Is Google Performance Max Right for Your Business? Key Insights and Tips
Most people who have run ads on Google Ads are familiar with at least some of the core campaign types, including search, display, video, and shopping. However, since 2021, Google has increasingly promoted Performance Max (or PMax) campaigns for its ability to show ads across networks and take advantage of Google’s machine learning for improved audience targeting.
Most paid ad marketers have likely at least dabbled with Performance Max, but many business owners are less familiar with the campaign type. With Google planning to phase out Smart Campaigns and upgrade them to PMax, now is an excellent time to learn about this unique campaign type.
In this post, we’ll explain Performance Max, how it works, and a few tips for evaluating whether it suits your business objectives.
What is a Performance Max Campaign?
Performance Max is a goal-focused, automated campaign type that spans across all of Google’s ad inventory, including:
- Google Search Network (the search and shopping ads that appear when you search on Google or search partner sites)
- Google Display Network (the visual ads that show up on other websites or apps, like The Weather Channel)
- YouTube
- Google Discover Network (Google’s personalized content feed that appears on mobile devices like Android phones)
- Gmail
- Google Maps
This campaign type aims to increase your conversions across multiple ad networks through one campaign. Accurate conversion data is essential for Performance Max since it relies on Smart Bidding strategies (like Maximize Conversion Value) to optimize real-time campaign performance.
Performance Max campaigns work well as a supplement to search campaigns since they go beyond the search engine results pages (SERPs). There are significant differences in audience intent and how each campaign targets users. Performance Max targets people throughout the purchasing cycle, while search focuses more on those actively looking for a product or service.
How does Performance Max work?
Since Performance Max is driven by machine learning, it requires the advertiser’s input to make intelligent decisions. Determine which bidding strategy and customer acquisition method work best for your goals. By default, PMax will bid higher for new customers over existing ones. You can then set the locations, languages, and ad scheduling settings like any other campaign type.
By default, PMax enables automatically created assets. This feature allows Google to make text assets for your ads created from your website content and other ad copy. If that feature is enabled, you also have the option to select Final URL expansion. That feature allows Google to replace your URL with a landing page that it believes to be more relevant to a user’s search. If you want more control over your campaign, turn off those settings.
Performance Max ads (called Asset Groups) are similar to responsive display ads and include a combination of images, videos, headlines, descriptions, and brand assets (like logos and business names) to fit the wide variety of placements available to the campaign. Google has helpful tips about the number of recommended assets and sizes for each asset type here.
Performance Max also uses audience signals that you can add to help with targeting. These can include:
- Your Data (retargeting lists and other 1st party data)
- Audience Interests (in-market segments, life events, buying habits, etc.)
- Demographics (age range, gender, household income, etc.)
- Search themes (optional keywords related to your products or services)
Since its introduction, Google has added numerous features to Performance Max to give advertisers more transparency and control over where ads are shown. A lot of performance data is still hidden, but here are a few newer control features worth noting if you plan to or are currently running Performance Max campaigns.
- Brand Lists—Both search and PMax campaigns allow you to add brand lists to help control which brand searches trigger your ads. This feature can stop branded queries from triggering your ads. I recommend creating one list for your brand and at least one for competitor brands.
- Negative keywords – Unlike search ads, PMax campaigns only allow you to apply negative keywords to the account level. Be careful; this means none of your campaigns will show when those keywords are searched.
- Content Suitability—This feature helps prevent your ads from appearing on content that doesn’t align with your business. Settings can include sensitive content, content themes, specific website or app placements, and others.
Will Performance Max work for my Business?
As always, in digital marketing, the answer depends. Performance Max is a great way to expand the reach of your ads to networks you may not have explored before. With accurate and reliable conversion data, it can significantly boost your lead growth, but some other notable factors can influence your success.
E-commerce
Performance Max works well for e-commerce businesses, particularly those with product feeds connected to Google Ads via Google Merchant Center. These kinds of companies usually have a steady stream of conversion and revenue data that helps optimize PMax performance.
Lead Generation
Businesses centering on lead generation tend to face more challenges when using PMax. It can undoubtedly help increase the number of form submissions or phone calls but does not distinguish between a qualified and unqualified lead without some help. A customer relationship management system (CRM) like HubSpot or Salesforce can help provide Google Ads with simpler data management via connectors. Other solutions include enhanced conversion tracking, which can provide more accurate data but requires some technical setup or importing conversions into Google Ads.
Budget
Budget can also be a limiting factor; different sources provide various recommended starting points. Google recommends testing a PMax budget of at least three times your cost per acquisition. Other sources say around $50 to $100/day for the first 30 days of testing, which matches what we’ve heard from Google Ads Representatives. There’s no “correct” answer, but we recommend starting with a higher daily budget for the first few weeks to ensure your PMax campaign can collect that initial conversion data. Then, you can make budget adjustments based on your campaign’s results.
Keeping Ad Assets Fresh
Performance Max has valuable tools, such as the Performance Rating, to tell you how your ad assets perform relative to each other and rank them as Best, Good, Low, or Not enough data.
Maintaining a PMax campaign means swapping out low-performing assets for new options and giving the campaign time to test them. Recently, Google has also added the ability to see the conversions and conversion value associated with each asset, providing advertisers with more actionable data about asset performance.
Regularly creating and testing ad assets is helpful for any paid ad campaign to remain relevant to your audience and keep people from developing ad fatigue. If your business has limited resources to make new creative assets or brand guidelines to which you must adhere, other campaign types may better suit your needs.
Final Thoughts
Performance Max is a versatile campaign type that provides advertisers with an excellent way to reach people across Google’s networks and drive conversion growth from one campaign. Over the past few years, Google has added numerous features to improve transparency and give advertisers more control over their PMax campaigns. However, most decision-making about where and when to show ads still depends on Google’s AI. To get the most out of PMax, you must
- Understand your business’s marketing goals and set up your PMax campaign’s targeting with those goals in mind.
- Have reliable conversion tracking to help machine learning make wise decisions.
- Have enough budget to support your PMax campaign as it collects initial data.
- Regularly refresh your ad assets to keep your message relevant to your audience.
If you need help getting started with Performance Max or optimizing your existing campaigns, SEO Rocket can help! Schedule a free, no-obligation consultation with us today.
