How to Guide Your Ad Spend With New Google Ads Priority Controls

Google Ads is rolling out new channel prioritization and budget allocation controls to give advertisers more flexibility over their campaign spend. These features are deploying globally over the coming months across Search, Shopping, Performance Max, and Demand Gen campaign types.

Instead of relying on all-or-nothing opt-outs, marketers can now categorize ad inventory by priority levels and set explicit spending caps on secondary networks. This guide outlines how to configure these controls to manage your budgets more effectively.

Categorize Inventory by Priority

Channel prioritization lets you decide which networks receive funding first by assigning inventory as either “High priority” or “Low priority.” You can apply these settings at both the account and campaign levels, including shared budgets.

When configured, campaigns fully fund high-priority channels—respecting targets when using Target CPA or Target ROAS—before allocating any remaining budget to lower-priority channels. For Search campaigns, you can categorize Google Search, Search partners, and the Google Display Network independently. For Performance Max and Demand Gen campaigns, Google properties such as Search, YouTube, Maps, Gmail, and Discover are grouped together as “Google channels.”

Set Spending Limits With Budget Allocation

To prevent overspending on secondary inventory, you can pair low-priority designations with flexible budget allocation controls. When a channel or grouping is set to “Low priority,” you can specify a maximum percentage of your daily budget to maintain strict boundaries.

Google Ads tools will aim to keep spending on those channels within your defined limit on a best-effort basis. This functionality is particularly useful for campaigns using Target CPA or Target ROAS bidding that are not strictly limited by overall budget, as channel prioritization alone generally does not restrict spending there.

Test New Networks Safely

Rather than turning networks off entirely, these optional controls allow you to test partners like the Google Display Network or Search partners with clearer financial limits. Review your current campaign configurations to see how these settings apply to your strategy.

Note an upcoming configuration change: starting in February 2027, the current spend allocation setup for Search campaigns with the Google Display Network turned on will be retired. To maintain your existing configuration after that date, you must manually set the Google Display Network to “Low priority” with a 50% budget allocation.

Source

Official announcement or documentation