What happened
Google Ads Editor 2.13 is rolling out with full AI Max support for Shopping campaigns: automated text generation, URL expansion controls, brand lists, and URL exclusions. That brings Shopping to parity with Search and Performance Max inside the desktop editor — until now, AI Max work on Shopping meant clicking through the web UI one campaign at a time.
The release goes wider than Shopping. Performance Max picks up Customer Retention Goals for optimizing toward re-engaging existing customers. Responsive and non-skippable video ads get Business Name and Business Logo fields. Demand Gen gains Maps placements, and a new Native Channel Performance report shows where your spend actually lands. Workflow polish rounds it out: better column management, resume support for downloads, bidding-strategy updates, and best-practice warnings on video campaigns.
Two structural changes deserve their own line. There's a new user-attestation field for disclosing AI-generated image and video assets. And creating new Video Action campaigns is officially retired — the forced march to Demand Gen is complete.
Why this matters
If you manage Shopping at any scale, the web interface is a miserable place for bulk edits. Editor parity means rolling AI Max across dozens of Shopping campaigns is now a desktop job you can review before posting. And the controls matter more than the generation: brand lists and URL exclusions are the guardrails that keep Google's query expansion and landing-page expansion from wandering into traffic you never wanted. Set them before you opt in, not after the search-terms report scares you.
The attestation field is the sleeper item. Disclosure of AI-generated creative just became a form field in Google's own tooling — a workflow step, not a preference. Fields like this tend to grow teeth later, so if your product imagery or video involves AI generation, someone on your team now owns that attestation and should know it.
The Video Action retirement is housekeeping, but it invalidates any media plan or agency playbook still referencing the campaign type. If a proposal lands on your desk mentioning Video Action campaigns, that's your signal the author hasn't opened the platform recently.
What to do about it
Update Editor and audit AI Max in bulk
Install 2.13, pull every Shopping campaign, and review AI Max settings side by side: URL expansion state, brand lists loaded, URL exclusions set. Exclude pages that should never take paid traffic — out-of-stock items, policy pages, blog posts — before expansion decides for you.
Write your attestation policy this week
Inventory which image and video assets involve AI generation, decide who attests, and make it a step in your creative handoff. Doing this now, while the field is new, beats reconstructing asset provenance later under a compliance deadline.
Pilot Customer Retention Goals with a control
If repeat purchase drives your store — consumables, refills, seasonal reorders — test the new Performance Max retention goal against a holdout. Watch whether it drives genuinely incremental reorders or just claims credit for customers who were coming back anyway.
Purge Video Action from your plans
Migrate any remaining video plans to Demand Gen and check the new Maps placements if in-store or local pickup matters to you. Then read the Native Channel Performance report so you know which surfaces Demand Gen is actually spending on.