Google has added many automated tools over the past few years, including Smart Bidding, responsive search ads, and close variant keywords.
The Performance Max campaign is the latest addition to a growing list of automated PPC tools.
It’s probably the most revolutionary campaign type in Google Ads to date.
Performance Max campaigns allow advertisers to promote their products and services across all Google advertising channels (YouTube, Display, Search, Discover, Gmail and Maps) in a single campaign.
Traditionally, to advertise on all of Google’s networks, you’d have different campaigns and creatives for each channel.
But Performance Max simplifies reaching customers by consolidating all of this into one campaign.
This is a fairly new campaign type, so best practices are still evolving.
To help build more knowledge on this topic, I recently spoke with Google’s product team members who built Performance Max. (You can watch the full PPC Town Hall episode below.)
From early best practices to their roadmap, they shared a lot and even answered a few questions I collected from the PPC community.
Here are some key points about the Performance Max campaign.
1. Performance Max takes precedence over other Shopping campaign types
If you run both a Performance Max campaign and a Shopping or Smart Shopping campaign for the same product (or product group), the Performance Max campaign takes precedence.
This means that ads from Performance Max campaigns will be shown to users, not ads from Smart Shopping campaigns.
This is similar to the way Smart Shopping campaigns take precedence over standard Shopping campaigns when running at the same time.
when Smart Shopping campaigns upgrade to Performance Max They will continue to take precedence over standard Shopping campaigns through the end of Q3 2022.
When you upgrade your Smart Shopping campaigns to Performance Max, your ads will run by default on other channels like Search, Display, Discovery, YouTube, and Gmail.
So when transitioning, you should definitely revisit and check your creative assets to make sure they’re all set up correctly.
2. Upgrading Smart Shopping to Performance Max doesn’t mean you have to advertise on all channels
If you like the convenience of a Smart Shopping campaign and don’t like the prospect of your ads appearing in more places, then you don’t need to add all your assets to a Performance Max campaign.
If you connect your business feed but don’t provide any other assets, such as video, images, and text, your Performance Max campaign will only serve Shopping ads.
Google advertising liaison Ginny Marvin said,
“For Shopping, when you link your GMC feed to a Performance Max campaign, but no other assets have been added, the campaign will be eligible for the Shopping format in Search, Display, YouTube, and Gmail.”
This points to a broader tip: while you can’t choose which channels you want your ads in Performance Max to appear on, you can do this to some extent by choosing assets to add to your campaign.
3. Keywords from search campaigns are prioritized over performance-maximizing targeting
While Performance Max can cannibalize traffic from shopping event types, it’s designed to match your existing search, display, and YouTube campaigns. They are designed to be less cannibalistic in these situations.
When running a search campaign with Performance Max, Google will first try to show ads from the search campaign.
Ginny Marvin says,
“If the keyword is the same as the query (or spelling corrected), the search will be prioritized. Otherwise, the priority will be based on Ad Rank. The keyword must be eligible.”
The key here is about “qualification”.
A Performance Max campaign may still decide to show ads for a keyword if an advertiser tries unsuccessfully to remove it or add it as a negative keyword in a search campaign.
Search campaigns are not eligible for display ads, so Performance Max campaigns are filled with incremental traffic.
Whether it decides to step in depends on whether it believes the increased number of impressions can lead to advertisers hitting their stated goals on a given target.
This leads to our next study.
4. Reporting accurate conversion data to Performance Max results in higher quality conversions
Google says Performance Max is primarily a performance-driven campaign with conversion goals in mind. Like all automation, it makes decisions based on the transformation data you enter into the system.
So when you’re setting up a Performance Max campaign, be sure to report on the types of conversions that matter to your business.
Instead of calling leads as conversions, consider reporting conversions only when leads qualify or convert into sales.
For e-commerce, consider not only reporting sales, but also using conversion adjustments to account for returns and repeat purchases that may impact the lifetime value of new customers.
Google recently introduced Enhanced Conversions for Leads, which makes reporting high-quality conversion data easier than ever.
5. You can’t assign a specific budget to a channel
In a Performance Max campaign, you can’t assign budgets to specific channels yourself.
But Google’s machine learning handles this dynamically in real-time across all channels. It tries to optimize for your stated goal and prioritizes the channels that best help it achieve that goal.
According to Google, manually allocating budgets limits Google’s ability to use its machine learning capabilities.
If you manually set your monthly budget across specific channels, you’re basically going back to regular search, display, and other campaigns that may already be running in your account.
But keep in mind the trick of selectively submitting assets to a Performance Max campaign to control the channels it can display ads. This, along with running multiple Performance Max activities, can restore some control.
Finally, ask yourself why you want this control.
Andrew Lolk said in another episode of the PPC town hall that when advertisers demand control, they usually really mean they want actionable insights.
Advertisers are happy when automation brings good results, but frustrated when they can’t explain those results to clients and offer strategic advice.
Google promises more insights for Performance Max campaigns.
6. You can use the new customer acquisition feature to optimize the acquisition of new customers
Complaint against another automated campaign type, Smart shoppingisn’t it that it sometimes prioritizes remarketing and gets credit for conversions from people who are already in your pipeline, possibly due to non-PPC efforts like SEO.
In these cases, automated campaigns can overstate their own utility and do a poor job of growing the business with new customers.
You can avoid this by telling Google to focus on new customers and sharing first-party data about who your existing customers are.
To help you achieve this goal, Google has released the New Customer Acquisition Objectives Beta, which allows you to optimize new customer acquisition and maximize the performance of this segment.
To gain immediate access, you can contact your Google Ads representative or wait for this new feature to be publicly released soon.
7. Support account-level negative orientation
While Google doesn’t want advertisers to micromanage targeting, Performance Max campaigns will respect account-level negative keywords and negative placements.
Some advertisers say it can be beneficial to exclude unpopular locations, or at least consider settings very carefully, such as whether you’re targeting physical locations or locations of interest.
Automation can take a lot of guesswork to find new pockets of conversions, but waste a lot of money in the process.
If you’ve tried certain keywords, placements, or geographic targets and didn’t find them working, use exclusions to prevent automated re-testing of these things at your expense.
in conclusion
Performance Max campaigns show advertisers a lot of potential, but they’re very different from the other campaign types we’re more familiar with in Google Ads.
As more advertisers try this new campaign type, a whole new set of best practices will evolve.
But before that, we learn as much as we can by asking Google questions and hearing from digital marketers who have already tried Performance Max.
Watch the full episode of the April 13, 2022 PPC Town Hall to learn more:
More resources:
Featured Image: Samby/Shutterstock
