Baidu Absorbed One-Click Volume Into AIMax. Read the Defaults.

🔀 Baidu moved one more manual control inside AIMax

Baidu has consolidated one of the most-used manual levers in its feed advertising system — "one-click volume", the button that lets an operator push extra budget into a plan when it needs momentum — into AIMax, its automated bidding mode. Under the change, the manual mode will no longer accept new one-click volume settings.

The notice is published on Baidu's advertiser portal under the heading Smart Bidding AIMax Capability Upgrade, marked fully rolled out and scoped to feed advertising. Its attachment is dated 19 October 2026.

The substance is three changes. The one that matters most is not the loudest.

📋 What the notice changes, and where it applies

The document sets out three capability upgrades, and states that all three act on the AIMax mode in feed advertising.

First, a creative derivation switch. AIMax has always pulled creative from two sources — system selection, where the system picks videos from historical data, and a creative pack that the advertiser configures. The notice adds a switch deciding whether the system may derive further creative from whatever it is given. It is selected as on by default.

Second, one-click volume becomes "smart volume" and moves into AIMax. The capability is renamed, restated as an optional atomic capability inside AIMax, and the matching column in the management list is renamed. In manual mode, new one-click volume settings are no longer supported; existing ones keep their current interface and stay editable until the system retires them.

Third, bulk activation. The management list now supports switching AIMax on in bulk, and switching on its atomic capabilities in bulk.

One boundary matters for reading the rest: this notice governs feed advertising. AIMax as a product spans both search and feed, but the three changes described here are feed-side. Nothing in this document alters search bidding mechanics.

🎛️ One-click volume now exists only inside AIMax

Worth being precise about what "no longer supported" means, because it is easy to overread in either direction.

Existing one-click volume settings in manual mode are not switched off. They keep their interface, remain editable, and continue to operate. What ends is the ability to create new ones. The notice describes the existing ones as continuing until the system retires them, which sets a horizon without naming a date.

New capability, therefore, flows one way: if an operator wants on-demand volume control on a plan going forward, the path runs through AIMax. That is a consolidation of the control surface rather than a removal of the control.

The practical question for an account is how many plans still depend on manual-mode one-click volume. Those will keep working, and they will keep working until they do not. An account that has not inventoried them is relying on a mechanism with an announced end and no announced date.

💰 Ten to twenty percent, and the default that enables it

This is the clause to read twice, and it needs its two layers separated.

Inside AIMax, smart volume has an on/off switch. At the project level, that switch defaults to off. So an account does nothing and the capability stays dormant.

But underneath the switch sits a mode, and the project-level mode defaults to automatic. Under automatic mode, the notice says the system judges when a project is short of volume and its delivery stability is at risk, and then calls on 10 to 20 percent of the project budget, within a short window, to explore target users.

Read the two defaults together and the sequence is clear. Smart volume off by default means the budget call does not happen on its own. But once an operator switches it on, the mode they land in is automatic — and automatic mode is where the system decides that 10 to 20 percent should move.

That is the design worth flagging to a client. The expense is bounded, disclosed, and off by default, which is a defensible design. The risk is procedural: an operator who switches the capability on to test it, without checking the secondary default, has opted into an automatic budget call rather than a manual one.

The notice also provides a custom mode, covering immediate effect, scheduled windows and weekly cycles, where the operator sets the terms. Project level defaults to automatic; the plan level defaults to off.

🖼️ Creative derivation became a switch, and turning it off has a cost

The derivation switch is the change most likely to produce an unpleasant surprise, because the two directions are not symmetric.

On by default, the system may derive further creative from account assets or a creative pack, and the notice notes that Baijiahao videos are excluded from derivation. Off, the system uses the supplied assets as they are. Switching between the two is supported.

The asymmetry is in the off-direction. The notice states that once derivation is switched from on to off, derived creative infrastructure will no longer be adopted, and units whose infrastructure was already built but not yet adopted may be cleared.

So the switch is not a toggle with two equal states. Turning it off can remove work in progress. For an account that has been running AIMax with derivation on, the sequence should be: look at what has been built but not adopted, decide whether any of it is worth keeping, and only then turn it off.

Two carve-outs are stated. Accounts on the no-derivation copying list, and financial-industry accounts, get the switch set to off by default when they enable AIMax — the more conservative setting is the default for them.

🎯 What this changes for an overseas brand's account

Three adjustments, ordered by how soon they bite.

Inventory the manual one-click volume plans. They still run, and they have an end date nobody has published. The work now is to know which plans they are, so that the migration is a decision rather than an event.

Check the second default before switching anything on. The first default is reassuring — smart volume is off. The second is not: enable it and the mode is automatic, with a stated budget range of 10 to 20 percent. Decide the mode deliberately, and consider whether custom mode is the better fit for a client whose budget authority is tightly held.

Treat the derivation switch as a one-way door in the off-direction. It can clear unadopted infrastructure. Review before switching, not after.

None of this is exotic. It is the ordinary work of keeping control of an account while a platform shifts the default path toward automation.

🏢 Where Baidu PPC Pro comes in

The China side of this has four prerequisites, and none of them changes with a product notice.

An account without a Chinese entity. Baidu requires a Chinese business licence to open an advertising account. Most overseas brands do not hold one, and obtaining one takes months. Baidu PPC Pro opens and manages the account without it, which decides whether a brand can be in a Chinese auction at all.

A keyword map built from local terms. Chinese consumers search the local term for the category, the local term for the feature and the local phrase for the problem they want solved. A translated keyword list reaches people and then fails to match them.

Creative that clears review the first time. Advertising in China is filed and reviewed per industry, with claims checked against permitted phrasing. A creative that performs in another market can be rejected here on submission, usually with no advance warning.

Landing pages that answer the search. Chinese-language pages that resolve the comparison the user just typed. Traffic to a page that reads as translated is traffic already paid for and then lost.

📅 What to watch, and notes on the source

Four things would settle what is still open.

1. Whether a date is published for retiring existing manual-mode one-click volume settings. "Will be retired" without a date is a liability until it becomes a date.
2. How the system defines the moment when a project is short of volume and delivery stability is at risk. That definition sets when the 10 to 20 percent gets called, and it is the part an advertiser cannot see.
3. Whether the derivation switch's off-direction behaves as described in practice — specifically, how much unadopted infrastructure is cleared and whether it can be recovered.
4. Whether a comparable consolidation reaches search-side manual controls. This notice is feed-only; the question is whether it is a pattern.

Notes on the source:

• The notice is published on Baidu's advertiser portal at yingxiao.baidu.com, product notice identifier 3201, headed "Smart Bidding AIMax Capability Upgrade — fully rolled out — feed advertising". Its attachment is named for the feed advertising platform and dated 20261019.
• The notice page renders client-side. Its body was read from the indexed rendering of that page, not from a browser session, and the passages quoted here were checked against that text. This is stated because the reading path affects how firmly the detail can be held.
• The notice announces full rollout but does not state an effective date in the text available. No date is asserted here.
• The three changes are stated by the notice to act on the AIMax mode in feed advertising. AIMax as a product spans search and feed; this article does not describe any change to search-side bidding.
• The figures of 44.2 percent advertiser penetration and more than 6,000 accounts fully delegated to AIMax come from coverage of a Baidu Marketing product event, not from this notice, and are not audited figures.
• No effect on cost, volume, approval rates or account performance is quantified, because none has been published.