Performance Max is the newest campaign type in Google Ads that leverages all six of Google’s owned channels: Video, Search, Display, Discovery, Gmail and Maps.
Utilising Google’s AI various assets will be combined to create an ad, & displayed on different placements to reach potential customers. The targeting & AI is driven by various inputs called audience signals.
For example, it might target users wishing to purchase a Pilates class on Google Search when they search for “pilates classes”, on YouTube when someone watches a pilates video, or on other Websites that the target audience is likely to visit using the Display network.
This new campaign type launched in 2022 and it has changed everything. Instead of being keyword and network-targeted, Performance Max is goal-based and audience-orientated, with its own unique benefits and challenges. Let’s dive in.
Benefits of Running Performance Max:
- Increased Reach: Your Performance Max campaign will be shown across the entire Google Network, which will help improve your reach (although increased reach doesn’t necessarily mean improved performance).
- Automated: Most of the optimising is being done behind the scenes by Google’s machine learning algorithm. This can be particularly appealing to newer advertisers, who don’t know how to use Google Ads.
- Search Campaign Improvement: Standard Search & Performance Max are the ultimate power pairing. Performance Max helps fill the gaps in your Search campaigns by using its technology to find new converting queries.
Performance Max is therefore an additional layer to fill in the gaps of your current campaigns and maximise your reach through AI-driven tools, and not a replacement for your current campaigns.
Limitations of Running Performance Max:
- Limited Insights & Control: Commonly referred to as Google’s ‘Black Box’ product, Google doesn’t provide advertisers much insight into what’s happening behind the campaign. This can make optimising the campaign difficult, especially when something goes wrong.
- Automated Funny Business: Google takes advantage of inexperienced advertisers through automated optimisations such as auto-created text assets, image assets, final URLs, and auto-generated videos. These will not only harm your performance but will also diminish your brand reputation.
- Wasted Ad Spend: Google often goes after the easiest conversions when the campaign is not set up correctly. For example, a common mistake when running Performance Max campaigns is not excluding branded keywords from your targeting. This will allow Google to use your budget to overspend on branded conversions without advertisers realising it.
- Potential To Cannibalise Other Campaigns: Performance Max can cannibalise other campaigns because of misspellings, close variants, ad rank and differences in targets and budgets. When not running Performance Max correctly, it can result in seriously overinflated Performance Max results.
Is Performance Max Right For My Business?
Typically, we don’t recommend running Performance Max campaigns for clients with smaller budgets as tighter budgets need more control over placements. This means avoiding placements like Display and YouTube.
Although every business is different, we do recommend testing it out. It’s Google’s newest flagship product, and it’s destined to keep improving over time. Before you get started here are our few top tips when it comes to Performance Max.
Our Top Tips For Performance Max Campaigns
- Craft an Irresistible Offer: Your offer is the most important thing. Optimise aspects of your offer before advertising such as pricing, delivery, quality, bonuses, guarantees and landing pages.
- Choose the Right Strategy: Think about what you would like to use Performance Max for. Are you using it for E-commerce or Lead Gen? Upper or Lower Funnel marketing? Different goals require different strategies.
- Robust Conversion Tracking: Implement high-quality tracking through Google Tag Manager, and make sure your campaign is optimised to these conversion goals. The better your tracking set-up, the better data you have to feed the algorithm to ensure the campaign will provide you with stronger & more successful results.
- Build a Strong Structure: Group your products together so the ads Google creates make sense. Build out your asset groups, and consider whether you’d like to experiment with more specialised strategies using multiple Performance Max campaigns.
- Create the Right Assets: Use Google’s guidelines when creating assets for Performance Max. Input as many assets as possible, and always include a video. Don’t let Google create an auto-generated one.
- Product Feed: Title, price and image creative on the Product Feed are the most important aspects to optimise when using Feed placements. Ensure you work on these via a Feed Management Tool, Google Merchant Centre or the E-Commerce Back End.
- Audience Signals: The ideal target audience specified in the Audience Signal is comprised of: your data, custom segments, interests and demographics. It’s important to start with very specific signals, such as first-party data that will allow Google to target the most similar customers.
- Review your Search Terms & Placements: Additional insights are available off-platform through scripts detailing search terms & placement insights. We implement scripts like these for all of our clients with Performance Max campaigns, to gain the necessary data to make data-driven decisions and optimisations.
- Don’t Set & Forget: Performance Max may be an automated, machine learning optimisation campaign, however, continuous experimentation is always necessary just like with any campaign type. It’s important to never stop optimising your campaign – don’t set and forget.
Do you need help with running Performance Max campaigns for your business? Or alternatively, are you looking for an Google Ads Agency to help guide your online strategy? Contact us today to see how we can help your business take the next step in maximising its online presence.
