Advantages:
- Unlocks new audiences across Google’s channels and networks via “audience signals”. Imagine combining custom intent, remarketing, and audiences into one targeting group.
- Performs better towards your goal by leveraging the entire customer journey, not just the final stage when someone is searching based on an existing need.
- Uses real-time bidding (Google considers all attributes in each search, not just the traditional ones).
- Utilises the DSA function but will always defer to “exact match” keywords already on the account and ads with better quality scores across campaign types such as YouTube, Display, and Search.
- Aggregates data into a single campaign rather than spreading it across multiple campaigns – for example, all data from Search and Shopping is combined and used in smart bidding.
If you think back to when Google Smart Shopping was rolled out, Performance Max is, by comparison, a shopping campaign for Google’s entire product portfolio all at once, in a single campaign.
Google’s product portfolio
Performance Max operates across six areas within Google’s portfolio: Search (including Shopping), Gmail, YouTube, Display, Discovery, and Maps. This means you can find more customers wherever they are. Typically, many only use Search and Smart Shopping, which are much further down the purchasing funnel (low funnel). As a result, new customers only appear when a need arises. By using the other platforms within Google, you move higher up the purchase funnel and help create demand among potential customers. In this way, you theoretically expand your target audience. Ultimately, this can lead to increased brand awareness and more customers in the long run.
Performance Max operates across six areas within Google’s portfolio: Search (including Shopping), Gmail, YouTube, Display, Discovery, and Maps.
Isn’t it risky to hand over all control to Google?
We can probably all agree that it sounds very attractive, but on the other hand, for many it may also sound a bit daunting to simply give Google your money and let them take control.
When Google launched Smart Shopping, I thought it was a very clever business move for Google to say: “Just give us your money and we’ll manage it for you.” This is because, in the end, Google is likely to get more money out of it, as they often push a bit harder with impressions and clicks than you might do yourself. At the time, it sounded very intrusive, but now with Performance Max, it sounds even more so.
All of this can seem a bit overwhelming. However, as we saw with the rollout of Smart Shopping, with the right setup it worked, after some time, 9 out of 10 times better. Furthermore, Performance Max offers a lot of opportunities as it reaches further across multiple platforms. In addition, Google has an immense amount of data and a powerful algorithm, making some things achievable through their automation that simply aren’t possible manually. For example, Google’s own algorithm uses “real-time bidding”, which means Google takes all attributes of each search into account, not just the standard 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 migrate existing Smart Shopping campaigns to Performance Max campaigns between July and September 2022. Local campaigns will be automatically migrated between August and September 2022.
Google will also launch a “one-click” self-service tool in Google Ads for those who want to migrate specific Smart Shopping or Local campaigns before the above dates. The tool will be available for Smart Shopping campaigns from April and for Local campaigns from June.
In other words, if you are using Google Smart Shopping today, it is a good idea to familiarise yourself with Performance Max now, for example by testing it and learning how to optimise the campaign type.
Defers to exact match and better quality score
Performance Max will always defer to “exact match” keywords that exist in your account. This means, for example, if you have a Search campaign running with “exact match” keywords, it will always take precedence over Performance Max. So, you don’t need to worry about it creating false expectations by including revenue from exact brand searches, which could result in a “misleading” ROAS.
Furthermore, it will always be the ad with the best quality score that is shown across your account, whether that’s on Search, Display, YouTube, or Shopping. This means that if you are already running Display, Shopping, and Search campaigns with a better quality score than Performance Max, they will still be shown. Conversely, if Performance Max performs better, it will be shown.
The fact that a Performance Max campaign can defer to other better-performing campaigns is very positive and gives us a fair amount of control in the end.
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 for negative keywords for brand safety at the account level. This will make it easier to filter out brand keywords.
What do you need to run Performance Max?
To get started with Performance Max, there are a few requirements for setting up the campaign type. Below I have outlined some of them.
Set a conversion goal to improve optimisation
Performance Max works in such a way that you set a final goal for what you want to achieve. This could be Purchases, Contacts, Calls, Page Views, Store Visits, Sign-ups, and so on. This allows Google to work towards a final goal across all its platforms, in other words, throughout the entire customer journey.
These conversion goals should be seen as groupings of your conversions on the account. Therefore, it is of course necessary to have the right tracking set up on your website. If they are grouped incorrectly, you should change their type under the account’s conversions. Likewise, if there are conversion goals you do not want to optimise towards, you simply remove them.
