How does Performance Max campaigns work in Google Ads?

You’ve probably heard of the latest campaign type Performance Max. The campaign is a smart campaign that combines shopping, search, display, Gmail and YouTube in the same campaign. Performance Max offers the entire Google Ads advertising within one campaign, which makes it easier for people who don’t want to spend so much time advertising.

What are the benefits of the campaign?

Performance Max is a goal-based campaign type, which means that the algorithms work to achieve the conversion goals specified by optimizing bids in real-time across multiple channels, giving a better chance of being seen in front of converting customers. Performance Max is better at finding more converting customers than previous campaign types. By aligning the goals that are important to your business, the campaign type can quickly reach customers in all Google channels much more easily and thus maximize the number of conversions. It works like the data-driven algorithms optimize across multiple channels simultaneously to find the most profitable customer touchpoint.

Another advantage is that the campaign type has a data-driven attribution, which makes it easier for the machine learning models to calculate a more accurate forecast regarding which ads are best for each target group in real time.

Who should use a Performance Max campaign

If you have specific goals for the advertising such as increasing the number of leads but don’t care about appearing on just one channel. If you want to maximize the result and reach as many potential customers as possible without being limited by which channel the ads appear in. The campaign type is also suitable for those who wish to have a simple campaign set that covers all conceivable Google channels with a single campaign type. Performance Max is also good for those who want to be seen on more channels than just search but don’t really know which channel would be most profitable.

How to create a good Performance Max campaign

Creating a good Performance Max campaign without shopping is to first identify which target groups you want to reach and then create advertising assets that are targeted to each individual target group. This campaign type doesn’t offer ad groups and keywords that we’re used to but ad assets and audience signals. By structuring the campaign in the same way as a regular search campaign by viewing ad assets as ad groups and keywords as audience signals, you can get better results. It also makes the campaign set more

conversion oriented as you can adapt the content to each target group instead of just shooting blindly. We also recommend trying to have an ad asset that is wider if you want to increase brand awareness, otherwise it is better to think more strategically about target group signals. Another important factor is to use as many images, videos and headlines as possible so that Google has a greater choice.

Performance max instead of smart shopping

Performance Max replaces smart shopping, which means that all shopping campaigns that are smart must be updated.

Disadvantages with a Performance Max campaign

As with most things in life, there are pros and cons. A major disadvantage of Performance Max is the lack of transparency in the campaign, which will hopefully improve in the future. But right now it is not possible to get much information regarding the campaign’s results or placements. It is possible to see a rating for each ad asset as well as examples of how the ads can look in the various channels. It would have been much easier to optimize if you could see how each individual ad asset works and where the ads have been shown. To be able to better adapt the target groups and advertisements to their needs and adjust bids where necessary.

Of course we at Awave create Performance Max campaigns and can help you. Contact us to get answers to your questions.