{"id":1583,"date":"2022-09-14T15:23:14","date_gmt":"2022-09-14T15:23:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.digitalposition.com\/resources\/blog\/?p=1583"},"modified":"2025-02-27T22:46:04","modified_gmt":"2025-02-27T22:46:04","slug":"google-performance-max-campaigns-101-best-practices","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dev.digitalposition.com\/resources\/blog\/ppc\/google-performance-max-campaigns-101-best-practices\/","title":{"rendered":"Google Performance Max Campaigns 101 & Best Practices"},"content":{"rendered":"

By now, you\u2019re well aware of Google sunsetting Smart Shopping to make way for the next generation of <\/span>Google Ads<\/span><\/a> campaigns\u2013Performance Max. With rollouts mostly complete, Google Performance Max updates will officially be the go-to Google Ads campaign sometime this month, ensuring businesses are well prepared to crush their marketing goals for the holiday season.<\/span><\/p>\n

If you\u2019re wondering what changes Google Performance Max will bring to your marketing efforts, you\u2019re not alone. Today, we\u2019ll walk you through the basics of Performance Max, including the most prevalent benefits, potential downsides, and a few best practices for optimizing your Performance Max campaigns for the utmost success.<\/span><\/p>\n

What is a Performance Max Campaign?<\/span><\/h2>\n

Performance Max is a fully automated, goal-based Google Ads campaign driven by AI, machine learning, and your inputs to achieve your most important performance objectives.<\/span><\/p>\n

Performance Max Google Ads unlock your campaign’s full potential across all Google Ads inventory (Shopping Ads, Gmail, Display and YouTube, Google Search, Discovery, and Google Maps), delivering a fully automated campaign that saves you time while improving your odds of reaching your intended audience. Oh, and it\u2019s all done from one single campaign. Cool, right?<\/span><\/p>\n

Here are four key benefits of Performance Max campaigns you should be aware of:<\/span><\/p>\n

Find More Customers Based On Your Goals<\/span><\/h3>\n

With the entire Google Ads library at your fingertips, you can engage with customers across all Google inventory from one single campaign based on the goals set forth at the beginning of the campaign.<\/span><\/p>\n

Performance Max campaigns allow you to set different values for your conversions in order to drive the highest ROI, whether those conversions are for online sales, lead generation, or offline sales.<\/span><\/p>\n

Leverage Automated Bidding & Drive More Value From Your Budget<\/span><\/h3>\n

With your goals set in place, Google Performance Max will leverage automated bidding and targeting technology to deliver tailored ads to your target customer, wherever they might be across the Google Ads inventory.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

This automated bidding strategy effortlessly allocates spend to the highest-ROI opportunities discovered. Add data-driven attribution to the mix (an optional feature), and you\u2019ll have additional opportunities to convert browsers into buyers.<\/span><\/p>\n

There are also options to use Maximize Conversions With tROAS or tCPA, which basically allow you to choose where Google should set their bids. It\u2019s recommended that you use Maximize Conversions with tROAS primarily to control and set the original bid Google should target, then make changes within that to help guide the automation throughout the course of your campaign.<\/span><\/p>\n

Learn About Your Audience Through Rich Insights & Transparency<\/span><\/h3>\n

Performance Max Google Ads also help streamline daily performance insights so you can gather the most relevant information on your campaign performance. This extensive data library can help you quickly identify strengths and weaknesses in your campaign for quick adjustments and better results down the road.<\/span><\/p>\n

Steer Automation with Google\u2019s Best Automation Tools<\/span><\/h3>\n

With Performance Max, you\u2019ll also have access to top Google Ads automation tools and property auction data to identify user inputs, accelerate the campaign learning period, and steer automation for better results in less time.<\/span><\/p>\n

Potential Drawbacks of Google Performance Max<\/span><\/h2>\n

Since the Performance Max rollout, we\u2019ve noticed that accounts with less than $10k in Performance Max\/month often experience longer learning times than accounts with larger ad spend budgets. Additionally, Performance Max may cannibalize other campaigns based on its determination of \u201cnot enough budget\u201d or \u201clow ad rank\/lack of negatives,\u201d both of which can really attack <\/span>branded ads<\/span><\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n

As of now, Performance Max Campaigns have way more volume than Smart Shopping (and better performance in most cases). Because of that, you also have to be super targeted and diligent about the changes you\u2019re making to your campaign.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Any changes made during the long learning period can have drastic effects and need to be carefully measured. If you’re going the fully automated route, don’t change any assets for 2-4 weeks. If you’re choosing to use maximize conversions with tCPA or tROAS, make small tweaks once a week to guide performance as needed<\/span><\/p>\n

How to Optimize Performance Max Campaigns<\/span><\/h2>\n

Learn how to create a Performance Max campaign that shines, and you\u2019ll improve your chances of a successful campaign. Here are a few key factors to pay attention to.<\/span><\/p>\n

Creative Assets<\/span><\/h3>\n

Performance Max uses your assets to create various ads for different channels. Since Performance Max will auto-generate ad formats, you\u2019ll want to ensure you have as many versions of fresh, quality creative assets as possible to go along with them. These include text, image, and video assets. Here is what we recommend\u2013coincidentally, it\u2019s the same amount that Google Performance Max allows you to have at one time \ud83d\ude09:<\/span><\/p>\n

Text Assets<\/span>
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