Google is moving Local Services Ads into Google Ads as Performance Max pay-per-lead campaigns from August 2026, starting with US home services and rolling out through 2027. The old LSA dashboard and its historical reports go away.
The campaign mechanics barely change. What changes is where your history lives, and Google is not bringing it with you.
Google is moving Local Services Ads into Google Ads. From August 2026 the format becomes a Performance Max campaign built for pay-per-lead goals, with new bidding, reporting and management. The first phase covers a limited group of US home and storefront service advertisers, the plumbing, electrical, HVAC, cleaning and roofing crowd, with other accounts moved through 2027.
Despite the Performance Max name, this is not the black box you might fear. The campaigns stay keywordless, still pull from your Google Business Profile, still appear only on Search and Maps, and you still pay only for valid leads like calls, messages and bookings. Not clicks.
Here is the part that will bite people. The separate Local Services Ads dashboard disappears after migration, and the historical performance reports do not come across. Years of lead data, gone from the interface, unless you pull it out first.
Why it matters
Australia is not in the first wave, but the direction is set. If you run Local Services Ads for a trade or a local service business here, your account will get moved eventually, and the same rules will apply. That gives you a warning most US advertisers did not get.
The bigger point is a familiar one. If you are not capturing your own performance data, you lose it when the platform reshuffles. Google owns the dashboard, sets the rules and can retire the whole thing on its own timeline. Any number that only lives inside a platform you do not control is a number you are renting.
The month Google begins moving Local Services Ads into Performance Max, starting with US home services and continuing through 2027.
What to do about it
Export your Local Services Ads history now. Pull lead volume, cost per lead, booking rates and monthly trends into your own spreadsheet before any migration touches your account.
Write down your current benchmarks. You want to know what good looked like before the campaign type changed, so you can tell if performance actually shifts or just gets relabelled.
Watch the reporting change, not just the leads. Performance Max reporting is thinner than the old LSA view. Decide which numbers you need and set up a way to track them yourself.
Keep answering leads fast. The economics still reward speed, because you pay per valid lead and the business that responds first usually wins it. That has not changed and it will not.
Do not assume the AU rollout is far away. Prepare as if it lands next quarter, because the cost of being ready early is nothing and the cost of being caught out is your baseline.
The channel is not getting worse. It is getting moved. Move your data first.