The Keywordless
Two white bars on a black card on an orange-red background, the lower one stopped short at an orange line, standing in for channel priority and a budget cap.

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Google Ads adds channel priority and budget caps

When you set priorities, Google says campaigns fully fund high-priority channels first (within target for Target CPA or Target ROAS), then send what's left to low-priority ones.

Jerry QuinUpdated 2 min read2 sources

Illustration: The Keywordless.

The short answer

What changed

Google Ads is rolling out settings that let you set channels to "High priority" or "Low priority" and set a best-effort limit on how much of your daily budget the low-priority ones can spend. Google announced it Oct 14.

Who has it

Google's help page says the controls start becoming available progressively on Oct 15, 2026, across Search, Shopping, Performance Max and Demand Gen, at the account and campaign level and on shared budgets. Demand Gen gets priority only, not budget caps.

What I'd do this week

Find every Search campaign that has the Display Network turned on. Those are the ones that change in February 2027, unless priorities are set on them sooner.

My take

I've wanted this kind of control for years, and this isn't quite it, but it's a step in the right direction.

  • What I really want is a channel split inside PMax. Even if I can't take a channel to zero, I'd like to give less budget to the channels I know don't work for my account, or at least get priority buckets like this new setting.
  • The closest thing is choosing between a feed-only campaign and one with full assets, and in my experience a feed-only PMax runs almost entirely on Search.
  • I think Google will get there eventually. This feels like the first move.

How priority works

When you set priorities, Google says campaigns fully fund high-priority channels first, then send what's left to low-priority ones. If you bid with Target CPA or Target ROAS, high-priority channels get funded within your target.

On Search, that means you can put Google Search, Search partners and the Display Network on different tiers. In Performance Max and Demand Gen, Google surfaces such as Search, YouTube, Maps, Gmail and Discover sit together as one group called "Google channels."

How the caps work

For any channel set to low priority, you can set a maximum percentage of your daily budget. Google says it will aim to keep spend under that limit on a best-effort basis, so treat it as a target, not a hard stop. Google's help page also says budget caps aren't supported for Demand Gen campaigns; priority is.

Google also points out that priority alone will generally not have an impact on Target CPA or Target ROAS campaigns that aren't limited by budget. For those, the cap is the setting that does the work.

The February 2027 change

Starting in February 2027, Search campaigns with the Display Network turned on lose their current spend allocation setup, and Google says you may see channel spend shift. To keep things as they are, Google says you can set the Display Network to low priority with a 50% budget allocation. Google's help page also says the Display Network will no longer serve on Search campaigns using Target Impression Share, and that priorities set before February 2027 apply right away.

What I'd do with it

These are my suggestions, not steps from Google.

  1. Put the 50% setting on the calendar. For the Display-on Search campaigns you found (except Target Impression Share campaigns), plan when to set the Display Network to low priority with a 50% budget allocation. It takes effect as soon as it's saved, so pick the date on purpose, before February rather than after.
  2. Retest Search partners with a small cap. If you turned partners off years ago, a low-priority setting with a tight cap is a safer way to look again than flipping it back on.
  3. Check shared budgets. Priority settings apply there too, so one change can move spend across several campaigns at once.
  4. Watch the cap for a week or two. Since it's best-effort, compare actual channel spend to the percentage you set before trusting it.

Jerry Quin

Jerry Quin is the pen name of a paid media practitioner who has managed Google Ads accounts at an agency for 10 years. He writes about Google Ads, Microsoft Ads, ChatGPT Ads, and the rest of paid media and digital marketing, from what's rolling out to what he'd actually do about it.

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