Google Ads now lets you choose which channels in a campaign get your budget first. Google announced 2 new optional controls on October 14, 2026: channel prioritization, which ranks each channel High or Low, and budget allocation, which caps what a Low priority channel can spend. They reach accounts gradually from October 15, and Google's Help page says “Feature availability in your account may vary depending on campaign type and rollout timing.”
Below: what each control does, which campaign types get them, how your bid strategy changes the result, 4 settings to check, and what Google hasn't settled yet. The facts come from Google's blog post and its Help pages. Practitioner advice names who gave it, and where the reasoning is ours, it says "Our read".
What the 2 controls do
Channel prioritization. Each channel in a campaign is set to High or Low priority, and “By default, all channels are set to High priority.” Google's blog says campaigns “fully fund high-priority channels (within their target when using Target CPA or Target ROAS) before allocating the remaining budget to lower-priority channels.”
Budget allocation. This is a cap, and it applies to Low priority channels only. You set it as a percentage of the campaign's average daily budget, not of what the campaign actually spends. Google's example: a 5% cap on a $1,000 daily budget comes to about $50 a day. The cap resets every day, and unused room doesn't carry over.
The cap is a target, not a wall. Google's Help page: “this isn’t a guarantee, and daily spend on that channel may occasionally exceed your budget allocation.” The firmest line is at zero: “If you set a Low priority channel's budget allocation to 0%, Google won't spend on that channel.”
Which channels you can rank. It depends on the campaign type:
| Campaign type | Channels |
|---|---|
| Search | Google Search, search partners, Google Display Network |
| Shopping | Google Search, search partners |
| Performance Max | Google channels, search partners, Display Network |
| Demand Gen | Google channels, Display Network |
"Google channels" is 1 group: Search, YouTube, Maps, Gmail and Discover. You can't rank them separately.
Which campaigns get them, and what changed
Before this, Performance Max had no channel controls, and Search, Shopping and Demand Gen had on/off switches, as Ginny Marvin, Google's Ads Liaison, described it in a comment on Greg Finn's LinkedIn post.
| Campaign type | Before | Now |
|---|---|---|
| Search, Shopping | On or off | High or Low, plus a % cap on Low |
| Performance Max | No channel controls | High or Low, plus a % cap on Low |
| Demand Gen | On or off | Priority only, date not settled |
Demand Gen gets half. “Budget allocation is not supported for Demand Gen campaigns.” Google's blog and Help page include Demand Gen in prioritization, but Google Ads' own Facebook post says it's “coming later”, and Search Engine Journal, reporting from Google's briefing, says limited testing starts in November.
Opting out still works. Google's Help page offers Low priority as the softer option: “You can use low priority for channels you value less instead of opting out.”
Where to set it. For the whole account, in Account settings on the "Channel Prioritization" card. For 1 campaign, in its Settings under "Channel Prioritization", then "Use campaign-level settings". A shared budget works if every campaign on it is the same type. You can't set it from a manager account.
Your bid strategy decides what the controls change
This is the part most likely to surprise you. Google's Help page splits it by bid strategy:
- Target CPA, Target ROAS or Target CPC, and the campaign isn't limited by budget: prioritization “doesn’t change how your budget is spent”. The % caps still apply.
- The same strategies, limited by budget: High priority channels spend first, within your target. Low priority channels get budget “when they can deliver conversions at your target”.
- Maximize conversions, Maximize conversion value, Maximize clicks, Manual CPC or Target Impression Share: High priority channels are funded first, and the rest goes to Low.
Our read: if your target-based campaigns rarely hit their daily budget, ranking channels does nothing for them. On those campaigns, the cap is the control that changes spend.
4 settings to check
1. Cap your weakest channel, after you look at it
At 0%, Google won't spend on a Low priority channel. Before you use it, Brooke Osmundson, writing in Search Engine Journal, suggests looking at how each network performs before you change anything, because campaigns already hitting their target may not need it, and moving inventory down “could reduce the opportunities” your bidding has. Pull your network segment first, then cap only the channel that loses on cost per conversion.
2. On Target CPA or Target ROAS? Use the cap, not the ranking
If budget isn't what limits the campaign, setting a channel to Low changes nothing by itself. The % cap still applies. So on these campaigns, a channel you want to hold back needs Low priority and a number.
3. Running Display Expansion on Search? Set Display to Low at 50%
Google's Help page says the old Display Expansion setup had “a 50% budget allocation applied in the backend”. From February 2027, those campaigns move to the new controls automatically, and Google says spend may shift. To keep the old 50% split after the move, set Display to Low priority with a 50% cap before then. Setting priorities earlier applies the new rules right away. As part of the same change, Display stops serving on Search campaigns that use Target Impression Share.
This 50% setting is for Search campaigns with Display Expansion. It isn't advice for every campaign that runs on Display.
4. Test on 1 or 2 campaigns first
Our read: change 1 or 2 campaigns first, compare the network segment week by week, and avoid big changes to core campaigns before Black Friday and Cyber Monday (November 27 and 30, 2026). Since Google calls every cap best effort, a week of the network segment is how you find out whether yours held.
What Google hasn't settled yet
- The API and Google Ads Editor. Google's Help page says support is “coming soon”, with no date.
- A Demand Gen start date. November comes from Search Engine Journal's report of Google's briefing, not from a Google page.
- Whether 0% is a hard stop. The same page that says Google won't spend at 0% calls every cap best effort.
- Which way Display spend moves after February 2027. Google says only that spend may shift.
- The limits on the %. Minimum, maximum, step size, and whether a High channel can be capped aren't documented.
- Results. Google hasn't published any data on what the controls do to conversions or cost per conversion.
- Separate control of Gmail, Discover and YouTube. In Performance Max and Demand Gen, Google's Help page groups them with Search and Maps as 1 "Google channels" setting.
PPC Land's summary is blunt: “every element of the new limit is soft”. It also notes that a campaign can spend up to twice its average daily budget on a single day.
Our read
The useful change is the middle ground. Until now, a channel was on or off, and in Performance Max it wasn't yours to choose at all. Now you can keep a channel running and limit what it gets. Every limit is best effort, so the setting is where you start and the network segment is where you check.
Open Account settings and look for the Channel Prioritization card. If it's there, pull the network segment for your 2 biggest campaigns before you change a single priority.
Sources
- Google Ads & Commerce Blog, channel prioritization and budget allocation announcement, Tal Akabas, Oct 14, 2026
- Google Ads Help, answer 18385152, channel prioritization and budget allocation, read Oct 16, 2026
- Google Ads Help, answer 7193800, Display Expansion on Search, read Oct 16, 2026
- Google Ads Liaison, thread on X, Oct 2026
- Google Ads, post on Facebook with the 4 slides, Oct 2026
- Ginny Marvin, comment on Greg Finn's LinkedIn post, Oct 2026
- Search Engine Journal, Brooke Osmundson's report on the launch, Oct 2026
- PPC Land, report on the percentage limits, Oct 2026
Quotations are exact. Lines marked Our read are MichaelBennett.co's reasoning, not Google's or the practitioners'.
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