Joe Robinson: Bald Guy, Marketer, Self-Improver.

This is another one I’ve lifted from the blog over at BFBC; originally I wrote it in late June 2022 but 4 months on it’s still pretty relevant. There’s an optimisation guide to come too and you can always get my up-to-date thoughts if you get in touch!

After a soft rollout in last year’s Q4, wider availability in early 2022 (alongside the announcement it’ll replace Smart Shopping and Local Campaigns in the long-term) and the ability to upgrade your existing campaigns starting in April, Performance Max in Google Ads is impossible to ignore by now. (You probably could, but we really don’t recommend it).

Given that it’s replacing our beloved Smart Shopping campaigns, here at BFBC we’ve made sure to get up to speed with PMax and all its features ahead of the compulsory rollout next quarter. Here’s a quick run-down of what we found so far!

What’s Performance Max actually for?

Given its name and “all of Google’s inventory” branding, it’s tempting to think this is it; Google has finally come out with one campaign to rule them all. Give them a landing page, a conversion goal and away you go.

This visual of PMax reaching all people at all times lays Google’s intentions bare

In reality, it’s not quite that yet. We’re sure that’s the long-term plan but right now it definitely works best as one part of a larger account, controlling the Shopping network and mopping up conversions on other networks where it can. And it’s straightforward to make it serve as a Shopping-only campaign, so if you love ecommerce like us there won’t be a mess of unwanted search traffic driven by these campaigns (usually).

If you’re replacing Local campaigns, we can’t help you directly I’m afraid- that’s just not BFBC’s niche and we don’t write checks our laptops can’t cash.

PMax is happy to deliver ads on search, and it’ll do that if it thinks it can be more profitable that way, but it doesn’t lock your search campaigns out of showing ads. Nor does it steal all of your brand traffic to look good, as far as we can tell (looking at you Dynamic Search Ads).

Where we’ve tested it

Like we said, ecommerce is our jam at BFBC so the bulk of our testing so far has consisted of replacing Smart Shopping campaigns. We’ve done this both by upgrading existing campaigns (per Google’s guidance) and creating new ones from scratch, so we know what to expect once that’s the norm. Each method seems to have its own upsides and pitfalls, so we’ll cover both here.

Google’s timeline for Performance Max is well underway- if you’re not making the switch you’re running out of time!

We’ve also tested it sparingly in a lead-gen context, so expect more news to come on that! For the meantime though, we’ll cover ecommerce and leave lead gen until we know enough to be showoffs about it.

So, what actually happened?

Ecommerce – as a Smart Shopping replacement

We’ll be blunt- PMax for Shopping (‘for Retail’ is the Google branding at the time of writing) performs brilliantly in 90% of cases. If this keeps up, we’re not going to miss Smart Shopping.

We found it can take a couple of weeks to find its feet, especially at lower spend levels so account for this when setting one up. We expected that upgraded (more on these later) campaigns might somehow lean on the historical data of the campaign which came before, but so far (note: with a very small sample size) this hasn’t been the case with Google even criticising our ads to justify why these campaigns weren’t performing as well. With 100% of the traffic coming from Shopping Ads, these ads are identical to the Smart Shopping ads which came before and performed well. Nice try.

Still, by Q4 we’ll only be able to launch all-new campaigns and these are the ones performing well, so no need to panic. You get to keep all your previous best practices and settings and even gain some control in the form of scheduling and location targeting (provided PMax respects these for Shopping), and audience signals allowing for more targeting than for Smart Shopping.

With account-level negative keywords (coming soon) and placement exclusions both applying to Performance Max, it’s a step forward in terms of both performance and control vs Smart Shopping. Smart Shopping was my (and many other PPCers’) first love, but PMax is looking like the more mature relationship that comes next. You know, the one where you’ve both learned from your past mistakes and you’re ready to commit long-term with your best foot forward and your flaws in check. Don’t break my heart PMax.

Performance Max: Upgrading from Smart Shopping

Google’s recommendation (literally, check that section of your Google Ads account) is for you to upgrade your pre-existing Smart Shopping campaigns into Performance Max campaigns. We’ve had mixed results doing it this way, but here’s how it works:

Log into your Google Ads account and go to the Recommendations tab (either at the campaign or account level) and you can either Apply All with reckless abandon, or ‘View X Recommendations’ and pick which campaigns you’d like to upgrade:

Alternatively, select a Smart Shopping campaign with the checkbox next to it in the campaigns screen, and you’ll see the ‘Upgrade To Performance Max’ option in the Edit menu like the example on the right (second from the bottom).

