Advantages:
- Unlocks new audiences across Google’s channels and networks using ‘audience signals’. Imagine combining custom intent, remarketing, and audiences all in one group.
- Achieves better performance against your goals by using the entire customer journey, not just the final stage when someone searches with an existing need.
- Uses real-time bidding (Google considers all attributes in each search, not just the classic ones).
- Utilises the DSA function but always defers to ‘exact match’ keywords on your account and the ads with better quality results across campaign types, such as YouTube, Display, and Search.
- Consolidates data into one campaign rather than spreading it across multiple campaigns – for example, all data from Search and Shopping is collected and used for smart bidding.
If you recall when Google Smart Shopping was rolled out, Performance Max is, by comparison, a Shopping campaign for Google’s entire product portfolio in a single campaign.
Google’s product portfolio
Performance Max runs across six areas within Google’s portfolio: Search (including Shopping), Gmail, YouTube, Display, Discovery, and Maps. This allows you to reach more customers wherever they are. Many typically only use Search and Smart Shopping, which are very low in the purchase funnel. As a result, you only reach new customers when a need already exists. By using Google’s other platforms, you move higher up the funnel and can create demand among potential customers. In theory, this expands your target audience and can ultimately lead to increased branding and more customers over time.
Performance Max runs across six areas of Google’s portfolio: Search (including Shopping), Gmail, YouTube, Display, Discovery, and Maps.
Is it risky to hand over all control to Google?
We can probably all agree that it sounds very appealing, but on the other hand, it may also seem a bit daunting to simply give Google your budget and let them take control.
When Google launched Smart Shopping, I thought it was a smart business move from Google’s side to say: ‘Just give us your money and we’ll manage it.’ After all, Google is likely to earn more this way, as they often push for more impressions and clicks than you might do yourself. Back then, it sounded quite intrusive, and with Performance Max, it sounds even more so.
All of this might sound overwhelming. However, as we saw with the rollout of Smart Shopping, with the right setup, it worked – and after a while, 9 out of 10 times it performed better. Additionally, Performance Max opens up many opportunities, as you reach further via more platforms. Google also has access to vast amounts of data and a powerful algorithm, making some things possible through automation that you simply cannot achieve manually. For example, Google’s own algorithm uses real-time bidding, which means Google considers all attributes in each search, not just the classic data points.
Performance Max will replace Google Smart Shopping
Google has announced that Performance Max will, by September 2022 at the latest, replace Smart Shopping and Local campaigns on all Google Ads accounts. Google will automatically upgrade existing Smart Shopping campaigns to Performance Max between July and September 2022. Local campaigns will be upgraded from August to September 2022.
Google is also launching a ‘one-click’ self-service tool within Google Ads for those who want to upgrade specific Smart Shopping or Local campaigns ahead of these dates. The tool will be available for Smart Shopping campaigns from April, with support for Local campaigns from June.
In other words, if you are currently using Google Smart Shopping, it is a good idea to familiarise yourself with Performance Max now, perhaps by testing and learning how to optimise this campaign type.
Defers to exact match and better quality results
Performance Max will always defer to ‘exact match’ keywords already present in your account. This means that, for example, if you are running a Search campaign with ‘exact match’ keywords, those ads will always be prioritised over Performance Max. Therefore, you do not need to worry about it artificially inflating returns by including revenue from exact brand searches, which could otherwise distort ROAS.
Likewise, the ad with the best quality result will always be shown across your account on Search, Display, YouTube, and Shopping. This means that if you are already running Display, Shopping, or Search campaigns with better quality results than Performance Max, those will still be shown. Conversely, if Performance Max delivers better results, it will be shown instead.
The fact that Performance Max campaigns can step aside for other, better-performing campaigns is a positive, as it still gives you a fair degree of control.
Negative keywords
Google has announced that there are currently no plans for negative keywords at the campaign level for Performance Max. However, there are plans to allow negative keywords for brand safety at the account level. This will make it easier to filter out branded keywords.
What do you need to run Performance Max?
To get started with Performance Max, there are certain requirements for setting up the campaign type. Here are some of the key points.
Set a conversion goal to improve optimisation
Performance Max works by setting a final goal for what you want to achieve. This could be purchases, contacts, calls, page views, shop visits, sign-ups, etc. This allows Google to optimise towards a single goal across all its platforms – in other words, throughout the entire user journey.
