Learn · How-To

How to Migrate Call-Only Ads Before They Stop Serving

Google is retiring call-only ads on a fixed timetable. The option to create a new one was removed in February 2026, and Google's own help documentation states that in February 2027 "all existing call-only ads will stop receiving impressions". There is no extension process and no opt-out. If phone calls are a meaningful lead source for your business, this is a dated migration with revenue attached to it. Google's official transition guide is three steps long: prepare the account, add call assets to a responsive search ad, remove the old ad. That is accurate and it is not sufficient. The parts that actually break a migration — call conversions, business hours, tracking numbers, and how you tell afterwards whether lead quality held — are not in it. This guide covers both.

1. 1

   Find out how exposed you actually are

   Before changing anything, filter your campaigns by ad type and find every live call-only ad. Record each one's thirty-day conversions, cost per call and conversion rate. This is your baseline. Without it you will have no way to tell afterwards whether the migration cost you anything, and "it feels about the same" is not a measurement. If you have no call-only ads live, you have nothing to do here — a surprising number of accounts were migrated years ago and nobody recorded it.

2. 2

   Add your business name at account or campaign level

   Call assets attach to responsive search ads, and those ads require a business name in your account or campaign settings. Google lists this first for a reason: without it the rest of the setup will not complete. Set it at account level unless you run genuinely distinct brands from one account, in which case set it per campaign.

3. 3

   Add every phone number as a call asset

   Add each number you advertise as a call asset and check it against Google's call asset policy before you rely on it. Numbers that route through a third-party call-tracking provider, use a premium rate prefix, or forward offshore are the ones most likely to be rejected, and a rejection discovered in February 2027 is a rejection discovered too late.

4. 4

   Carry your call schedule across deliberately

   Call-only ads carried their own scheduling. Call assets use asset-level scheduling that you have to set explicitly, and the default is to run whenever the ad runs. If nobody answers the phone between 17:00 and 08:00, set the asset schedule to match the hours you actually answer. The most common post-migration complaint is a rise in missed calls, and this setting is usually the cause.

5. 5

   Build the responsive search ad properly, not as a copy-paste

   In the target ad group, create or edit a responsive search ad and attach the call assets under More Asset Types. Resist the temptation to paste your call-only headline straight in. A call-only ad was written for someone who could only phone; an RSA is written for someone who may phone or may click through. You need headlines that work for both, and a landing page good enough to receive the ones who click.

6. 6

   Re-check your call conversion actions before you switch over

   Confirm which conversion action is counting calls, what minimum call length it requires, and whether it is set as a primary or secondary conversion. Migrations frequently change what gets counted without changing what happens, which produces a reported drop that is purely an accounting artefact. Write down the current settings so you can prove which it was.

7. 7

   Run both in parallel, briefly

   Let the new ad serve alongside the old one until it is approved and accumulating impressions. Google's guidance is to remove the call ad once the responsive search ad is approved and performing. A short overlap of a week or two is cheap insurance against an approval problem you did not anticipate.

8. 8

   Remove the old call-only ads and mark the date

   Once the replacement is producing calls at a comparable rate, remove the call-only ads and record the date in your account change history notes. Future you, looking at a performance discontinuity six months from now, will want to know exactly when this happened.

9. 9

   Compare lead quality, not just call volume

   Thirty days after the switch, compare your baseline against the new numbers — but compare answered calls and qualified calls, not total calls. Responsive search ads reach a broader audience than call-only ads did, so a rise in call volume with a fall in qualification rate is a realistic outcome and it is not necessarily a bad one. It is a different mix, and you need to decide whether you want it.