Note that I stole this screenshot from Google rather than check all of our accounts; some of ours don’t have this option yet so yours might not either. If you’re not sure, find the recommendation and you can’t go wrong.

However you begin the process, the following will happen:

• Your Smart Shopping campaign will be removed, making it permanently inactive;
  Since they’ll be retired soon anyway, this isn’t as serious as it sounds!
• A Performance Max campaign will be created in its place, with the name “PMax: “ followed by your old campaign’s name, so it’ll be easy to find. The budget will be kept identical too.
• This new campaign will feature one asset group (with an identical name to the SS ad group), targeting the same product groups as before (now called listing groups). There won’t be any audience signal in place; your product titles will be the only targeting besides Google’s estimates of conversion intent.
• Your Shopping Ad’s assets will be copied over and used in the new Performance Max ad. URL expansion will be turned on (meaning Google can use a different URL than the one specified if it thinks it’s more appropriate to the user), but this won’t mess with your shopping ads.
  

So far everything looks good, but there are a couple of pitfalls to watch out for:

• The new campaign’s targeting will be set to all countries and territories. That’s a pretty huge change that goes unannounced, so keep an eye out for it. Google will probably follow common sense and take what clues it can get from the feed about where to serve your ads, but why take the risk?
• Any target CPA or target ROAS settings will be carried over as they are. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, but if they’re especially strict, you might see the PMax struggle to spend its budget- it’s a brand new campaign with no historical data of its own, after all.
  

Keep all of the above in mind and you should have no trouble getting your new campaign off to a great start. Easy, right?

Performance Max: Things to watch out for

There are a few elements to PMax which are brand-new, so look out for these and make sure you take them into account*:

• At first glance, audience signals look like you’re stating outright targeting, like in a Display campaign or Facebook Ads. Not quite- sticking with the Facebook comparison, everything you state in your audience signal is set to lookalike-only, and Google looks for high-intent users with the properties you’ve stated.
  Performance Max does remarket, there’s no doubt about it- but you can’t specify a remarketing-only campaign and Google won’t prioritise returning users by default.
  
  

Google is fairly upfront about audience signals being more like guidelines than actual rules.

• If you don’t add your own display/video creative to a PMax campaign, it’s likely to make its own. The quality of these varies wildly, so look out! Give Google as much creative as you can to limit its freedom in that sense. If you’re shopping-only, don’t worry too much- Google won’t usually expand into video.
• The Insights tab in your PMax campaigns can be really useful for finding out which users are converting well; you might find an audience trait you didn’t know about before and now you can create a new asset group with targeting and ad content to suit them specifically. It also contains a search term report, although it’s not the one we know and love; take some time to get used to it.
  

*or just let BFBC do it. Get in touch and see how we can help you master Performance Max before your competitors.

The inevitable comparison to Facebook Ads

We waited as long as we could before getting to this bit, but it’s got to be said- a well-managed Performance Max campaign is potentially going to look a lot like a Facebook Ads campaign.

Again, the big caveat is that all your audiences are ‘similar to’ and you can’t specify any outright targeting. But in terms of the targeting settings available to you and the way you tailor creative to each of them, there’s going to be a lot of overlap between the two.

The execution is a little bit different, but PMax has a lot of the same optimisation potential as Facebook Ads.

That’s what this has all been about really: Google said this week that “how people search for information shouldn’t be constrained to a search box,” (thanks to Kirk Williams for nabbing that quote) which is another way of saying “we want to make money from users when they’re not searching as well as when they are.” A cynical view for sure, but we’re not saying you can’t make more money too if Google gets this right.

In conclusion…

Performance Max represents the next step in Google’s ad business, and your business along with it if you’re invested in Google Ads to drive sales for you.

With that said, it doesn’t have to be a big scary departure from the norm- the compulsory bits so far look like they’re genuinely better than what came before, and there are definitely a ton more ways to optimise your Performance Max campaign compared to Smart Shopping meaning your performance ceiling should be higher.

Google are actively adding features and reporting insights to Performance Max, breaking a 5+ year trend of taking them away in favour of “trust our machine learning”. We’re definitely still putting a lot of faith in the machine here, but it’s much more collaborative than Smart Shopping ever was.

Make the change, put the time into getting it right (or hire BFBC to do it, we honestly don’t mind) and this can be a positive change for your business. You can’t number-crunch your way to profitability like the Google Ads days of old, and instead you’ll see success by approaching PMax the same way you approach the rest of your marketing mix. It’s definitely a change of direction, but we think it’s for the better.