Introduction

Performance Max (PMax) launched in 2021 and stormed the pay-per-click (PPC) world. It has divided opinions and changed the landscape of Paid Search and Paid Shopping. Performance Max uses the best of Google’s AI and machine learning technology, so it’s not something to be ignored.

PMax utilizes Google’s machine learning capabilities to drive more conversions across Google’s owned inventory. Similar to Responsive Search Ads (RSAs), PMax Ads are automatically generated based on advertiser input and can serve across various platforms, including:

  • Shopping
  • Search
  • Display
  • YouTube
  • Discover
  • Gmail
  • Maps

Performance Max drives conversion goals by combining AI machine learning models and data signals to optimize bids and placements in real time. It’s important to feed the AI machine learning with rich data signals in order to get the best performance out of the campaign type. Rich data signals include:

  • Audiences
  • Creatives
  • Budgets
  • Bid strategies
  • And more

Performance Max Foundations

Before we start the step-by-step guide, let’s take a look at how PMax campaigns fit into your overall account, especially when compared to Search and Standard Shopping campaigns, and also get to the bottom of why tracking your conversion goals is so important to the success of your PMax campaigns.

Will my campaigns compete with one another?

This is a question that often comes up when we talk about Performance Max. Google Ads will choose the ad with the highest probability across different accounts to enter the auction with competitors ads, which means your ads won’t compete with one another.

PMax Ads will be prioritized over existing Shopping campaigns that run in the same account, so when you start to run Performance Max you’ll naturally see Shopping campaigns decrease regardless of the budgets associated with them. We recommend that, if you want to run both campaign types in the same account, you split the selected products across both campaigns to manage this.

✓ PMax campaigns complement Search campaigns. They do not compete with one another.
✓ Search Exact Match campaigns “win” over PMax campaigns in cases where targeting overlaps.
✓ You can “link accounts as equivalent” for domains using multiple Google Ads accounts via a Google Support Rep.

Understanding Conversions

When it comes to eCommerce shopping, it’s best practice to track value for your conversions, rather than using a counter. If you don’t have the ability to track revenue dynamically, WMM can help you with this, and if you’re using this guide for your own work and need an easy fix, we recommend that you estimate a revenue figure based on your average order value (AOV) and assign it to the transaction in order to get an understanding of your return on ad spend (ROAS).

Additionally, you can use the Enhanced Conversions tracking feature to enable more accurate conversion measurement. It works by allowing conversion tags to capture the hashed customer data that advertisers collect on their conversion page (e.g. email addresses) and then matches it against Google logged-in data.

“Once data thresholds are met, Enhanced Conversions tend to track a 5% uplift in conversions attributed to campaigns.”

What you’ll need to get started:

✓ Marketing objective/campaign goal
✓ Assets (text, image, video)
✓ Feed
✓ Signals (including audiences)
✓ Language
✓ Cost per action (CPA) and ROAS targets (optional)
✓ Budget

Step 1: Choosing a Campaign Objective

The first step to create a Performance Max campaign is to select your main advertising objective (for most retailers this will be “Sales”). From here, you’ll be able to associate all of the conversion goals relevant to the campaign. To maintain consistency throughout the account, we recommend keeping your goals the same for all campaigns; however, it is possible to select a combination of conversion actions using “custom goals” if it better suits your campaign objective.

Step 2: Choose Performance Max

The next step is to select Performance Max as your campaign type and associate the campaign with your GMC feed. This step allows the campaign to serve Shopping Ads. From here, you can select the countries you want your campaign to target, for example, “United States”. In order to associate the campaign to the GMC, it must be linked in Google Ads. If you have not done this yet, please follow the steps outlined here.

Step 3: Assign a Campaign Budget and Strategy

Campaign budgets for Search Ads are set at a daily level. On some days the campaign will spend less, and on other days it will spend more – up to twice as much – however, it will never exceed the average daily budget multiplied by the average number of days in a month.

We recommend using the “set a target” option so that the campaign aims to meet the average ROAS and works harder to achieve your campaign goals.

Step 4: Choose Additional Campaign Settings – Final URL Expansion

This is somewhat of a hot topic… Please be aware that the Final URL Expansion feature is turned on by default when you create a new campaign. Google advises that the setting allows for machine learning to select the best landing page that will drive the best performance based on customer intent. Since we’re discussing Performance Max using a feed (Shopping Performance Max), we advise that you leave this feature turned on to ensure potential customers are directed to the exact landing pages where their desired products can be found. This will enhance the overall user experience.

To have more control, WMM recommends that you exclude any non-shoppable pages using URL exclusion rules, such as contact and about pages, and plan out which campaign and asset groups direct to certain category and product pages in order to have a clean structure with limited overlap.

Step 5: Create Focused Asset Groups and Add Creatives and Audiences

Performance Max Asset Groups are similar to Ad Groups in Search; it’s where you manage your product listing groups, creative assets and audiences. We recommend creating unique asset groups for different final URLs so that you can assign relevant assets to match the URL and gain a higher Ad Strength score.

