The biggest ads news from Google Marketing Live this year was that ads are moving into AI Mode itself. Google showed conversational ads inside AI answers, and a Business Agent for Leads that can qualify someone in conversation and fill in the form for them. These formats run through AI Max for Search and Performance Max, so advertisers on classic setups will not see them.
For service businesses that live on leads, this changes a few things about how campaigns should be set up and judged. None of it requires panic, but some of it is worth doing before the new formats reach your account.
The form is no longer the finish line
If Google can qualify a lead in conversation and pre-fill your form, you will likely see more leads that look complete. That sounds good, and it might be. It also means a filled form tells you even less than before about whether someone is serious.
The only reliable answer is to track what happens next. Mark each lead as booked, not answered, not a fit or sold, and send those outcomes back to Google as offline conversions. That way the system learns from people who actually became clients, not from people who were easy to convert into a form.
Your inputs matter more than your keywords
AI Max and Performance Max decide a lot on their own. What you control is the material they work with: your landing pages, your assets, the questions your forms ask and the conversion data you send back. Weak inputs give the system nothing useful to learn from, however much budget you add.
- Landing pages that answer the obvious questions and show prices or ranges where you can.
- Qualifying questions on forms, such as budget, timeline and location, kept short.
- Offline conversion imports set up before you move budget into the new formats.
Test, do not jump
Google shared figures on stage about extra conversions from these campaign types. Treat any platform number as a reason to test, not a promise. Move a portion of budget, keep a comparable campaign running, and compare cost per booking over a few weeks rather than cost per lead over a few days.
If the new formats bring bookings at a better cost, scale them. If they bring more leads but not more bookings, you have learned something valuable, and cheaply.
