low priority channels.
- Budget allocation. For any Low priority channel you can set a maximum percentage of the daily budget. Google aims to keep spend within that limit on a best-effort basis.
- The February 2027 change. For Search campaigns with the Display Network on, the current spend allocation setup goes away and channel spending may shift. Google says advertisers can keep their current configuration by setting the Display Network to Low priority with a 50% allocation.
The help page fills in the detail. In Search campaigns you can rank Google Search, Google search partners and the Google Display Network, and all channels start at High priority. Until February 2027, Search campaigns with the Display Network on that have not set priorities keep the current Display Expansion behaviour, and from February 2027 they migrate automatically. The same page adds something the blog post left out: GDN will no longer serve on Search campaigns using Target Impression Share.
The Display Expansion help page supplies the missing baseline. It describes the previous setup as delivering Display ads from unspent budget, at a cost per conversion similar to Search, with a 50% allocation applied in the backend. Before October 2026 no setting in the interface showed advertisers that 50% figure, as PPC Land reported on 24 October 2026.
Only the Display Network in Search campaigns is being migrated by force. Search partners, Shopping, Performance Max and Demand Gen get the new controls as options.
The 2026 to 2027 timeline for Search advertisers
The table draws on Google's post and help pages, the API release notes and, for the August test, Search Engine Roundtable.
| Date | What happens | What it means for you |
|---|---|---|
| August 2026 | Alpha test of the controls, reported by Search Engine Roundtable | Early sign of the change |
| 14 Oct 2026 | Google announces channel prioritisation and budget allocation | Controls arrive; February 2027 change disclosed |
| 15 Oct 2026 | Progressive rollout begins | The card may not be in your account yet |
| 28 Oct 2026 | Google Ads API v26.1 adds channel priority and budget cap fields | Scripted setup becomes possible |
| Now to Jan 2027 | Unconfigured Search campaigns keep Display Expansion behaviour | Setting priorities now switches a campaign over at once |
| Feb 2027 | Display Expansion campaigns migrate; the backend 50% split goes away | Spend may shift between Search, search partners and Display |
| Feb 2027 | GDN stops serving on Search campaigns using Target Impression Share | Display reach from those campaigns ends |
| Feb 2027 | DSA auto-upgrade to AI Max begins; existing call-only ads stop receiving impressions | Three Search changes land in the same month |
| 1 Apr 2027 | India's FY2027-28 begins | Clean comparison data needed by March |
February 2027 also brings the automatic upgrade of Dynamic Search Ads to AI Max, covered in our DSA-to-AI Max migration guide, and the end of call-only ads, covered in our call assets migration guide. If all three hit one account in the same month, you will struggle to tell which change moved your numbers. Treat 31 January 2027 as your working deadline.
How channel prioritisation and budget allocation work
Priority tiers
There are two tiers. High priority channels spend first. Low priority channels get what is left. Google suggests Low priority for channels you value less, instead of opting out.
You can set tiers at account, shared budget and campaign level. The account default covers every eligible campaign of that type unless a shared budget or campaign override exists.
Budget allocation percentages
The percentage is optional, and it works only on Low priority channels. Four rules decide how it behaves:
- The base is the average daily budget, not actual spend. Google's example: 5% on a $1,000 average daily budget means it aims to keep that channel at or below $50 a day.
- It is best-effort. Daily spend on the channel may occasionally exceed the allocation, including on days when the campaign spends more than its average daily budget.
- It resets daily. Unspent or overspent amounts do not carry over.
- 0% means off. If you set a Low priority channel to 0%, Google will not spend on it.
For shared budgets, the percentage applies to the whole pool across all campaigns using that budget.
Your bid strategy changes the outcome
Priority tiers only matter when a campaign is limited by budget. If it is not, the percentage cap is the only lever that does anything. The table summarises Google's bid strategy guidance.
| Bid strategy | Effect of priority tiers | Effect of the % allocation |
|---|---|---|
| Target CPA, Target ROAS, Target CPC, not limited by budget | None; Google aims to hit the target across channels | Still applies, so this is your only real control |
| Target CPA, Target ROAS, Target CPC, limited by budget | High priority spends first within target; budget moves to Low priority only if it can convert at target | Caps Low priority spend |
| Maximize Conversions, Maximize Conversion Value | High priority spends first; leftover budget goes to Low priority | Caps Low priority spend |
| Maximize Clicks, Manual CPC | High priority spends first; leftover budget goes to Low priority | Caps Low priority spend |
| Target Impression Share | High priority spends first in general, but GDN stops serving on Search campaigns from Feb 2027 | Irrelevant for Display after the change |
The practical upshot: if a Target CPA campaign rarely hits its budget, setting Display to Low priority with no percentage changes nothing. You need the number.
