Google's given you the controls. Do you know which way to turn them?

Google's given advertisers more control over where their money goes.

That should be good news. For years we've complained about automated campaigns deciding the channel mix for us, particularly inside Performance Max. Now Google is rolling out new ways to set channel priorities and guide how much budget reaches lower-priority inventory.

But before we congratulate ourselves on winning another argument with the algorithm, there's a question I'd ask across the table from any finance director.

Where should the next £1 of advertising spend actually go?

Because getting a new set of controls isn't the same thing as knowing what to do with them.

What's actually changed?

Google announced two optional controls in October 2026: channel prioritisation and budget allocation. They're being rolled out progressively, so don't assume the buttons are in every account today.

1. High and Low priority: advertisers can tell the system which eligible channel groupings should be funded first. High-priority channels are considered before Low-priority channels, subject to campaign goals and bidding constraints.
2. Budget allocation: for eligible Low-priority channels, advertisers can set a desired maximum proportion of the average daily budget. Crucially, it's a best-effort guide, not a hard spending cap.

Search can distinguish Google Search, Search partners and the Google Display Network. Shopping has its own eligible groupings. Within Performance Max, Google groups surfaces such as Search, YouTube, Gmail, Discover and Maps together as Google channels; you can't use this feature to put YouTube on Low and Google Search on High within that same PMax grouping.

Demand Gen gets channel prioritisation, not the new budget-allocation control. And if a Target ROAS or Target CPA campaign isn't budget-limited, changing priority alone generally won't alter its spend distribution. The small print matters rather a lot.

Source: Google's channel prioritisation and budget allocation guidance.

A £100-a-day campaign isn't a £100-a-day experiment

Imagine a Search campaign with a £100 average daily budget. You put a lower-priority channel on a 15% allocation.

You have asked Google to aim for no more than £15 of the average daily budget going to that channel. You have not guaranteed that exactly £15 will be spent there. Nor have you capped spending at 15% of whatever the campaign happens to spend that day.

The allocation resets daily. Actual channel spend can exceed the preference. When you take a setting described as "best effort" to an FD and call it a guaranteed limit, you're building your next awkward meeting.

So I'd record the intended allocation, the actual delivery and the business outcome. They're three different measurements.

Why I wouldn't just turn the expensive-looking channel down

Let's say Display appears to have a worse reported CPA than Search. Turn it down, tidy up the blended number, job done?

Not necessarily. Some inventory creates demand that gets captured elsewhere. Some traffic genuinely is expensive and unproductive. The trick is telling the two apart.

A neat channel report won't do that on its own. And a channel that's very good at collecting the last click can look disproportionately attractive if the measurement doesn't reflect the full customer journey.

That was the point of my earlier piece, Google's letting you argue with Performance Max, written when Google was testing a different channel-level mechanism. The October rollout is a new control system, but the strategic danger remains: optimising what looks tidy rather than what makes the business money.

Before you touch it, ask five questions

1. What is the campaign trying to do? Capture existing demand, create new demand or sell more of a profitable product category? Different jobs need different evidence.
2. Is budget actually the constraint? Review campaign eligibility, bidding targets and available impression-share evidence where those metrics apply. More control doesn't create more qualified demand.
3. What's the baseline? Record channel spend, conversion actions, conversion value, CPA or ROAS, and attribution limits before changing anything.
4. What will we change, and who approved it? Test one meaningful control at a time where practical, with a documented hypothesis and review date.
5. What would make us reverse it? Decide in advance which outcomes count as success and which represent unacceptable risk.

And separate branded demand from non-brand performance wherever that's appropriate. A brilliant-looking blended ROAS can make a weak acquisition programme seem healthy.

What if there's no more budget?

Now we're having a useful conversation.

Suppose a profitable Search campaign is losing eligible impressions because it's budget-constrained. We can estimate potential additional traffic and Google Ads conversion value — if we have the correct Search impression-share denominator, alongside real CTR, CPC, conversion rate and value evidence.

That's a scenario, not a forecast or a promise. Marginal clicks need not convert like existing clicks.

But the discussion doesn't end when the FD says there's no extra money. We can look at bid efficiency, search-term waste, channel allocation and whether the budget is chasing the right conversions. A fixed-budget alternative deserves a model of its own, with the assumptions laid bare.

The question isn't only how much budget Google could spend. It's what additional value the business could reasonably expect for each decision.

The February 2027 detail worth putting in the diary

Google says Search campaigns currently using Display Expansion will move to the new prioritisation and allocation approach starting in February 2027. Advertisers who want to approximate their existing configuration can set the Display Network to Low priority with a 50% daily budget allocation — again, best effort, not a guarantee.

That's a reason to inventory affected campaigns, establish a baseline and plan a controlled review. Not a reason to hammer a new setting into every account on a Friday afternoon.

The point

I'm pleased advertisers are getting more say in where their money goes. More transparency and more useful controls are welcome.

But a new option in Google Ads is not a growth strategy. Neither is a prettier channel-level bar chart.

If we're moving money between Search, partners, Display or a broader automated campaign, I want an answer to three things: what was the commercial reason, what was the evidence, and what happened after the decision?

That's the difference between managing a control panel and managing an investment.

Google has given us more dials. The skill is knowing which ones are worth turning.

Google announced the new controls on 14 October 2026; availability varies as the rollout proceeds. Technical references: Google's announcement and Google Ads Help.

Russell Anson runs Compulsion, an independent paid-search consultancy. Performance, profitability and accountability — with evidence you can defend. compulsion.agency

Related reading: Google's letting you argue with Performance Max, Your Google Ads report looks great. So where's the money? and Who still has the keys to your Google Ads account?.