Liam Walsh
Liam is a Co-Director at Intelligency and heads up the agency's Digital Intelligence & Paid Social activity. Over the last decade, he has worked with brands from the world of sports such as Premier League clubs to entertainment such as Channel 4 and Disney.
Google Ads is making another big shift toward automation: by the end of this year, manual language targeting will disappear from Search campaigns. Instead, Google’s AI will automatically detect and target user languages.
What’s changing?
Up until now, we’ve been able to tell Google exactly which languages to target—whether that’s English, French, or Spanish—so ads only showed to users browsing in those languages. Once this rolls out, that option goes away. Google’s AI will take full control, using a mix of signals like search queries, browser settings, and behavior to decide a user’s language.
What’s not changing?
This is Search-only for now. If you’re running Display or YouTube campaigns, you’ll still have the manual language targeting options we’re all used to.
Why this matters?
On the surface, this makes campaign setup simpler and could, in theory, mean better detection of user intent. But the flip side is reduced control. If Google’s AI misinterprets signals, ads could start showing in markets or languages you don’t want to target—or, equally worrying, you might miss out on the audiences that matter. That means we’ll need to keep an even closer eye on performance data and be ready to step in quickly if something looks off.
Industry context
This change was first picked up by PPC News Feed (credit to Ezra Sackett for spotting it) and it fits a clear pattern: Google is steadily removing manual levers in favor of automation. We’ve already seen this with responsive search ads, automated bidding, and Performance Max.
The bigger picture
For me, this underlines the reality of where Google is heading: more automation, less manual control. While AI can certainly drive efficiencies, it also forces us as marketers to adapt—shifting our focus from setup to strategy, measurement, and making sure automation is working in our favor.
