If you're unfamiliar with it, Performance Max is a campaign type that enables advertisers to have multiple inventories of Ads in one campaign. This means your ad will be showing on search, display, YouTube, Shopping, and others. A common concern among advertisers regarding Performance Max is the control over specific ad placements. Unlike traditional campaigns in Google Ads, where advertisers can select individual placements or target audiences, Performance Max utilizes AI to enhance ad delivery across all available channels.
Recently, Google introduced significant updates to its Performance Max campaigns, and this post will discuss the new features and their implications while placing Performance Max within the broader advertising landscape.
What’s new in Performance Max?
Here are Google's latest updates designed to enhance advertiser control and address previous concerns over limited visibility:
Campaign-level negative keywords
Expected by the end of the year, the introduction of campaign-level negative keywords is a game changer. While it's important not to over-rely on this feature, it allows for significant refinement in targeting by excluding irrelevant traffic and enables more efficient budget allocation. Currently Performance Max campaigns often attract traffic that might not be as relevant to certain advertisers, resulting in low efficiency and waste of budget. After this update, advertisers can proactively negate these keywords, ensuring campaigns focus on relevant search terms from the start.
Impression share reports for search and shopping ads
Impression share reporting is another significant update. This feature allows advertisers to evaluate how often their ads appear relative to the competition, providing valuable insights for budget allocation. For example, if you know the campaign has a low impression share and is performing well, increasing the budget could result in capturing more high-quality impressions. Conversely, if the impression share is already above 90%, allocating additional budget might decrease the quality of traffic, which could be directed and over-delivered to other placements such as the display network, discovery, and YouTube, and it would likely result in a decline in the campaign's efficiency.
Target pacing insights for CPA and ROAS goals:
This feature helps to monitor performance against set targets. Advertisers can now more effectively monitor the performance of their campaign goals and targets. This will give a real-time view of whether the campaign is on track to achieve the TROAS or TCPA or if adjustments are needed to keep the campaign on target. With target pacing insights, Google is promising that advertisers will be able to know what factors are contributing to underperformance, whether it’s market fluctuations, budget constraints, or changing consumer behavior. Having this data enables quicker fixes and more informed decision-making.
Looking forward
Recent updates show advancements in restoring some advertising control within Performance Max. Although these improvements offer valuable chances for fine-tuning, it's important to approach these changes positively by making the most of the available tools, while considering that each account is unique. Advertisers will need to adjust their strategies on a case-by-case basis to enhance results. The success of any campaign depends not only on the tools we have at our disposal but also on how we effectively use them.
