Google has fundamentally altered how advertisers forecast their reach, quietly removing support for Display and Video campaigns from its Performance Planner tool. Effective March 9, 2026, the built-in forecasting engine within Google Ads no longer allows users to model spend or performance for these specific campaign types, nor can they utilize impression share—including top and absolute top impression share—as primary planning metrics.
The change was not announced via a formal press release or product update. Instead, it appeared as a documentation update within the Google Ads Help Center. For many marketers, the discovery was abrupt: existing plans relying on these metrics or campaign types are now inaccessible, meaning they cannot be viewed, edited, or exported. The data within those specific plans is effectively frozen.
This shift represents a significant contraction of the tool’s utility. Performance Planner, which simulates ad auctions based on billions of search queries and is updated every 24 hours, has been narrowed to support only those campaign types oriented around conversion signals. By stripping out visibility-based metrics, Google is effectively steering advertisers away from “reach” as a planning framework and toward “results” as the sole driver of budget allocation.
For those managing upper-funnel awareness, the loss of native forecasting for Display and Video means a reliance on manual modeling or third-party tools. While the campaigns themselves can still be run, the internal “crystal ball” Google provided to predict their impact has been removed.
The Pivot Toward Conversion-First Architecture
The removal of these features is not an isolated technical glitch, but rather the latest step in a multi-year transition toward AI-driven automation. For years, Google has been systematically deprecating manual controls in favor of “black box” formats that prioritize conversion signals over granular human-defined targets.
The evidence of this shift is visible in a sequence of platform changes leading up to 2026. In September 2024, Google announced the deprecation of Enhanced CPC bidding for Search and Display, a transition that concluded in March 2025. By September 2025, the campaign setup flow was restructured to make Performance Max the default option when multiple channels were selected. These moves were designed to route advertisers toward automated formats where Google’s AI manages the bidding, and placement.
By early 2026, Google’s own leadership began framing traditional, hyper-granular campaign structures as obstacles. Brandon Ervin, Director of Product Management for Search Ads at Google, indicated that thinking in terms of impression-level management is misaligned with how modern AI-powered systems operate. This philosophy is now embedded in the forecasting infrastructure; if a metric like impression share doesn’t align with AI optimization, it is removed from the planner.
The decline of the open web likewise plays a role. Data indicates a sharp drop in the prominence of traditional display; open web display advertising impressions represented only 11 percent of Google’s display advertising in January 2025, a steep fall from over 40 percent in January 2019.
What Remains: The New Planning Hierarchy
While Display and Video are gone from the planner, several other campaign types remain eligible, provided they meet strict performance and stability criteria. The tool now exclusively serves Search, Shopping (Standard), Performance Max, Demand Gen, App, and Local campaigns.
Eligibility for these remaining types is not universal. For Search, Shopping, and Performance Max, a campaign must not have changed its bid strategy in the last 10 days, must have at least 10 impressions, 3 clicks, and at least one conversion recorded. This ensures the AI has a stable baseline of data to generate an accurate forecast.
Demand Gen campaigns—which run across YouTube, Gmail, and the Discover feed—are positioned as the intended successor to traditional awareness formats. Unlike the deprecated Display and Video options, Demand Gen is built on conversion-trackable architecture. The fact that Demand Gen remains supported in Performance Planner signals Google’s vision for the “upper funnel”: awareness is no longer about how many people saw an ad (impressions), but how many people were driven toward a conversion signal.
| Campaign Type | Bid Strategy Stability | Min. Impressions | Min. Conversions |
|---|---|---|---|
| Search / Shopping / PMax | 10 Days | 10 | 1 |
| Demand Gen (tCPA/Max Conv) | 7 Days | 14 | N/A |
| Demand Gen (tROAS/Max Value) | 7 Days | N/A | 5 |
| App Campaigns | 10 Days | N/A | 10 (last 10 days) |
The Operational Impact on Advertisers
The immediate fallout depends on how an advertiser uses the tool. Those who rely on Performance Planner for Search or App campaigns will see no disruption. However, those who used it to justify “top-of-funnel” budgets to stakeholders now face a reporting gap. Because existing Display and Video plans are inaccessible, the historical baselines used for quarterly or annual planning have vanished from the native interface.
the tool’s forecasting engine has become more aggressive in its budget suggestions. The planner may now propose a budget of $0 for certain campaigns, signaling that the AI believes those specific investments are not contributing to the most efficient spend distribution. In such cases, the tool may explicitly advise pausing the campaign entirely.
To compensate for the loss of native Display planning, Google has introduced cross-channel budgeting capabilities within Google Analytics. Launched in January 2026, this system allows for projection and scenario planning across different platforms independently of the Performance Planner. This suggests that Google is moving high-level budget forecasting out of the “Ads” tactical tool and into the “Analytics” strategic layer.
Advertisers are currently encouraged by Google to plan on a weekly basis rather than monthly or quarterly to account for rapid market fluctuations. This is particularly relevant as the platform continues to shift Lookalike segments within Demand Gen from hard targeting constraints to suggestion-based signals, further reducing manual control over who sees an ad.
The next major checkpoint for advertisers will be the continued integration of “Journey Aware Bidding,” which aims to optimize the full customer path from first touch to final conversion. As Google continues to merge these automated systems, the gap between “awareness” and “conversion” is expected to close entirely within the platform’s planning tools.
Do you have a strategy for forecasting awareness budgets without native Google tools? Share your experience or questions in the comments below.
