How to report AI Max campaigns to clients.

AI Max for Search campaigns lets Google match ads to searches beyond the account's keywords, and choose or write the headline and the landing page for each one. Fewer of those decisions sit in the account, so more of the explaining has to come from the report.

A client used to be able to read the keyword list and know what they were paying for. With AI Max, the honest answer to what the money was spent on is a report, not a setting.

Google Ads' search terms report has a view called Search terms and ad combinations, which used to be called Search terms and landing pages from AI Max. It lists the search terms that triggered ads, with the headlines, landing pages, campaigns and ad groups behind each one.

Its Match type column says how closely each search term relates to the account's keywords. Google's help page also suggests adding the Source column to the view. Check what both show in your own account before building a client report on them.

Four views answer most of what a client asks about AI Max.

• Spend beyond the keyword list

  How much went to search terms the account never listed, against how much went to terms it did, where the report separates them. This is usually the client's real question.

• The landing pages used

  Which pages people were sent to, and whether any of them are pages the client would not have chosen.

• The headlines served

  Which headlines ran most, including any Google wrote, so the client sees the words used in their name.

• Results for the big combinations

  Conversions and cost per conversion for the search term, headline and page combinations that spent the most, not only the campaign total.

Present AI Max as a trade. The client gets reach the keyword list would not have found, and gives up some control over where the money goes. The report is how they see what they gave up, and whether it paid.

Keep the client's own results in front. Orders or leads from the client's systems, beside the spend, show whether the expansion paid in a way a platform's own conversion count cannot settle on its own.

Mark the date AI Max was switched on in every trend chart. Search terms and costs before and after it are different kinds of traffic, and a line without that mark invites the wrong comparison.

SightShark syncs Google Ads daily into a data warehouse you own, beside each client's analytics, store and CRM data, so spend can be read against the client's own orders and leads rather than the platform's count alone.

Syncs add to the tables rather than replacing them, so the months before AI Max was switched on stay on record for the comparison. A percentage-change alert on spend or cost per conversion flags a shift the day after it lands.