Performance Max is a goal-based advertising campaign type that gives advertisers all of their Google Ads inventory from a central point. Google promises it complements keyword-based Search campaigns to enable businesses to find more customers across all of the internet giant’s channels, including YouTube, Display, Search, Discover, Gmail, and Maps.
How does Performance Max work?
Performance Max is a way for businesses to improve performance on conversion goals. Although you can select Sales, Leads, or Local store visits and promotions for your conversion metric, Performance Max works best on full-funnel conversion goals rather than lead gen conversions.
The tool delivers more conversions and value through its own Smart Bidding system. And all of this in real-time. It is essentially like adding a central CPU to coordinate all of your Google performance marketing activities. Its algorithm draws on data from audience targeting, creative performance, budget optimization, and bidding.
A drawback for some businesses, Google automates some of the campaign activities which were previously executed by digital marketing managers. Google essentially automates a lot of the Google Ads functionalities using machine learning systems. It selects the channel and ad that will best convert according to the goal event that has been set. Due to the complexity of the multichannel targets, the Smart Bidding tool automates many of the previously part-manual bidding options.
For Google to automate the campaign bidding, marketers simply have to share information with Google on target audience data and current customers. Then you upload all of the following: ad texts, high-quality Display images, videos or other assets.
What are the benefits of Performance Max campaigns?
Performance Max allows you to engage customers across Google’s channels. With Google’s real-time understanding of consumer intents and preferences, paired with your input using audience signals, Performance Max can unlock new customer segments you may not have expected. You customize the goals that matter to your business and maximize conversions or conversion value.
The overriding benefit is that you get to manage all of your Google channels from one centralized campaign dashboard. This means your potential audience increases without having to manually add new Google channels with their own dashboards and campaign optimization tasks. Google supplies all of the management tools that you know from their other channels: Bidding overviews, trend analysis, sophisticated audience targeting, and, most importantly, real-time insights provided through the Performance Max reporting suite.
How can feed managers and marketers access Performance Max?
All marketing teams and feed managers using a P2C platform for feed management or who manually upload their product feeds to the Merchant Center can create Performance Max campaigns. You can create up to 100 Performance Max campaigns in your Google Ads account. Be sure to upload a wide range of assets to the campaigns, including video. Google works best if it can place your ads on any of its channels in any format. To save more time and resources, use a P2C platform to manage your PMax campaigns. This gives you the advantage of managing all feeds for Google as well as other channels.
Why you should be using Performance Max
By opening up new channels, Google can unlock new audiences and increase its possible reach by millions. Combined campaigns mean that you can better gauge your performance against your goals. The Performance Max reporting tools give you insights into the performance of your creatives and can suggest the trends you need to be aware of – you will get better insights into your creatives’ performance by using a P2C platform. By simplifying your campaign and channel management, you will have more time to work on executing your P2C strategy and enriching your creative assets.
Don’t forget that European marketers can use their favored comparison shopping channels in conjunction with Performance Max. The ads will show on general search results pages from the comparison site.
7 tips for top Performance Max campaigns
- Use Performance Max with full-funnel conversion tracking and avoid lead-gen conversions.
- Use URL exclusions to maintain a clear overview of campaigns.
- Add at least one video asset.
- Check location settings to ensure you don’t have the defaults.
- Spend some time identifying your optimal audience signal.
- Keep your Merchant Center feed free of duplicate images.
- For the best reporting insights, use the PMax segment in Google Analytics.
