Google Ads Now Lets You Cap Display and Search Partners. Set It Before February or Google Sets It for You.

If you run Google Search or Performance Max, pull a spend breakdown by network this week and decide on purpose what share of budget Search partners and the Display Network should get. Google just shipped controls to do that, and in February 2027 it removes the old Display Expansion setup in Search campaigns and migrates you to the new system. If you do nothing, Google picks the starting point. If you act now, you pick it, and you have a clean before-and-after to measure.

What Google announced

Per Google’s announcement on October 14, 2026 and its Google Ads Help page, two optional controls are rolling out progressively starting October 15:

• Channel prioritization. Each channel is set to High or Low priority at the account, campaign, or shared budget level. Every channel defaults to High. Google funds High priority channels first, within your Target CPA or Target ROAS if you use one, then spends what is left on Low priority channels.
• Budget allocation. For Low priority channels only, you can set a daily percentage cap. It is calculated from your average daily budget, not actual spend, and it is best effort. Google can occasionally exceed it, and it resets daily with no carryover. Set a Low priority channel to 0% and it stops spending there.

Eligible channels by campaign type, per the help page:

• Search: Google Search, Search partners, Google Display Network (GDN)
• Shopping: Google Search, Search partners
• Performance Max: Google channels, Search partners, GDN
• Demand Gen: Google channels and GDN. Budget allocation is not supported for Demand Gen.

In Performance Max and Demand Gen, YouTube, Maps, Gmail, and Discover are grouped as “Google channels,” so you cannot prioritize them individually.

The deadline that matters: February 2027

Per Google, starting in February 2027, Search campaigns with Display Expansion on will automatically migrate to the new settings. The current spend allocation setup is removed, and Google warns spend may shift between Search, Search partners, and GDN. Two details operators should note:

• To keep your current behavior, Google says to set GDN to Low priority with a 50% daily allocation, best effort.
• GDN will stop serving on Search campaigns that use Target Impression Share.
• Until February, campaigns with no priorities set keep today’s behavior. Campaigns where you set priorities before then switch to the new settings immediately.

Why this is a margin question

Search campaigns that let Display Expansion run often look fine on blended ROAS while the Display slice drags it down. The problem is that most accounts never look at the network split. Here is the check, with illustrative numbers you should replace with your own.

Say a Search campaign has a $1,000 average daily budget and a blended target of 4.0 ROAS, with 45% contribution margin before ads.

• Break-even ROAS at 45% margin: 1 / 0.45 = 2.22
• If Google Search converts at 5.0 ROAS and GDN at 1.8 ROAS, GDN is below break-even

If Display takes 30% of spend ($300 a day):

• Search: $700 at 5.0 ROAS = $3,500 revenue, $1,575 margin, $875 profit after ad spend
• GDN: $300 at 1.8 ROAS = $540 revenue, $243 margin, $57 loss after ad spend
• Blended: $4,040 revenue on $1,000, 4.04 ROAS, which still looks healthy

Cap GDN at 5% of budget ($50 a day) and the freed $250 either goes to Search at the same 5.0 ROAS or stays unspent. Either way you stop funding a channel that loses money. The blended number hides it. The split exposes it.

The reverse also happens. If Search partners or GDN is quietly your cheapest incremental reach, a forced migration that cuts it could lower volume. That is why you measure first.

One caveat that changes how you use this

Google says that if a campaign is not limited by budget and uses Target CPA or Target ROAS, priority levels generally will not change spend distribution. In that case, the budget allocation cap on the Low priority channel is the lever, not the priority label. Marking GDN “Low priority” alone may do very little on a tROAS campaign with room to spend. Set the percentage.

What to do this week

1. Pull the network split. In Google Ads, segment by Network for every Search campaign and review Search partners and Display separately. Record spend, conversion value, and ROAS for the last 30 days. This is your baseline.
2. Flag every Search campaign with Display Expansion on. These are the ones Google migrates in February. Check Target Impression Share campaigns separately, since GDN stops serving on them.
3. Decide per campaign, not per account. Branded and high-intent non-brand campaigns usually earn nothing from Display. Set GDN to Low priority with a 0% to 5% allocation. Prospecting or broad campaigns where Display has proven incremental can keep 50%, Google’s migration default.
4. Use campaign-level settings for exceptions. Campaign settings override the account default. Set a conservative account default, then open it up where the data supports it.
5. Do it one change at a time. Change a few campaigns first, not the whole account. Annotate the date. You need a clean read, and Q4 is not the time for noisy attribution.
6. Performance Max: set search partners and GDN caps deliberately. If your tROAS target is tight, test a low allocation on GDN and compare conversion value per dollar against your pre-change baseline.
7. Agencies and manager accounts, plan manually. Per the help page, you cannot apply these settings from a manager account, and API and Editor support are listed as coming soon. Budget time to set it in each account.
8. Put the February date on the calendar. Review again in January so the automatic migration lands on settings you already tested.

What we are watching

Google’s help page notes the rollout is progressive, so you may not see the card in your account today. Check Account settings for the Channel Prioritization card. If you do not see it, check again next week rather than assuming it is missing.

Do not treat this as a growth feature. It is a cost control. The brands that win with it are the ones that already know their network-level ROAS and set caps before the default does it for them.

If you want the network split, break-even ROAS, and Display and partner caps set against your real account before Q4 peak, book a call.