Google Ads API v26 released with breaking changes and new Search Lift reporting

Google released v26 of the Google Ads API, the fourth major version of 2026. It carries breaking changes to Local Services Performance Max, enhanced conversions for leads and hotel bid modifiers, and adds read-only Search Lift reporting along with business messaging, Demand Gen and EU political advertising updates.

Breaking changes: country_code and listing_id are now required when creating Local Services Performance Max campaigns; the enhanced_conversions_for_leads_enabled field is removed in favour of enablement_setting; hotel-specific fields in AdGroupBidModifier are replaced by vertical-agnostic ones such as user_set_dates, length_of_booking and start_date_range, with values carried over; HotelDateSelectionType becomes DateSelectionType and hotel-specific CriterionError reasons are replaced, so error handling needs updating.

New in v26: Search Lift reporting adds a SearchLiftKeywordBundle resource, the segments.search_lift_keyword_bundle and segments.search_property segments, and 15 metrics including relative_search_lift, normalized_incremental_searches and search_lift_impressions, analyzable alongside Campaign.lift_measurement_config. Studies cannot be created through the API. LINE and SMS joined the supported business messaging providers; local_services_enabled can be set on new Performance Max campaigns and LocalServicesLead gains a campaign field and a COUPON lead type; CurrencyConstant gains a minimum daily budget field for Demand Gen; listing_type is supported for Shopping campaigns; a new error blocks creating an ADOPT_AI_MAX experiment where AI Max is already on; the EU political advertising self-declaration field became optional for many campaigns that do not target the EU; a unified enhanced conversions configuration is exposed through enablement_setting and effective_enablement_setting; and conversions gained a MESSAGE_LEAD category and a CLICK attribution event type.