Although there is no minimum number of Product IDs to be included in each campaign or asset group, please take into consideration that each month you want to be hitting at least 20-30 conversions per campaign in order for the machine learning to work.

For example, a jewelry brand campaign and asset group structure could look like this:

Step 5.1 Product Listing Groups

Listing groups are essential components of PMax campaigns, enabling you to assign which products you want to target from your GMC feed and allowing you to associate assets and audiences to them in order to improve relevancy and campaign performance.

By default, Listing groups target all products, so it’s important to complete this step. We recommend splitting product listing groups in line with product themes. For a jewelry retailer, this could be bracelets, necklaces, charms, etc., as this will allow you to easily align relative creative assets and audiences.

Step 5.2 Creatives
To get the most of your Performance Max campaign and achieve optimal results, we recommend taking note of the asset requirements and utilizing the available options to the fullest, going above and beyond the minimum requirements.

This table contains all of the Performance Max creative requirements:

Asset Recommendations:

Text: Utilize character lengths to the fullest; align messaging to the URL, relevant Search campaigns and other marketing channels; and add as many versions of text assets as possible – the more variations the better! Similar to Responsive Search Ads, Google will optimize using machine learning and generate the best combination of assets for the particular search.
Images: Use as many image assets and sizes as possible so that AI machine learning can optimize the best ad for the particular user. We also recommend including a mixture of product images and lifestyle images.
Videos: We’ve found that videos are sometimes overlooked by advertisers; however, we strongly recommend that you upload video assets. If you don’t upload your own videos, Google can automatically create videos using your text and image assets, and turn them into rather poor-quality slideshows.

  • Videos must be uploaded to Performance Max campaigns via Youtube. This is easy to do using YouTube URL links and the video doesn’t need to be live (we often use “private” videos).

Best Practices:

It’s good practice to use Google’s Ad Strength indicator to assess if Google determines your assets to be of good quality, as this will help you enter and win auctions at the lowest cost. The Ad Strength indicator is a real-time feedback tool that guides you on the best practices and provides recommendations to be included in your asset groups in order to maximize performance:

Performance Max also has the ability to “automatically create assets”, which is opted in by default. If you aren’t using the auto-generated URL Expansion, we recommend turning this off in order to have control on what assets are served. However, you must opt in to auto-generated text assets if you want to use auto-generated URL Expansion:

Step 5.3 Audiences

Audience signals help Google’s AI machine learning to understand which types of users you’re interested in. There are lots of different audience types to consider (listed below). Although adding first party data is optional, we believe that including first party data is imperative to getting the best results, as any unique insights on Audience can help you to beat your competition and are more likely to convert!

  • Converters and Non-Converters: These audience lists are very powerful and are used for remarketing and similar audiences purposes.
    • 1st Party (your data)
    • 2nd Party (Google data)
  • Demographic and Interest-Based: We recommend using the Audience insights available within Google Ads to help you select the right audiences for your Performance Max asset groups and tailor your strategy to the audience.
    • In-market
    • Life events
    • Detailed demographics
    • Affinity
  • Custom Segments and Keywords: These are sometimes overlooked as they can take time to build; however, once in place they work well, so it’s worth the effort. We recommend that you plan your Custom segments offline before building them in Google Ads.
    • Here’s an example of some custom audiences created within Google Ads by a jewelry store:

Step 6: Ad Extensions
Utilizing ad extensions is best practice for Performance Max campaigns because they help you to take up more real estate on the search engine results page, which makes users more likely to click on your ads. They can also help to improve quality scores, which can help to reduce cost per click (CPC), and provide additional relevant information to users to help inform their decision about your business. Available extensions include:

  • Sitelinks
  • Callouts
  • Structured Snippets
  • Price
  • Promotion
  • Call
  • Lead
  • Location

Google states that for each enabled extension, CTR increases by 10-15% on average and can also drive other valuable interactions.

Step 6: Measurement and Reporting
Once your Performance Max campaign is live, keep an eye on the overall performance of the campaign (Cost, Impressions, Clicks, Conversions, Revenue, CPA and ROAS). It’s important to monitor the campaign and not make too many significant changes or conduct tests until you gain a better understanding of the base levels of the campaign.

Like any other Google Ads campaign (Search and Standard Shopping), bid strategies and machine learning need some time to calibrate. This can vary depending on the number of conversions the campaign receives. Most campaigns should be out of the learning period by week 2, and from this point you are free to optimize the campaign as usual. However, you should not make changes of more than 30% difference, or make changes more than once in 24 hours.

Compared to other campaigns (Search and Standard Shopping), there are fewer data points available to report on. Namely, we can’t view a keyword report for Performance Max campaigns, which can feel scary at first. However, Auction Insights, Product Level, and Asset Group reporting are available on the left-hand menu, as you would expect.

To access Locations, Landing Pages and Devices, follow these steps:
Reports > Filter for Performance Max campaign type > Add metrics that you want to see such as Cost, Conversions, Revenue > Add your chosen field (e.g. Location)

Additionally, the “Top signals” reports provide useful insights into what is driving the campaign and this can be used within commentary and optimizations.