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If your Google ads Rep isn’t pestering you about Auto-Apply anymore, it’s because it’s no longer a part of their commission structure.
Posted by on January 11, 2026 at 7:08 pmJust a heads-up for everyone managing Google Ads accounts: If you’ve noticed your Google account reps have suddenly gone quiet about Auto-Apply Recommendations (AAR) this month, don’t mistake it for them finally respecting your expertise or caring about your client's ROAS. It's because from Q1 2026, Google has officially stopped incentivizing AAR adoption in the rep incentive structures.
Some reps will try to frame this as "I'm moving away from automation to help you be more strategic." Don't buy it. They are just pivoting to whatever the new Q1 2026 bonus targets are.
Use this "quiet period" to audit your accounts and turn off all those AAR settings the previous reps bullied you into enabling. You won't get any pushback this quarter because, frankly, they don't get paid to care about them anymore.
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1 Reply
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fortune 500 and 1,000 accounts do not rely on auto-recommendations. If they did their paid ads revenue would crash. Its probably because of the complaining from advertisers.
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All mine moved to AI Max recommendations. Every single one I spoke too this past two weeks is saying I need to enable AI Max and Broadmatch in order to stay relevant lol
Idk w/e – I get they are just doing their jobs – i usually blow them off but occasionally need them so I’ll do 1-2 meetings with each a quarter – but it’s really frustrating when they tell me to turn broad match on for a brand campaign.
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Your rep suddenly respecting boundaries? Hilarious… they’ve just moved on to pushing AI Max and Demand Gen because that’s what pays their Q1 bonuses now. Accounts I manage spending $100k-300k+ monthly had AAR disabled from day one because letting Google auto-switch bidding strategies or expand keywords without approval is how you wake up to 40% higher spend at half the ROAS… reps act like automation partners until commission structure changes.
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2026 Google narratives
1. Search AI Max
Basically existing products repackaged and renamed with AI.
There are so many idiots running search campaigns at the corporate level listening to everything Google says and do it. They were fostered into search by Google and never exercise their ability to think critically..
Paid search is losing more and more intent and is becoming more of a reach play.
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Or just don’t let them push you around in the first place 😉
You should never apply anything in your account to don’t feel comfortable about. It’s your money or your clients’ money.
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The US based reps are usually really smart people with a really crappy job. I wish Google would reinvent the purpose of the role and train them to be much better product experts. I had to explain to a very aggressive young lady on the accelerated growth team recently how her suggestion would cannibalize and tank the most successful campaign in the account. She argued with me to the point where she stopped making logical sense. Imagine if that intense energy was channeled in a way that wasn’t about winning misaligned product adoption.
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