Google Ads: how to allocate budget across channels?

A Google Ads campaign might perform well on Search but deliver different results across search partners or the Display Network.

Until recently, however, advertisers had limited control over how their budgets were distributed between these networks.

On 14 October 2026, Google announced two new features: Channel Prioritization and Budget Allocation, designed to give advertisers more control over where their advertising spend goes.

The update covers Search, Shopping, Performance Max and Demand Gen, with a gradual rollout beginning on 15 October.

These changes arrive at a particularly relevant time for ecommerce businesses, with Black Friday approaching.

They could also benefit lead generation campaigns and ongoing advertising strategies.

Let's explore how the new Google Ads budget controls work, their limitations and when they are worth using.

What's changing in Google Ads budget management?

With these new controls, Google allows advertisers to decide which channels should receive priority when allocating budget and how much can be spent on secondary networks.

The update introduces two features:

• Channel Prioritization: assigns channels a high or low priority, telling Google where to direct spending first.
• Budget Allocation: allows advertisers to set a desired maximum percentage of their daily budget for low-priority channels.

The distinction matters because the two settings serve different purposes.

Channel Prioritization influences the order in which Google allocates available budget. Budget Allocation introduces a percentage-based spending limit for selected networks.

These controls do not automatically distribute an advertiser's entire budget across separate Search, Shopping and Performance Max campaigns.

Instead, they operate at channel or channel-group level within each supported campaign type.

According to Google's official announcement, the aim is to offer advertisers more flexibility than simply enabling or excluding an advertising network.

How does Channel Prioritization work?

Channel Prioritization allows advertisers to assign two priority levels to available channels:

• High Priority: Google aims to allocate budget to these channels first, while respecting any performance targets.
• Low Priority: receives remaining budget when suitable opportunities are available within the campaign's settings.

By default, channels are classified as High Priority, apart from certain transitional rules affecting Search campaigns with Display Expansion.

Consider a practical example.

A B2B company uses a Search campaign to generate sales enquiries. Most qualified conversions come from Google Search, while Google search partners deliver less consistent results.

With the new controls, the advertiser can prioritise Google Search and assign search partners to the Low Priority tier.

Google will then aim to fund opportunities on the higher-priority channel first, within the campaign's bidding objectives.

This does not guarantee that the entire budget will be spent on Google Search. Actual allocation also depends on available demand, campaign settings and expected performance.

What happens with Target CPA and Target ROAS?

An important consideration involves campaigns using Smart Bidding with Target CPA or Target ROAS.

When a campaign is limited by budget, Google prioritises High Priority channels, provided the available opportunities remain compatible with the selected performance target.

If additional spending on those channels would exceed the desired acquisition cost or compromise the Target ROAS, the system may direct some budget towards secondary channels.

When a campaign is not limited by budget, channel priority alone generally does not change spending distribution.

Google continues optimising towards the performance target across available channels.

This is where Budget Allocation becomes particularly useful.

Budget Allocation: how can you set spending limits?

Budget Allocation allows advertisers to assign Low Priority channels a desired maximum percentage of their average daily budget.

Imagine a Search campaign with the following settings:

• Average daily budget: £100
• Google Search: High Priority
• Google search partners: Low Priority
• Budget Allocation for search partners: 15%

Google will aim to keep daily spending on search partners within £15, leaving more budget available for opportunities on Google Search.

The percentage is calculated using the campaign's average daily budget, regardless of how much the campaign actually spends that day.

One important detail: the limit operates on a best-effort basis.

Google aims to respect the selected percentage but does not guarantee it will always be maintained.

On some days, spending may exceed the desired allocation, partly because Google Ads can spend more than the average daily budget under its standard spending rules.

The allocation resets each day. Any overspending or underspending is not carried forward.

Advertisers can also set an allocation of 0% to prevent spending on a particular channel.

These controls offer greater flexibility, especially for businesses that want to test additional networks without leaving their budget allocation entirely open.

Which Google Ads campaigns support the new controls?

The features are being rolled out progressively, and the available options depend on the campaign type.

Google currently distinguishes four main configurations.

Search and Shopping

For Search campaigns, advertisers can manage priorities across:

• Google Search
• Google search partners
• Google Display Network

For Shopping campaigns, the available channels are Google Search and Google search partners.

This makes it possible, for example, to test search partners with a lower priority and a percentage-based spending limit.

Performance Max and Demand Gen

For Performance Max, Google uses three channel groupings:

• Google channels
• Google search partners
• Google Display Network

Google channels includes properties such as Search, YouTube, Maps, Gmail and Discover.

The new controls therefore cannot assign separate spending percentages to Search and YouTube within the same Performance Max campaign.

Google-owned properties are managed as one group, while search partners and the Display Network can receive different priority levels.

For Demand Gen, the available groupings are Google channels and the Google Display Network.

