Written by: Tarik Čalkić

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You'd be forgiven for avoiding using Performance Max (Pmax) campaigns, as many advertisers have found it frustrating or confusing to use. Launched in November 2021, PMax was greeted with both excitement and confusion, especially due to its high degree of automation. Yet when configured thoughtfully, we've found PMax to be one of the most powerful ways to reach potential customers across Google's vast network - from YouTube and Display to Search, Discover, Gmail, and Maps. As a fully automated campaign, Performance Max can leave little to no room for optimisations, changes and insights...so we decided to shed some light on optimisation practices and hopefully help you master this versatile tool. 

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1. Campaign Goal / Objective 

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The first step is to choose your campaign goal based on your business (most commonly used are Sales for ecommerce and Leads for B2B or SaaS). Prior it was best practice was to start your campaign without goal guidance. However in the case of Performance Max it's better to have a clear goal setting from the start. 

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2. Bidding strategies & Historical Data

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If your account has historical performance data (30 conversions in 30 days is considered best practice) you can start with target ROAS or target CPA – 30 conversions rule is an optimal starting point for P. Max campaigns. That said, it can still perform without historical data, it just may take a bit longer to generate substantial results. 

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My advice would be to start with "Maximise Conversions" or "Maximise Conversion Value" without CPA or ROAS targets to jumpstart campaign and generate traffic faster. After your campaign has got a significant number of conversions, consider applying targets.

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3. Assets & Asset Groups 

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Let's start with a simple definition so we're all on the same page: “An asset group is made of images, logos, headlines, descriptions, videos, sitelinks, assets, and audience signals that you upload or that are automatically created by Google AI during your Performance Max campaign setup. These assets are automatically mixed and matched based on which Google Ads channel (YouTube, Gmail, Search, and others) your ad is being served on” (source).

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To maintain control over your asset groups, make sure you TURN OFF automatically created assets and URL expansion, like this:

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A few more practical tips to ensure you use all available assets to achieve better Ad Strength:

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• 15 headlines – try having 5 most relevant keywords, 5 brand related headlines & 5 generic / USP headlines.
• 5 long headlines – combination of Brand + Product headlines, Brand + USP headlines and Call To Action headlines.
• 5 descriptions – make sure all text makes sense when combined and avoid repetition. 
• 20 images – make sure to have combination on Vertical (3:4), Square (1:1) and Horizontal (1.91:1) formats – aim for minimum 10 images if 20 is not possible
• 5 Videos same as with images you should have 3 formats and minimum 3 videos
• Include Business name and Logo (up to 5 logos in different formats).
• Display path – use it to highlight your asset group focus 

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4. Signals: Search Themes + Audiences Signals 

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These signals direct Google AI towards the audiences that you want to target and are just suggestions, not targets – Google is going to target audiences beyond your signals. For a good audience signal Google recommends having Your Data and Interests and Detailed Demographics. 

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If you have multiple asset groups, try to tailor your signals as much as possible e.g. if your asset group is serving Dresses make sure your interest / affinity audiences are in line with it and when possible, have a customer match list that is relevant to dresses. Create custom interest segments that include relevant keywords, when possible competitors and expand these segments with websites and apps.

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Essentially, relevant combination of first party data + interests and affinities + custom segments + search themes are the ingredients for strong Audiences signal. Some further tips:

• Search themes are still in beta - are basically an upgraded search keyword custom segment that also can be used on Search inventory and non-Search inventory and will have same prioritisation as phrase or broad match keywords. 
• Don’t use your exact keywords, instead go broad terms like overall product category or relevant theme – no need to have all 25 to avoid redundancy, rather have 10 unique and relevant themes. 

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5. Product Feed 

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If you're running a Performance Max campaign for an ecommerce business, your focus should be the “shopping part” of campaign. To make sure it works fine you need to have your product feed optimised. This part usually gets overlooked as advertisers get working feed and rarely look into its details. The main attributes to pay attention to and optimise if needed are:

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• Product Title – make sure it mentions Brand and some main relevant product attributes like colour, size, material. Best to follow formula: Brand + Product Name + Relevant attribute e.g. Colour + Generic keyword.
• Product description – make sure it is not too short, and it contains product relevant text.
• Google product category – make sure it is set as close to your product as possible.
• Additional product categories – are not predefined so you can write them in manner that best works for your product and aim for depth of minimum 5. Best to follow formula Brand > Product category > Product name > Product colour > Product material > Gender > Age

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6. Insights, Scripts, Negative Keywords 

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Use Insights and Reports in google ads to gain top level understanding of what is going on within your Performance Max campaigns. The main ones to pay attention to are:

• Performance highlights in your campaign – see significant increases / decreases across your asset groups. 
• Search terms insights – closest to search terms report we can get – see search categories related to your asset group. 
• Placements report for P. Max lets you see where P. Max ads showed – run it occasionally to make sure no irrelevant pages are included. 
• Scripts – currently there are many scripts advertisers use to dive deeper in P. Max, most useful ones are P. Max search terms script (allows you to see search terms that triggered your Pmax campaign) and P. Max network distribution script (allows you to see performance per network – basically how much of your ad spend is going to shopping, search, display and video – make sure your campaign is mainly serving on shopping and search). 
• Negative keywords – it was recently announced that advertisers will be able to add up to 100 negative keywords to Performance max campaign level but this has not been fully rolled out yet, you can still do it trough Google support using this form. 
• Brand exclusions – many advertisers doubt strong P. Max performance as it has been proven that it “steals” from brand – to avoid this make sure you add Brand exclusions in your campaign settings.

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7. Structure 

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They say that to get best results with Performance Max it's best to have one campaign serving all your products in either on asset group or through multiple asset groups split by product – because more data means faster learning and better performance. This setup would probably work fine every time but your control and ability to get insights is super low.

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To tackle this issue, consider segmenting / splitting you P. Max activity in the way that works for you. Here are some of the most popular structure splits:

• By product category 
• Bestsellers / Regular products / Zombies
• Sale / No Sale items – Retail / Outlet 
• By product value – High Value Products / Low Value products 
• P. Max with Brand exclusions + Brand Standard shopping

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I hope this is valuable on your Performance Max journey! Do feel free to reach out if you have any Performance Max concerns, I'd be happy to help.