Google published a quiet control this week that looks like a dial and behaves like a preference.
On October 14, Tal Akabas, director of product management for Google Ads, announced channel prioritization and budget allocation. Google’s Help Center says the features begin becoming available on October 15, then roll out over the coming months across Search, Shopping, Performance Max and Demand Gen. You can mark inventory High priority or Low priority. On Low priority channels you can enter a percentage of your average daily budget that Google will try to keep those channels under.
That last clause is the whole essay. Try. Aim. Best effort. Not a guarantee.
If you buy media on Google heading into the holidays, this is the kind of setting people will misread in a status meeting. Someone will say “we capped Search partners at five percent” and hear a hard stop. Google’s own Help page says daily spend on that channel may occasionally exceed the allocation, including on days when the campaign spends more than its average daily budget. So the marketing job is not to celebrate a new dial. It is to write the percent on purpose, know what it does and does not do, and decide what you will do when the number slips.
What Google actually shipped
There are two related controls. They are optional. By default, every channel is High priority, which means nothing changes until someone moves a channel down.
Channel prioritization decides what gets funded first when a campaign is limited by budget. High priority channels spend first (within your Target CPA or Target ROAS when you use those). Remaining budget can go to Low priority channels. Google’s blog and Help page both say that when a Target CPA or Target ROAS campaign is not limited by budget, priority levels generally do not change how spend is distributed. That is most of the automated Search and Performance Max money I see in accounts: the target is the constraint, not the daily budget.
Budget allocation is the part that reaches those uncapped campaigns. Once a channel is Low priority, you can set a percentage. The Help page is precise: the percentage is of the campaign’s average daily budget, not of what the campaign actually spent that day. A five percent allocation on a $1,000 average daily budget means Google aims to keep that channel at or under $50 a day. The allocation resets every day. Unspent and overspent amounts do not carry over. Set Low priority to zero percent and Google says it will not spend on that channel. The same page still reminds you the limit is best effort.
Which channels you can rank depends on the campaign type, per Google’s Help page:
- Search: Google Search, search partners, Google Display Network
- Shopping: Google Search, Google search partners
- Performance Max: Google channels, Google search partners, Google Display Network
- Demand Gen: Google channels, Google Display Network (prioritization only; budget allocation is not supported)
In Performance Max and Demand Gen, Search, YouTube, Maps, Gmail and Discover sit together as “Google channels.” You cannot put YouTube in a lower tier than Search inside Performance Max. Search partners and the Display Network can each get their own priority. If you need finer control of Google’s own surfaces, Google points you back to Search and Demand Gen campaigns with their existing opt-outs.
Management starts in the Google Ads interface and Search Ads 360. API and Editor support is “coming soon.” You cannot set channel prioritization from a manager account. Agencies will click into each client account or each campaign. Shared budgets can carry the settings, but only when every linked campaign is the same type, and the percentage then applies to the shared pool as a whole.
PPC Land and Search Engine Land both covered the same announcement on October 14. Independently, they flag the best-effort language and the February 2027 Display Expansion change. That is the dual source you want when a client asks whether the percent is real.
Why the percent matters more than the ranking
I keep seeing teams treat “High priority” like a brand safety checkbox. It is not. On a Target ROAS campaign with headroom, ranking Search partners Low does almost nothing by itself. Google says so. The percentage is the lever that still applies when the budget is not the bottleneck.
That is also why Google pitches this as an alternative to opting out. Akabas wrote that marketers who historically turned off Search partners and the Display Network can use the new lever to test those networks with clearer limits. Read that as a commercial invitation. Google would rather you leave partners and Display on with a small allocation than leave them off. Testing with a written percent can be smart. Leaving them on because the UI offered a comforting number, without checking whether the number held, is how Q4 budgets get soft.
Three mechanical details I would write on the same page as the percent:
- Average daily budget is the base. If your campaign overdelivers on a given day (Google Ads can spend up to twice the average daily budget on a single day within the monthly ceiling), the allocation still points at the average, not at the higher actual spend. Google does not promise the channel will stay at that dollar amount.
- Account defaults hit every eligible campaign of that type. If a campaign already spends more than your new Low priority percent on partners or Display, Google says you may see a shift after you save. Preview that before you apply an account-wide five percent in October.
- Demand Gen and total budgets have holes. Demand Gen gets prioritization but not budget allocation. Campaign total budgets only work with these settings on Demand Gen; other campaign types using a total budget will not apply the prioritization settings. If your holiday flight sits on a total budget, check the interaction before you plan around the new dial.