Before and after February 2027: four configurations compared
Take a Search campaign with Display on, a ₹20,000 average daily budget and Maximize Conversions bidding.
| Configuration | How Display gets budget | Display ceiling per day | Risk |
|---|---|---|---|
| Today, untouched (old Display Expansion) | Unspent Search budget, backend 50% allocation | About ₹10,000 if the backend 50% used the same base; Google does not say | None until February |
| After Feb 2027, untouched (default High and High) | Display on the same tier as Search, no cap | The full ₹20,000 budget, in principle | Uncapped Display share |
| GDN Low priority, 50% allocation | Search funded first, Display gets leftovers | ₹10,000 target, best-effort | Closest to today |
| GDN Low priority, 0% allocation | No Display spend | ₹0 | Lose any Display upside |
The second row is our inference, not a Google statement. Google says all channels default to High priority and that the current setup goes away, but it has not said whether the migration will write a Low priority 50% setting into campaigns that do nothing. PPC Land raised the same gap. Until Google clarifies, treat an untouched campaign as one with no Display cap.
What Google has not said yet
Plan around these open questions rather than guessing:
- The exact migration date. February 2027 is all Google has published. It may be a single day or a staged rollout.
- Whether migrated campaigns get a 50% default. See above. The safest assumption is no.
- Campaign total budgets. Channel prioritisation settings do not apply to campaigns on campaign total budgets, except Demand Gen. Google does not say what happens in February to a Search campaign with Display on that uses one, and the budget type cannot be changed after creation. Ask your Google representative before you rely on one.
- Old behaviour versus new. Google says Low priority at 50% keeps your current configuration, but the new limit is explicitly best-effort. It has not said whether the backend 50% behaved the same way, or what base it used.
Tooling has moved. The help page still lists Google Ads API and Editor support as coming soon, and says priorities can be managed in Google Ads and Search Ads 360 but not set from a manager account. The API release notes are ahead of it: v26.1, dated 28 October 2026, added CampaignBudget.budget_network_settings, a read-only CampaignBudget.budget_network_eligibility field and a per-account CustomerBudgetNetworkSetting resource for defaults.
Read Google's performance claims with care. The Display Expansion page says Search campaigns with spare budget can deliver up to 15% more conversions at similar CPA, and an average of 14% more conversion value when the core campaign uses Maximize Conversion Value or Target ROAS. Neither figure comes with a date range, sample or method. The same page puts the Display Network at more than 3 million websites, videos and apps.
Decision table: what to set for each campaign
The settings are Google's; the choices are our recommendation.
| Pick this setting | If this describes the campaign |
|---|---|
| GDN Low priority, 50% | Display conversions are acceptable today and you want no change in February |
| GDN Low priority, 10 to 25% | Display drives cheap clicks but few real leads; you want a small, capped test |
| GDN Low priority, 0% (or untick the Display Network) | Display conversions fail your lead-quality checks or brand-safety review |
| GDN High priority, no cap | Display converts at or near Search CPA in your own data, and you want volume |
| Search partners Low priority with a % | Partner traffic is mixed quality; same card, same logic, optional |
| Move Display reach to Demand Gen | The campaign uses Target Impression Share, which loses GDN in February |
| Leave untouched until February | Only if you have checked the campaign has Display off |
Demand Gen supports channel prioritisation but not budget allocation, so a percentage cap will not follow you there.
A quick test of whether Display is acceptable: segment the campaign by network for the last 90 days. Compare cost per conversion and, for lead generation, the share of Display leads that your CRM or sales team marks as qualified. If you cannot see lead quality by network, fix that before choosing a number above 25%.
Worked example: a ₹20,000-a-day Search campaign
Assume a lead-generation Search campaign with Display on, a ₹20,000 average daily budget and Maximize Conversions. Your data shows Google Search alone can usefully spend about ₹14,000 a day. These figures are illustrative assumptions, not benchmarks. Google's monthly spending limit for most campaigns is 30.4 times the average daily budget, so we use 30.4 days for a month.
Option A: Low priority at 50%. Search is funded first and takes ₹14,000. The remaining ₹6,000 can flow to Display, which is under the ₹10,000 cap (50% × ₹20,000). Total spend: ₹20,000 a day. Display can take up to ₹1,82,400 a month (₹6,000 × 30.4).