Performance Max works by setting a final goal for what you wish to achieve.
Content
Just like with a responsive display ad, you need to provide plenty of content in the form of images, text, logos, etc. It’s important to stress that the more content you give Google to test, the better your performance will be. I recommend filling in everything and adding as many images and videos as possible. If you do not upload a video, Google will automatically create one based on the text and images you have provided. You can add the following:
- 15 images in various formats
- 5 logos in different formats
- 5 videos
- 5 headlines (30 characters)
- 5 long headlines (90 characters)
- 1 short description (60 characters)
- 4 standard descriptions (90 characters)
- 1 HTML banner
Audience signal
One of the major strengths of Performance Max is audience signal. Audience signal is all the data you can provide to Google’s algorithms to help it achieve your goal. This can include custom intent, such as lookalike audiences based on visitors to your competitors’ websites. It could be general in-market audiences, or people searching for specific keywords on Google, or all your remarketing lists. With all this data, Google knows which audiences are most relevant to achieving your goals.
Do not run on the same CSS partner simultaneously
If you use a CSS partner in an existing Smart Shopping campaign, it is very important that you do not launch Performance Max with the same CSS. This would cause your Smart Shopping to stop working. I recommend starting with Google’s own CSS and running it in parallel with your CSS partner. Once your Performance Max campaign can outperform your existing Smart Shopping campaign, you can consider switching to a new Performance Max campaign with your CSS partner and scaling it up afterwards. It’s a longer route, but in the end you avoid losing sales. You can read more about CSS further down.
How do you optimise Performance Max?
As so much is now automated in this campaign type, it does change the way you optimise.
Tracking
It is vital that your tracking is spot on, both for macro conversions such as transactions, and for micro conversions, like people performing certain behaviours in the user journey. By including micro conversions that focus on different stages of the customer journey, you will improve performance across the entire journey, not just at the end. For example, you can assign micro conversions with notional values, which can be used in smart bidding.
Structured data in product feed
It is also important for online shops to optimise their product feed regarding structured data, so Google gets the most from your data. You can read more about this here.
Strategy
Finally, marketing strategy itself is of course crucial. Today, it is more important than ever to focus on the entire customer journey and not just the “action phase”, so you can grow your business rather than simply treading water with the same goals and actions time after time.
Save 20% on spend with CSS
To get more for your money, it makes very good sense to use CSS, giving you a 20% discount on click prices and a better ROAS. You can read more about CSS here.
Creatives
With so much now automated, there are greater demands on your creatives. It is therefore a good idea to put effort into your creatives – for example, images and videos. We have often seen that the better the creative assets you use, the better the performance. The same applies when you update your creatives, for instance after a season or campaign.
Asset groups
A Performance Max campaign consists of so-called asset groups, which are similar to ad groups. An asset group consists of content in the form of images, text, videos, etc. In addition, it includes an audience signal – as mentioned earlier, this is data you can provide to Google’s algorithms. Using these asset groups, you can optimise your campaign by creating new asset groups, each with tailored content, products, remarketing lists, and landing pages. In this way, you can expand asset groups within different categories and brands.
Profit (POAS)
As I’ve covered in other articles, POAS and profit are the way forward for online shops. Focusing on profit and margin rather than turnover and ROAS gives much greater insight and share of exposure, which is ideal for Performance Max. You can read more about POAS here.
My recommendation
I’ve personally tested Performance Max with quite a few clients, both lead generation and e-commerce. I have to admit, they perform really well. Overall, we see that we get much greater reach with Performance Max. This also makes sense, as it is present in many more places. Additionally, we see that Performance Max is generally better at finding relevant users. For example, we have significantly increased our budget but also increased our ROAS and POAS. This is most likely because Performance Max is better at acquiring users at the start of the customer journey (top-funnel) than, for example, Smart Shopping and generic keyword campaigns.
I highly recommend testing Performance Max. But even though it all sounds great, you shouldn’t turn a blind eye. There will always be some cases where it does not outperform your current setup. We also saw with Smart Shopping, when it was rolled out, that it was not particularly good at first. So, there may be a bedding-in period for some.
Based on all of this, I recommend, as with all automation, testing it against the campaigns you would otherwise run and letting the results show what works best. In most cases, Performance Max will outperform other campaigns, as it has access to much more data.
Get started with Performance Max on Google Ads
Would you like to know more about Performance Max, or do you need help setting it up? Then don’t hesitate to contact us here.
