Google quietly announced a change that will permanently delete years of advertising data. Starting June 2026, Google Ads will enforce a strict 37-month retention window for granular reporting data.
Hourly, daily and weekly data older than 37 months will be gone. Not archived. Not moved to cold storage. Deleted.
The change affects every Google Ads account globally. If you've been running campaigns since 2022 or earlier, your earliest performance data is already on borrowed time.
Monthly and quarterly aggregates will survive longer, but the granular data that lets you analyse day-of-week patterns, seasonal trends and campaign-level performance over time? That has an expiry date.
The maximum data retention window for granular Google Ads reporting data from June 2026
Here's what makes this particularly painful for Australian businesses. Many run seasonal campaigns tied to financial year cycles, back-to-school periods or holiday trading windows. Comparing this year's Boxing Day campaign to the one from three years ago requires daily-level data. After June, that comparison disappears.
BigQuery data transfers are affected too. If you've been piping Google Ads data into BigQuery for warehouse-level analysis, the source data feeding those transfers follows the same retention rules. Your warehouse keeps what it already has, but new pulls can't reach back further than 37 months.
The fix is straightforward but time-sensitive.
First, export everything now. Pull hourly and daily reports going back as far as your account allows. Store them in BigQuery, a data warehouse or even a structured spreadsheet. The format matters less than the act of preservation.
Second, set up automated BigQuery transfers if you haven't already. Google's own documentation recommends this as the long-term solution. The free tier is generous enough for most small-to-mid-size accounts.
Third, document your current benchmarks. Even if you lose the raw data, having baseline metrics for cost per click, conversion rates and ROAS by quarter gives you something to compare against.
The businesses that will feel this most are the ones who don't know it's happening.
Google framed this as a storage optimisation. Fair enough. But the practical impact falls entirely on advertisers who relied on that historical depth for strategic planning.
If you're spending meaningful budget on Google Ads, block out an hour this week to run your exports. Once the data is gone, no amount of account management will bring it back.
Sources: Search Engine Land, Google Ads Help
