Performance Max campaigns have emerged as the new kid on the block, and they might just be Google Ads' most creative project yet.

What do these campaigns involve? In a nutshell, they give advertisers the ability to market their products or services across Google's entire advertising platform. With one campaign, advertisers can promote their brand or business on YouTube, Display, Maps, Search, Shopping, Discovery and Gmail.

Advertising has never been more straightforward than it is with Performance Max. Gone are the days of creating individualised campaigns for each channel - Performance Max streamlines advertising, making it much easier for brands and businesses to connect with consumers. Although Performance Max is still relatively new to the advertising scene, it's already shown it has a lot to offer.

Performance Max takes precedence

When you operate Performance Max alongside your shopping or smart shopping advertising campaign for a particular product, Performance Max takes priority. This means that users will see your Performance Max campaigns instead of those coming from your Smart Shopping campaign.

In 2022, most Smart Shopping campaigns will be upgraded to Performance Max automatically. When you upgrade your Smart Shopping campaigns to Performance Max, they will continue to hold priority over standard campaigns. With an upgrade, you'll showcase your ads across Google's channels automatically. When you do make the switch to Performance Max, make sure you review all your assets to ensure they're correctly established.

Upgrading doesn't demand advertising across all channels

We can't deny it, Smart Shopping campaigns are convenient. If you don't want your ads broadcast across all Google's channels, no fear - when you upgrade to Performance Max, you won't need to incorporate all your assets within the campaign.

If you simply connect your merchant feed without any additional marketing assets, your Performance Max campaign will only share shopping ads. Although Performance Max doesn't allow you to be selective with advertising channels, you can achieve a level of customisation by choosing which assets you include in your campaign.

Search keywords take precedence over Performance Max

Performance Max is designed to operate alongside existing campaigns across Search, Display and YouTube channels. Although they take precedence over shopping campaigns, they allow these particular campaigns to continue to flourish.

If you do operate a search campaign and Performance Max simultaneously, Google will strive to promote search campaign ads.

If advertisers have used a keyword with no success, and have removed or classified it as a negative keyword in their search campaign, Performance Max may still advertise this keyword. It takes this step based on whether it senses if promoting this keyword will help an advertiser achieve their goals.

Accurate conversion data reporting results in higher-quality conversions

As Performance Max is a performance-driven campaign platform focused on conversion, it is informed by the conversion data it receives. When you launch a Performance Max campaign, it's crucial you report the conversions relevant to your business.

We recommend you only report conversions when leads are qualified or when they result in sales.

If you operate eCommerce, report sales alongside conversion adjustments. This will allow you to factor in any returns or repeat sales that could impact a new customer's involvement with your business or brand.

Thanks to Google's new Enhanced Conversions for Leads, reporting high-quality conversion has never been easier.

Budgets can't be allocated to channels

When you use Performance Max, you're unable to allocate budgets to individual channels.

Thanks to Google's machine learning, you'll achieve real-time results across all advertising channels employed by your brand or business. It strives to optimise according to your goals, and gives preference to the channels that will best achieve your aims.

Google says that if you try to allocate budgets yourself, you'll limit its machine learning powers. Setting manual monthly budgets return your efforts to the regular campaigns you may already have running.

Once again, if you use Performance Max, make sure you're selective in your asset submissions to retain some control over the channels on which you advertise. You can also combine this approach with operating multiple campaigns to maintain control. If you choose this method, you'll want to ask yourself why this sort of control is important to you.

Google has committed to providing more insights for Performance Max campaigns which will in turn provide more opportunities for optimisation of campaigns.

The New Customer Acquisition feature encourages new consumers

One drawback of Smart Shopping is that it sometimes prioritises remarketing and takes the credit for conversion related to customers already in your system. In these instances, your automated campaign might be overestimating its capabilities and prevent business growth.

This complication can be avoided by telling Google to centre on new customers, and by sharing first-party data about existing consumers.

Google has made this easier with its New Customer Acquisition goal. This goal is only available through Performance Max campaigns. This allows you to optimise your campaign to gain new customers, and to improve performance from this cohort. You can choose to focus solely on new customers (excluding any existing customers), or you can choose to simply bid higher for new ones whilst still targeting existing customers too.

Support for account-level negative targeting

Although Google discourages advertisers from micromanaging their targeting, Performance Max campaigns consider account-level negative placements and keywords.

These placements and keywords might include unhelpful geo locations; instead, advertisers might think more seriously about whether they choose to focus on particular physical areas.

You might attract a lot of expenses by using automation, which can go through many guesses to settle on conversions.

If particular keywords, placements or targets haven't proved successful, the exclusion function can help prevent the automation from settling on these undesirable elements.

Want to learn more about Performance Max campaigns?
Contact PupDigital

There's a lot of potential in Performance Max, and our team at PupDigital is here to help take the guesswork out of this new campaign type. We're a family-owned digital marketing agency specialising in streamlined and aesthetic design, wholesome marketing, and effective marketing strategies. Our experienced directors and expert professionals love helping our clients to achieve and exceed their digital marketing goals. Contact us today through our online contact form or by emailing hello@pupdigital.com.au.