What is being tested
Google is running an alpha that puts two checkboxes in the Performance Max campaign console: one for Search Partner Network (Google results embedded in third-party search boxes) and one for the Google Display Network. Both are checked by default. Both have been mandatory since Performance Max launched, which is the entire reason this is news.
Digiday reported the story. A Google spokesperson confirmed the feature is in alpha and declined to say when broader availability might follow. Access is being distributed rather than announced: Crossmedia, Go Fish Digital, Moroch (which got in during the final week of June 2026), Duncan Channon, Roast, and PMG have confirmed access. Some agencies found the checkboxes had simply appeared in their accounts with no notification at all. Three agencies said Google turned down their requests.
Kyle Rovinski of Duncan Channon summarized the objection that produced this, describing the historical advertiser position on Performance Max as "the product could not be trusted." That is the sentiment Google is responding to, and the response is a limited alpha.
What it changes, and what it does not
Search Partners and Display are the two placements advertisers most often blame for spend they cannot account for, so removing them addresses a real complaint. It also addresses the easiest one. The allocation logic that decides how a Performance Max budget gets split across Search, Shopping, YouTube, Discover, and Gmail is untouched, and that opacity is what most advertisers mean when they say PMax is a black box.
For ecommerce accounts the calculus is narrower than it looks. Shopping inventory is usually where PMax earns its keep, and Display and Search Partners are usually where the cheap, low-intent traffic comes from. If you get access, performance metrics will improve the moment you uncheck the boxes, because you just removed the cheapest traffic in the campaign. The measurement that means something is whether conversions and revenue hold while the spend concentrates elsewhere.
What to do about it
If the checkboxes appear, change one thing at a time
Deselect Display and Search Partners on one campaign, not the account, and leave a comparable campaign untouched. Watch total conversions and revenue rather than CPA and CTR, both of which improve automatically when you cut low-cost inventory. Give it enough conversion volume to mean something before you decide.
Do not restructure around an alpha
Access here is rationed and undated, and three agencies asking for it were refused. Building a Performance Max strategy that depends on controls you might not get, on a timeline nobody has published, is a bet on Google shipping something it has not committed to.