Google Ads API v25.2 Adds Competitive Benchmarks and Deeper Performance Max Controls

Google Ads API v25.2 Adds Competitive Benchmarks and Deeper Performance Max Controls

Google released v25.2 of the Google Ads API on September 23, 2026, adding competitive benchmarking, expanded Performance Max controls, and a set of developer-focused reporting and recommendation features. The changes give advertisers and platforms more programmatic visibility into market position and more granular control over Performance Max (PMax) asset groups and URL tracking.

The update surfaces percentile-based benchmarks, enables AssetGroup-level URL options, and adds a migration path from Smart campaigns to Performance Max drafts. As Search Engine Land summarized, “Advertisers are getting more data and control across competitive benchmarking, PMax, Search bidding and creator insights,” — a practical characterization of what this release offers (Anu Adegbola, Search Engine Land).

What changed — the essentials

There are three headline changes to watch:

• Competitive benchmarks (percentile metrics): BenchmarksService.GenerateBenchmarksMetrics now supports percentile metrics so advertisers can see their standing in percentile tiers against an “all advertisers” benchmark, scoped with category filters.
• Performance Max controls: AssetGroup-level URL options were added — tracking templates, custom URL parameters, and final URL suffixes — plus a SmartCampaignSettingService.GeneratePMaxDraftCampaign method to create PMax drafts from existing Smart campaigns.
• Recommendations and reporting: New recommendation types flag overly restrictive Target CPA/ROAS settings and more granular hotel/travel metrics and segments were added for vertical reporting.

Why this matters

The benchmark percentile metrics are a practical addition for teams that need to contextualize performance. Instead of relying solely on internal historical trends or sample data, agencies and in-house teams can now programmatically pull a percentile view of performance and automate alerts or dashboards around it. As the Google developers’ notes explain, the BenchmarksService was “updated to provide metrics representing the customer’s competitive standing among other advertisers in percentile tier format” (Google Developers release notes).

For Performance Max, adding URL options at the AssetGroup level improves tracking hygiene and attribution fidelity. Historically, PMax’s automation and broad coverage made consistent tracking more difficult. AssetGroup-level tracking templates and custom parameters let teams apply consistent UTM schemes or server-side tracking templates per asset group rather than relying on campaign-level or ad-level workarounds.

Actionable recommendations

Here are practical steps advertisers and agencies should take in the coming weeks:

1. Audit current PMax setups: Review asset groups and identify where custom URL parameters or tracking templates would improve attribution. Plan a phased rollout to avoid sudden reporting breaks.
2. Integrate benchmark metrics into dashboards: Use the BenchmarksService to add percentile metrics to client or executive dashboards. Focus initially on impressions, CTR and cost-related percentiles for quick market context.
3. Validate Smart-to-PMax conversions: Use SmartCampaignSettingService.GeneratePMaxDraftCampaign with validation (validate_only) to preview migration issues before creating drafts. Map out content, image and business profile constraints to prevent failed conversions.
4. Adjust bidding guardrails: Monitor the new recommendations that flag when Target CPA or Target ROAS may be suppressing auction participation. Treat these recommendations as diagnostic signals to test moderate loosening in a controlled experiment.
5. Update developer integrations: If you maintain analytics or reporting platforms, update client libraries and test calls to v25.2 endpoints. Confirm that percentile data is requested with PERCENTILE_DATA in supplemental_data and that BenchmarksSource settings match your category filters.

Implications for teams and tooling

Agencies managing many accounts should prioritize adding benchmarks to account health checks — percentile context helps prioritize where effort will move the needle. Data teams will want to standardize how percentile tiers are displayed (e.g., top 10% = market leader, 50th percentile = median performer) and translate findings into concrete retargeting, creative, or bid experiments.

Developers building dashboards or automation should treat the new fields as optional enrichments that can be toggled per client. Percentile metrics are powerful, but only when aligned with category filters that make comparisons meaningful. Likewise, the Smart-to-PMax draft generation endpoint reduces manual migration work but requires careful validation of assets and GBP/image support to avoid generation errors.

Example use cases

– An e-commerce brand uses percentile benchmarks to see that its CTR is in the 30th percentile for “Apparel/Clothing.” That triggers a creative refresh and a focused asset-group level test in PMax, where custom URL parameters allow A/Bing landing page variants to be tracked cleanly.

– A travel advertiser leverages new hotel itinerary segments to isolate booking window performance and adjust bidding for short lead-time bookings versus long-lead stays.

Conclusion

Google Ads API v25.2 is a modest but strategically useful release: percentile benchmarking brings market context, while PMax URL controls and Smart-to-PMax drafting ease migration and improve tracking. Teams that prioritize integration and validation will extract the most value quickly.

Attribution: Article informed by Anu Adegbola, “Google Ads API v25.2 adds competitive benchmarks and PMax upgrades,” Search Engine Land, and Google Developers release notes: https://searchengineland.com/google-ads-api-v25-2-adds-competitive-benchmarks-and-pmax-upgrades-491541 and https://developers.google.com/google-ads/api/docs/release-notes.