These conversion goals should be understood as groupings of your conversions on the account. Naturally, this means that you must have the necessary tracking set up on your website. If they are grouped incorrectly, you should change their type in the account’s conversion settings. Similarly, if there are conversion goals you do not wish to optimise for, you can simply remove them.
Performance Max works by setting a final goal for what you want to achieve.
Content
Just like with a responsive display ad, you need to provide plenty of content in the form of images, text, logos, and more. It is important to note that the more content you provide for Google to test, the better your performance will be. Therefore, I recommend filling in everything and uploading as many images and videos as possible. If you do not upload a video, Google will create one for you based on the text and images you have provided. You can add the following:
- 15 images in various formats
- 5 logos in various formats
- 5 videos
- 5 headlines (30 characters each)
- 5 long headlines (90 characters each)
- 1 short description (60 characters)
- 4 standard descriptions (90 characters each)
- 1 HTML banner
Audience signal
One of the great strengths of Performance Max is the audience signal. This is all the data you can give to Google’s algorithms to help achieve your goals. This could be custom intent, such as lookalike audiences based on people who visit your competitors’ websites. It could be general in-market audiences, users searching for specific keywords on Google, or all your remarketing lists. With all this data, Google knows which audiences are most likely to help you achieve your goal.
Do not run with your existing CSS partner simultaneously
If you use a CSS partner for an existing Smart Shopping campaign, it is very important not to start Performance Max with the same CSS. This could cause your Smart Shopping campaign to stop running. I recommend using Google’s own CSS at first and running it in parallel with your CSS partner. Once your Performance Max campaign can outperform your existing Smart Shopping campaign, you can consider replacing it with a new Performance Max campaign using your CSS partner. This is a longer process, but in the end, you avoid losing sales. You can read more about CSS further down.
How do you optimise Performance Max?
Since much of the campaign type is automated, it changes how you optimise.
Tracking
It is extremely important that your tracking is spot on, both for macro-conversions (such as transactions) and micro-conversions (such as specific user behaviours along the journey). By including micro-conversions that focus on different stages of the customer journey, you will increase performance throughout the journey, not just at the end. For example, you can assign micro-conversions fictitious values to use with smart bidding.
Structured data in the product feed
It is also important for e-commerce sites to optimise their product feed for structured data, so Google can make the most of your information. You can read more about this here.
Strategy
Finally, your overall marketing strategy is crucial. Today, it is more important than ever to focus on the entire customer journey and not just the ‘action’ part, so you grow your business rather than simply treading water with the same goals and tactics.
Save 20% on spend with CSS
To get more for your money, it makes perfect sense to use CSS, as you get a 20% discount on your click price and therefore achieve a better ROAS. You can read more about CSS here.
Creatives
Because so much is automated, the demands on your creatives are higher. It is worthwhile to invest in your creatives, such as images and videos. We have often seen that the better the creatives used, the better the performance. The same applies when you update your creatives, for example, for new seasons or campaigns.
Asset groups
A Performance Max campaign consists of so-called asset groups, which are similar to ad groups. An asset group consists of content such as images, text, and videos, as well as an audience signal (data you provide to Google’s algorithms). By building new asset groups with tailored content, products, remarketing lists, and landing pages, you can optimise your campaign. This allows you to create asset groups for different categories and brands.
Profit (POAS)
As I have written in other articles, POAS and profit are the way forward for e-commerce. Focusing on profit and margin instead of just revenue and ROAS gives much greater insight and market share, which is ideal for Performance Max. You can read more about POAS here.
My recommendation
I have tested Performance Max with a number of clients, both lead generation and e-commerce. I must admit that it performs very well. In general, we see that we reach a wider audience with Performance Max, which makes sense as it is present in many more places. We also find that Performance Max is generally better at finding relevant users. For example, we have increased our budget significantly whilst also improving our ROAS and POAS. This is most likely because Performance Max is better at attracting users early in the customer journey (top-of-funnel) than, for example, Smart Shopping or generic keyword campaigns.
I strongly recommend testing Performance Max. However, even though it all sounds promising, you should not be complacent. There will always be cases where it does not perform better than your baseline. Furthermore, as with Smart Shopping’s early days, initial results may not be great, so there may be a learning period for some.
Based on all this, I recommend – as with any automation – testing against the campaigns you would otherwise run and letting the results show what works best. In most cases, Performance Max will outperform other campaigns because it has access to much more data.
Get started with Performance Max on Google Ads
Would you like to learn more about Performance Max, or do you need help setting it up? Then please do not hesitate to contact us here.