Option B: Low priority at 20%. Search takes ₹14,000. Display is capped at ₹4,000 (20% × ₹20,000). Total spend: ₹18,000 a day, leaving about ₹2,000 a day unspent, or ₹60,800 a month (₹2,000 × 30.4). Monthly Display spend falls from up to ₹1,82,400 to about ₹1,21,600 (₹4,000 × 30.4). You can move the unspent ₹60,800 into another campaign, or lower the budget.
Option C: untouched after February. On our inference above, both channels sit at High priority with no cap. Smart Bidding splits the ₹20,000 wherever it predicts conversions, so Display could take more than ₹6,000 on some days. Whether that is good depends on lead quality, which Smart Bidding sees only if you feed qualified-lead conversions back in.
Option D: the same campaign on Target CPA, not limited by budget. Priority tiers do nothing here. If you set Low priority without a percentage, Display spend will not change because of it. Only the cap works: at 50%, Google aims to keep Display at or below ₹10,000 a day.
Every cap is best-effort. Most campaigns can spend up to twice the average daily budget on a single day, so on a heavy day the campaign can spend up to ₹40,000 and Display can go past ₹10,000 at 50%. Judge the setting on weekly totals, not single days.
India and agency notes
Google's examples are in dollars and its pages list no India-specific rule. Three local points are worth planning for.
Timing against the financial year. February 2027 falls in the last quarter of India's FY2026-27. A spend shift between Search and Display in that window makes year-end reporting harder to read, and it muddies the baseline for FY2027-28 budgets from 1 April 2027.
Agencies running many accounts. Google says priorities cannot be set from a manager account, so agencies must set an account default in each client account, by hand or, once tested, through API v26.1. Record each setting in your change log, because the account default applies to every eligible Search campaign and replaces Display Expansion on them at once.
The AI Mode overlap. On 28 October 2026 Google said it is scaling ads in AI Mode to India through existing Search, Shopping and Performance Max campaigns. Search campaigns can now serve in more places, so a Display share that looked harmless earlier in 2026 deserves a fresh look. Our AI Mode ads playbook for India covers that side.
If you also run budget-limited campaigns on Target CPA or Target ROAS, remember that from 17 August 2026 those campaigns perform more consistently towards their stated target. Our target-bidding playbook explains it. A loose target plus an uncapped Display channel is the combination most likely to move spend in a way nobody planned.
The February 2027 checklist
Finish this by 31 January 2027. The menu steps follow Google's help pages.
- Find every Search campaign with Display on. In each campaign, open Settings, then Networks, and look for the option to include the Google Display Network. Export the list.
- Pull 90 days of performance by network. Note Display's share of cost, cost per conversion and, where possible, qualified-lead rate.
- Tag each campaign's bid strategy and budget status. Mark Target Impression Share, limited by budget, shared budgets and campaign total budgets.
- Decide keep, cap or drop for each campaign, using the decision table above.
- Set an account default for Search campaigns. Go to Account settings, find the
Channel Prioritizationcard, select Search campaigns, assign tiers and enter a percentage for Low priority channels. Save.
- Add campaign-level overrides where needed. In campaign Settings, expand the same card and choose campaign-level settings. On a shared budget, the override applies to every campaign sharing it.
- Check shared budgets. Prioritisation applies only when every campaign on the shared budget is the same type. Split mixed pools first.
- Plan for Target Impression Share campaigns. If you need the Display reach, build it in Demand Gen or change the bid strategy.
- Raise campaign total budgets with Google. Get a written answer on February behaviour before relying on one.
- Annotate the change date in your reporting and compare 14 days before and after for spend by network, conversions and lead quality.
- Review experiments. Custom experiments support the controls, but multi-campaign shared budgets are not supported and all channels in them are treated as one tier.
- Recheck in February once the migration lands, in case Google changes the defaults or the help page.
One sequencing note: anything you set before February takes effect immediately and replaces Display Expansion on that campaign. For a clean before-and-after comparison, change one group of campaigns first and keep a comparable group on the old behaviour until the migration.
How eCorpIT can help
eCorpIT is a Gurugram-based technology organisation, founded in 2021, assessed at CMMI Level 5 and MSME certified, with senior-led engineering teams working across AWS, Microsoft and Google platforms. Our performance marketing team audits Google Ads accounts ahead of the February 2027 changes, covering Display share by network, channel priority and allocation settings, shared budgets, Target Impression Share campaigns and the DSA and call-ad migrations. Talk to us at /contact-us/.
Last updated: 1 November 2026.
