Google Ads Performance Max: Is it worth it?
I’m a Google Ads coach who teaches marketers and business owners how to get the most bang for their buck out of Google Ads. In fact, even though I don’t work at Google anymore, the Google Ads sales teams still bring me in to do Google Ads training!
Given that street cred, here’s what you need to know about the new Google Ads campaign type Performance Max, and whether it's right for your business.
What is Performance Max?
Performance Max is the newest campaign type in Google Ads. For the first time, you can run Search, Shopping, Display, Discovery, Video and Local ads all out of a single campaign.
Who can use Performance Max?
Every Google Ads account is eligible for Performance Max. In fact, if you try to launch a Shopping campaign, the Google Ads interface will “nudge” you into choosing PMax instead. And standalone Smart Shopping or Local campaigns don’t exist anymore, they’ve both been “rolled up” into Performance Max.
The 3C’s you need to run Performance Max campaigns
1. Conversion tracking
You should also know that Performance Max is purely designed for conversions; if you don't have conversion tracking set up, it's not the right campaign type for you. That means that for lead gen businesses where a conversion is a lead rather than a purchase, you may have issues getting strong results from PMax. However, Performance Max is a great fit for ecommerce businesses.
2. Creative assets
In order to run a Performance Max campaign, you have to give lots of assets: headlines, descriptions, images, logos, videos, and if applicable, your shopping feed or store locations.
3. Customer data for your Audience Signal
What's also different about Performance Max is this brand new concept of an “audience signal.” It's not a fully automated campaign type, like an App campaign, where you give it no targeting… but it's also not like a normal Search or Display campaign where you tell it what keywords or audiences you want it to serve. Instead, with an audience signal, you get to “guide the automation” in a certain direction by giving it two things: a custom segment and a customer list.
How to optimize a Performance Max campaign
As you may have come to expect with automated campaigns in Google Ads, you don’t get a lot of insights on what a Performance Max campaign is actually doing - which means it can be tricky to optimize! Here are a few tips I’ve picked up:
While there is no searm terms report, there is a “search themes” report on the Insights tab; if you’re noticing search themes that you don’t want to serve ads on, you can reach out to Google support and ask them to manually add negative keywords to your Performance Max campaign
There is also an audiences report on the Insights tab; if your top performing audiences don’t seem like the right fit for your customers, you may need to rework your creative to better appeal to your target customers and/or try a different audience signal
While Performance Max will not tell you what landing pages it’s driving users to, you can find this information in your Google Analytics Landing Page Report
The most important optimization lever at your disposal is your bid strategy! If your PMax is not hitting your goals, revisit your conversion setup, bid strategy and budget to ensure they’re working together, rather than against each other, to drive results
Who is Performance Max best for?
Performance Max may be difficult to manage and get good results if you're a small business owner or new to Google Ads: you have to have perfect conversion tracking, lots of creative, and first-party customer data for it to work effectively.
Performance Max is also not the best choice right now for lead gen businesses, as I’ve both seen firsthand and heard lots of anecdotal reports of garbage lead quality.
However, if you have some Google Ads experience, have great conversion tracking, creative assets and customer data, PMax can both save you time and drive great results. Try out Performance Max!
If you want to set up a Performance Max campaign step by step alongside me, be sure to join my Google Ads course, Inside Google Ads.
You may also be interested in this article I wrote for WordStream, “Performance Max: 10 Do’s, Don’ts, Watchouts and Workarounds,” and this interview with Marketing News Canada in which I dive into all things Performance Max.