There is an important limitation: Demand Gen supports Channel Prioritization but not Budget Allocation.

Advertisers should therefore check which spending controls are actually available for each campaign type.

How do you configure channel priorities in Google Ads?

The new controls can be configured at account, campaign or shared-budget level, where supported.

To create an account-level configuration:

1. Open your Google Ads account settings.
2. Find the Channel Prioritization section, if available.
3. Select the campaign type you want to configure.
4. Assign High Priority or Low Priority to the available channels.
5. Where supported, enter the Budget Allocation percentage and save.

Advertisers can also define campaign-specific settings that override the account defaults.

For shared budgets, the campaigns must belong to the same campaign type, and the allocation percentages apply to the shared budget as a whole.

Availability is not yet uniform. Google began rolling out the features on 15 October 2026 and expects to extend access over the following months. Some accounts may therefore not display the new settings yet.

Before changing a campaign, it is worth reviewing the bidding strategy, whether the campaign is limited by budget and how its different channels are currently performing.

Google search partners: should you reduce their budget?

Google search partners are one of the most interesting use cases for the new controls.

This network allows Search adverts to appear on Google's partner search properties, extending their reach beyond Google Search itself.

Performance can vary depending on the industry, campaign and quality of traffic.

For some businesses, search partners help generate conversions at sustainable costs. For others, results may be less convincing than those achieved through Google Search.

Before reducing spending, advertisers should consider:

• Conversions and CPA: how much it costs to generate results across different networks.
• Lead quality: how many enquiries become genuine commercial opportunities.
• Conversion value: revenue and ROAS, where available.
• Volume and consistency: whether there is enough data to make a reliable comparison.

If the results suggest weaker performance, assigning search partners a lower priority and introducing a spending limit may be appropriate.

However, excluding a network simply because it generates a slightly higher CPA could mean losing valuable conversions.

For lead generation campaigns in particular, the assessment should also account for CRM data and the actual value of acquired customers.

What changes for Black Friday and seasonal campaigns?

Budget allocation becomes particularly important during Peak Season, when demand, competition and advertising costs can change quickly.

An ecommerce business investing heavily in Google Shopping and Performance Max may want tighter control over secondary networks during the most competitive trading days.

Channel Prioritization and Budget Allocation make it possible to decide in advance which channels to prioritise and how much room to leave for others, provided the relevant settings are available.

This could help advertisers manage spending during Black Friday, which falls on 27 November 2026.

However, last-minute changes deserve caution.

Adjusting channel priorities, budgets and Target ROAS simultaneously makes it harder to understand which decisions have influenced campaign performance.

We have already explored Peak Season budget management in our article on Black Friday advertising, budget, bidding and tROAS.

The new controls introduce an additional way to manage spending across networks, while existing budget planning and bidding strategies remain essential.

What will happen in February 2027?

Another update is approaching for Search campaigns using Display Expansion.

From February 2027, Google plans to replace the current Display Network spending allocation system with the new channel priority and budget controls.

This could change how spending is distributed between Google Search, search partners and the Display Network for some existing campaigns.

According to the official Google Ads documentation, advertisers who want to preserve the current Display Expansion behaviour can use the following settings:

• Google Display Network: Low Priority
• Budget Allocation: 50%

This remains a best-effort allocation rather than a guaranteed hard cap.

The recommendation specifically concerns Search campaigns with Display Expansion enabled. It should not be applied automatically to every campaign.

Businesses using this network should review their settings before the scheduled transition in February 2027.

How can you tell whether the new budget allocation works?

Greater control over advertising spend is only valuable when it supports better decisions.

Before changing priorities, advertisers should define what they expect the new distribution to achieve.

The objective might be to reduce CPA, improve ROAS or limit spending on a network with unpredictable performance.

After making the change, results should be compared against an appropriate previous period, accounting for seasonality, changes in demand and other campaign adjustments.

Where possible, controlled experiments can help isolate the effects of the new configuration.

It is also important to distinguish attributed conversions from genuinely incremental results.

An improvement in the ROAS reported by Google Ads does not, by itself, demonstrate that the investment generated additional business value.

We explored this distinction in our article on Google Ads attribution models and how to measure value.

How can you optimise Google Ads budget allocation?

Channel Prioritization and Budget Allocation give advertisers new ways to direct spending across channels and networks, without necessarily excluding secondary inventory entirely.

Decisions about priority should start with existing performance, commercial objectives and the contribution each network makes to conversions.

For ecommerce businesses, this means considering order value, margins and results from Shopping and Performance Max campaigns.

For B2B companies, the priority is connecting lead acquisition costs to actual lead quality and commercial value.

At RichClicks, we develop Google Ads strategies that combine budget planning, campaign management and conversion measurement, identifying investment opportunities aligned with business objectives.

Explore our Google Ads consultancy services to improve your budget allocation and optimise campaign performance.