More control over where your budget goes

Google gave advertisers two long-requested controls in October: you can now mark channels as high or low priority and cap how much of your budget a low priority channel can spend. Alongside that, a new data strength metric helps you see what your setup is doing for you.

Don · Founder, Dozzo Published 14 Oct 2026 ~7 min read

October 2026 has been one of the more eventful months for Google Ads this year. On 14 October Google announced channel prioritisation and budget allocation, and earlier in the month it began rolling out new data strength tools. Together they shift how advertisers think about where their budget goes and how well their data is set up.

The big change: channel prioritisation

Google now lets you label the channels inside a campaign as high priority or low priority. In a Search campaign, that means Google Search, Search partners and the Google Display Network can each get their own priority level.

When you mark a channel high priority, Google funds it first, then spends the remaining budget on your low priority channels. On campaigns using Target CPA or Target ROAS, Google says high priority channels are funded within your target.

Think of it as telling Google "this is where my money matters most." Instead of letting spend drift across all channels evenly, you decide which ones get first claim on the budget.

In Performance Max and Demand Gen, Google's own surfaces (Search, YouTube, Maps, Gmail and Discover) are grouped together as "Google channels" and prioritised as one. The settings work at account level, at campaign level and on shared budgets, depending on what you choose.

Budget allocation explained

Alongside priority, Google added budget allocation: for any low priority channel you can set a maximum share of your daily budget it can spend. A few practical details matter:

The percentage is based on your average daily budget, not actual spend.
Setting a low priority channel to 0% stops spend on it.
The limit resets daily, and spend can occasionally exceed it, because Google calls this "best effort" rather than a hard cap.
An account level default applies to every eligible campaign of that type unless you override it.

The controls are rolling out gradually for Search, Shopping and Performance Max, with Demand Gen to follow. Availability will vary by account until the rollout completes.

The new data strength tools

Earlier in October, Google also pushed a set of data updates in its Demand Gen announcement. The headline is a new Data Strength Uplift metric in the Google Ads UI, which helps you understand the conversion gains driven by your data setup.

Data Strength Uplift metric. Shows how much of your conversion performance comes from how your data is configured.
Data Manager expansion. Now connecting to Display & Video 360 and Google Analytics, so first-party data can power stronger results.
Enhanced conversions. Coming to Display & Video 360 and Google Analytics to improve measurement accuracy and bidding.

Google's internal analysis also reported that advertisers using Google Tag Gateway see, on average, over 20% conversion uplift in Demand Gen campaigns. For a Malaysian advertiser, the practical takeaway is that clean, well-connected data matters more every quarter.

Who this affects most

The prioritisation and allocation controls matter most if your Search campaigns have "Include Google Display Network" or "Include Google search partners" switched on, because those are the channels you can now cap or de-prioritise. They also matter for Performance Max advertisers who want to limit spend outside Google-owned surfaces.

Many older campaigns still carry the default Display and Search partner settings from when they were created. If you have not reviewed them recently, these new controls are a good reason to look again.

Watch out for February 2027

There is one date worth marking. Google says that from February 2027, Search campaigns with the Display Network turned on will lose their current spend allocation setup, and spend may shift between channels. To keep roughly today's behaviour, Google suggests setting the Display Network to low priority with a 50% budget allocation.

That is a future change, but the decision it forces is a now problem. If your Search campaigns currently include Display, decide whether to keep it, cap it or switch it off, before the February change decides for you.

What to do now

Audit your network settings. Check which Search campaigns still have Display or Search partners switched on.
Look at cost per conversion by network. Segment the last 90 days and compare, not by clicks but by what actually converts.
Test with a small cap rather than switching off. A 10 to 15% cap on a low priority channel lets you keep testing without it taking over the budget.
Decide on Display before February 2027. Keep it, cap it, or turn it off, on purpose.

Google Ads is changing constantly, and these October controls are exactly the kind of update that quietly changes performance if you ignore them. Dozzo reviews these settings as part of managing Google Ads campaigns, and we never promise guaranteed leads or ROAS. Get a free account review →

Sources

This summary is based on Google's own announcements in October 2026: the channel prioritisation and budget allocation post on The Keyword (14 October 2026), the Demand Gen data strength announcement on The Keyword (13 October 2026), and the Google Ads Help documentation on the new controls.

Google Ads updates in October 2026 and what they mean for Malaysian advertisers