Creating new Smart Campaigns via the Google Ads API closed on August 3
The Google Ads API official deprecations list carries an effective date of August 3, 2026: new Smart Campaigns can no longer be opened through the API. Existing Smart Campaigns keep serving ads and can still be updated. The change mostly affects agency and software flows that create campaigns automatically.
The date arrived and the door closed quietly
The Google Ads API documentation on deprecations and unversioned changes carries an entry with an effective date of August 3, 2026. The wording is unambiguous: "New Smart Campaigns cannot be created. Existing Smart Campaigns will continue to serve ads and can be updated." New Smart Campaigns cannot be created, and the ones already running stay live and remain editable.
The change was not a surprise. The Google Ads Developer Blog published a post titled "Changes to Support for Smart Campaigns in the Google Ads API" on June 23, 2026, and Search Engine Land covered it on June 24. That left roughly six weeks between announcement and effect. What happened this week is the date arriving.
Scope needs one caveat: every source we reviewed describes the change through the API path. The status of Smart Campaigns in the Google Ads interface is not addressed in those sources, so we make no claim about it here either.
The error arrives from a different place depending on your version
As Search Engine Land reports, the call now returns an error, and its name depends on the API version in use. Version 24 returns SmartCampaignError.CREATION_FAILED. Version 23 and earlier return OperationAccessDeniedError.CREATE_OPERATION_NOT_PERMITTED. In practice that means an integration pinned to an older version will see a more generic permission error, and a team reading the logs could misdiagnose it and start hunting for an authorisation problem.
There is no interruption on the existing campaign side. The official entry states that current Smart Campaigns keep serving ads and can be updated, and Search Engine Land confirms they can still be managed through the API. So this is not a shutdown, only the closing of the path that opens new records.
Google points to its own automated campaign types as alternatives. The option it leads with is Performance Max, which serves across Google's advertising channels. Depending on the objective, Search and Demand Gen campaigns are also among the recommendations.
The affected party is not the advertiser building campaigns by hand. Search Engine Land names them plainly: agencies, software providers and platform partners with automated campaign creation workflows. Any tool that opens a client account and then spins up a campaign in one click has to rewrite part of that flow.
The move from simple setup to automation cleared another threshold
Smart Campaigns were an entry level campaign type designed to let small businesses run ads with minimal configuration. Closing that door on the API side means the same slot gets filled by Performance Max. We are not claiming the two are equivalent, and neither do the sources; what Google is doing is routing new setups toward automated campaign types.
The concrete cost of that shift is not in the setup but in the data. Performance Max needs richer material to work with: conversion tracking, audience signals, image and text assets. The sources do not enumerate those requirements, so that part is our field experience. What is fixed by the sources is this: the campaign type being pointed to is Performance Max, and it does not share the minimal configuration logic of a Smart Campaign.
Then there is timing. If your tool opens a campaign automatically when a new client is onboarded, it may have started failing quietly this week. The June announcement spreads the responsibility, but in practice the break shows up on the effective date, and the first person to notice is usually the client whose campaign never started.
What it means for businesses in Türkiye
The assessment below is our reading, not something stated in the sources. None of them contains a country specific breakdown; the change applies across the API.
A meaningful share of small business advertising in Türkiye runs through tools and agency panels that keep setup simple, so the practical impact lands in three places. First, the agency and software side: any flow that opens a campaign through the API after a client record is created now returns an error and needs review, with the error message read correctly in the logs. Second, existing accounts: there is nothing urgent for accounts with live Smart Campaigns, because the entry states they keep running. Third, new setups: opening a campaign in a new account now means choosing a different type, and if that type is Performance Max then correctly configured conversion tracking matters more than it did before.
In short this is not a crisis, it is a maintenance item. But if it goes unnoticed, the place it gets noticed is a client asking why their ads never started. That last sentence is our own comment.
The UNALSOFT take
On our ad management side, campaign type is not a preference but a decision tied to how mature the account is. Moving to an automated campaign type in an account where conversion tracking has not settled means handing the budget to a system that will struggle to learn. This change is a reminder of that order: measurement first, campaign second. For accounts about to be set up, the first job is confirming that conversions are actually being counted correctly.
The campaign type changed, measurement is next.
Let's look together at which campaign type your account is actually ready for.