The February 2027 clock on Search Display Expansion
One part of this release is not optional.
Starting in February 2027, Search campaigns with Display Expansion enabled migrate automatically to channel prioritization and budget allocation. Google’s blog says the current spend allocation setup goes away and advertisers may see a shift in channel spending. To keep the current configuration, set the Google Display Network to Low priority with a 50 percent budget allocation. The Help page adds that the Display Network will no longer serve on Search campaigns that use Target Impression Share, and that if you set the new priorities on a Search campaign before February 2027, the new settings apply right away and replace Display Expansion behavior on that campaign.
So you have a choice, not a free pass. You can wait and let Google migrate you in February. You can set Low priority and 50 percent now, knowing 50 percent is still best effort. Or you can set a tighter percent (or zero) because Display Expansion was never a deliberate choice in that account. Waiting is a decision. Write it down for the accounts that still have Display Expansion on.
What I would do in the account this week
Ignore the product marketing for a minute. Here is the operator path I would run before holiday budgets climb.
Pull last 30 days of channel mix. For every Search, Shopping, Performance Max and Demand Gen campaign that matters in Q4, export spend and conversions (or your offline revenue join) by Google Search / Google channels, search partners, and Display Network. Rank the campaigns by partner and Display share. The top ten by dollar leakage are your first settings, not a blank account default.
Decide High vs Low per campaign type, not per slogan. Branded Search defense usually wants Google Search High and partners Low with a tight percent or zero. A prospecting Performance Max test might leave Google channels High, put partners Low at five or ten percent, and leave Display Low at zero until creative and landing pages are ready for that inventory. Write the rule in a shared doc so the next person who opens Channel Prioritization does not invent a new philosophy.
Use the percent where prioritization is weak. On Target CPA and Target ROAS campaigns that are not budget-limited, set the Low priority percentage even if you leave ranking alone. That is the case Google itself says prioritization will not reshape. The percent is the control that still applies.
Treat zero as “off, with a caveat.” Google says a zero percent Low priority allocation means it will not spend on that channel. Keep an eye on the channel report for the first two weeks anyway. Best effort language still sits on the same Help page. If spend appears, you have a support ticket and a client explanation ready, not a surprise.
Do not configure this from the MCC and assume it stuck. It will not. Set account defaults inside each client account, then override at campaign or shared-budget level where the mix should differ. If your tooling lives in the API or Editor, plan a manual stretch until Google ships support.
Put the February 2027 Display Expansion list in the same spreadsheet. Campaign name, whether Display Expansion is on, Target Impression Share or not, proposed Low priority percent, owner, date set. That list is the migration plan. It also stops someone from “fixing” Display Expansion in November without a percent attached.
Tell finance and the client how to read daily spend. A $100 daily budget can still spend more than $100 on a heavy day. A five percent partner allocation aims at about $5 against the average, not against the spike. If your pacing alerts fire on daily partner dollars, recalibrate them to the average-budget math or you will train the team to ignore the alerts.
Questions for Google or your rep
- On which date did channel prioritization appear in this specific account, and for which campaign types?
- For Target ROAS campaigns that are not budget-limited, will you confirm in writing that only the Low priority percentage (not the High/Low ranking alone) constrains Search partners and Display?
- When a Low priority allocation is exceeded on a given day, does that appear as a distinct notice in change history or only as channel spend in the report?
- For shared budgets across Search campaigns, is the percentage applied to the shared pool, and can one campaign’s partner demand consume another campaign’s headroom inside that pool?
- For Search campaigns still on Display Expansion, what is Google’s measured spend mix today between Search and Display in this account, so we know what “50 percent Low priority” is approximating?
What to do this week
Google gave media buyers a middle setting between “partners on” and “partners off.” That is useful. It is also easy to mistake for a lock.
Before holiday budgets spike, pull the channel mix for your Q4 campaigns. Mark Search partners and the Display Network High or Low on purpose. Put a percentage on every Low priority channel that can take one, especially on Target CPA and Target ROAS campaigns with budget headroom. Use zero when you mean off, then verify. Build the February 2027 Display Expansion list now so the migration is a scheduled job, not a February surprise. Brief anyone who reads daily spend that the percent is a preference Google aims to honor.
Then leave the dial alone for two weeks and read the channel report like you mean it. The control only helps if the written percent matches the spend you are willing to defend in a client meeting.
