Google Ads has started rolling out two new settings, channel prioritization and budget allocation, announced on Google’s own Ads & Commerce blog on 14 October 2026. You can now mark Search partners or the Display Network as low priority and cap the share of your daily budget they are allowed to take, instead of switching them off entirely.
What exactly did Google change on 14 October?
Two optional controls, both aimed at where your money goes rather than who sees your ads.
Channel prioritization lets you tag each channel in a campaign as High or Low priority. Google funds the High-priority channels first and only sends what is left to the Low-priority ones. Budget allocation goes further: on a channel you have already marked Low, you can set the maximum percentage of your average daily budget it may spend. Google’s blog post and Search Engine Land’s 14 October write-up both describe the cap as best effort, not a hard ceiling.
Everything defaults to High priority, so nothing on your account changed overnight. According to PPC Land’s 14 October report, the controls appear in the Google Ads interface and Search Ads 360 first, and cannot be set from a manager account — you set them per account or campaign. Which channels you can rank depends on the campaign type:
| Campaign type | Channels you can rank separately |
|---|---|
| Search | Google Search, Search partners, Google Display Network |
| Shopping | Google Search, Search partners |
| Performance Max | Google channels (bundled), Search partners, Google Display Network |
| Demand Gen | Google channels (bundled), Google Display Network |
Note the bundling. In Performance Max and Demand Gen, Search, YouTube, Maps, Gmail and Discover are grouped as "Google channels" and cannot be separated. This is not the asset-group-level transparency advertisers have wanted since Performance Max launched. It is a spending valve on the two channels most owners complain about.
Why should a small ad budget care about this?
Because the smaller your budget, the more a leaky channel costs you in real terms.
Search partners and the Display Network are the two places small accounts quietly lose money — plenty of impressions, cheap clicks, very few customers. Intelligency Group’s June 2025 analysis, cited by PPC Land, found Search partners delivered 37% lower return on ad spend than Google Search itself — US-based research, not Canadian data, but it matches what we see in accounts.
Until now the choice was binary: leave Search partners on and accept the waste, or turn them off and lose whatever genuine volume was in there. On a $1,000-a-month budget there was no middle setting. A Greater Toronto Area real estate team we run on exactly that budget produced 23 leads at roughly $46 each in August 2026, which only works because almost none of that money goes anywhere except Google Search. Give 20% of it to Display and the cost per lead stops making sense.
The new controls give you that middle setting. You can leave Search partners on at 10% and find out, with a visible limit, whether it converts.
What is the difference between prioritization and the budget cap?
Prioritization decides the order; allocation decides the ceiling. You usually need both.
The catch, flagged in Google’s own post and in PPC Land’s reporting: priority alone changes nothing unless your campaign is limited by budget. On Target CPA or Target ROAS campaigns that are not hitting their daily ceiling, ranking a channel Low does not change distribution — the percentage cap is the part that bites. On Maximize Conversions, Maximize Clicks, Manual CPC or Target Impression Share, leftover budget does flow down to Low-priority channels, so the order matters more.
| Channel prioritization | Budget allocation | |
|---|---|---|
| What it sets | High or Low priority per channel | Max % of average daily budget for a Low-priority channel |
| Default | All channels High | None set |
| Based on | Funding order | Average daily budget, not actual spend |
| Works when not budget-limited? | Not for Target CPA or Target ROAS | Yes — the cap still applies |
| Guaranteed? | n/a | No — best effort, can be exceeded |
| Resets | n/a | Daily, no carryover |
A 0% allocation stops spend on that channel altogether — the old opt-out, now expressed as a number.
What happens to Display Expansion in February 2027?
It gets migrated for you, and your spending mix may move if you do nothing.
From February 2027, according to both Google’s announcement and Search Engine Land, Search campaigns with the Display Network enabled lose the current spend allocation setup and move onto the new system. Google’s stated way to keep roughly what you have today is to set the Display Network to Low priority with a 50% budget allocation. PPC Land adds that the Display Network will stop serving on Search campaigns using Target Impression Share, and that advertisers who set priorities before February 2027 get the new behaviour immediately. Four months is plenty of notice, which is exactly why it gets forgotten. Set it in October and it is done.
What to do this week
- Check whether the setting is live in your account. Rollout is progressive, so it may not be there yet. Open a Search campaign’s settings and look for channel priority next to the networks options.
- Segment your last 90 days by network before you touch anything. You need conversions by channel, not clicks, to make this decision.
- Set Display to Low priority with a 50% allocation on any Search campaign that has Display Expansion on, which keeps your current setup through the February 2027 migration instead of letting Google decide for you.
- If Search partners has produced nothing in 90 days, cap it at 10% rather than killing it — then check again in a month. If it still converts nothing, take it to 0%.
Frequently asked questions
Does the budget cap guarantee Display will not overspend?
No. Google describes the allocation as best effort, not a hard limit, and says daily spend may occasionally exceed the percentage you set — including on days when the campaign overspends its average daily budget. The percentage is calculated against your average daily budget, not what you actually spent that day. Treat it as a strong steer rather than a guard rail, and check the network segment report weekly at first.
Should I just turn Search partners off instead?
If it has had 90 days and produced no conversions, a 0% allocation is the honest answer and it is the same thing. The reason to cap rather than cut is that you get data: at 10% you learn what that channel does for your business on a budget you can afford. The real mistake is leaving it uncapped and unexamined, which is the default most small accounts are still running.
Will this change how Performance Max spends my budget?
Partly. You can rank Search partners and the Display Network against Google’s own surfaces, but Search, YouTube, Maps, Gmail and Discover stay bundled as one "Google channels" group, so you still cannot push budget from YouTube towards Search inside Performance Max. A real improvement on all-or-nothing, but not the channel-level control the campaign type still lacks.
Do I need to do anything before February 2027?
Only if you run Search campaigns with the Display Network turned on. Those migrate automatically and your spending mix may shift. Setting the Display Network to Low priority with a 50% allocation now preserves your current configuration, applies immediately, and takes about two minutes per campaign. Everyone else can adopt the controls whenever they appear.
Would you rather someone else audit where your budget is actually going? Our Google Ads management process was built by our ex-Googler founder. Book a free 48-hour audit and we will show you your network split before you change a thing.
Sources: Google Ads & Commerce blog, 14 October 2026; Search Engine Land, 14 October 2026; PPC Land, 14 October 2026.