Performance Max brings change to every aspect of Google Ads
Performance Max is here - some hate it, some love it, and some think it’s the name of the next Avengers villain. Having worked with Google and tested Performance Max, Kinase automation expert Paula Marmolejo Morazo brings together key facts and recommendations.
Kinase's beloved Secret Digital Veteran already shared their controversial opinion when Performance Max launched. Now that we've worked with Performance Max, we can break down how Performance Max changes each element of Google Ads, give some of our own tips and tricks, and lay out what your next steps should be.
Performance Max is about automation - but what’s new about it?
What’s new is the combination of campaign types brought into one campaign and goal. Performance Max is an automated and goal-based campaign type that runs across all Google Ads inventories, including YouTube, Display, Discovery, Search, Gmail and Maps. Performance Max aims to save time and drive you towards your goals whilst using Smart Bidding’s machine learning. It aims to complement regular search campaigns rather than replace them.
Some campaigns will automatically switch to Performance Max. What’s happening there?
The key date for this has changed since first released, and it’s probably subject to change in the future. At the time of writing (in June 2022) these are the key dates.
In early July: Optional, one-click upgrade to Performance Max available in Google Ads for Shopping and Local Campaigns. Tips and tricks: by doing this upgrade instead of creating a new campaign, the learning phase (warm up time) of Performance Max will be reduced, as it will use the campaign’s historical data - minimising disruption and leveraging what you've already spent.
In September: All Smart Shopping campaigns will automatically switch to Performance Max. Local campaigns will most likely follow the same trend, although this is not confirmed yet.
How will Performance Max change Google Shopping?
Smart Shopping already exists - and Performance Max boosts its power. Using Performance Max, you will still be able to appear in the Shopping space and manage products as you would with a Smart Shopping campaign. The added value is:
Performance Max adds extra placements - eligible to show on the Discover tab and Maps.
Performance Max adds extra insights - whilst you cannot check search terms on Smart Shopping campaigns, Performance Max will show “Search topics”, giving you an idea of the different categories your ads are appearing for.
The Need for Feeds
Performance Max operates by pulling in a feed from your Google Merchant Centre, in the same way as Google Shopping does. There are no changes on how to implement or manage feeds, and you will still be able to add custom labels, segment campaigns by product categories and all that good stuff. As for Local Inventory Ads, it will be possible to serve these with Performance Max, utilising a local feed as before.
Tips and tricks: you don’t necessarily need a Merchant Centre feed to run a Performance Max campaign - you can set one up without it, so don’t let the lack of a feed hold you back!
Will Performance Max eat my text ads?
Yes and no. Performance Max will show ads in search results, but think of it as integrating with Dynamic Search Ads and pulling them into a bigger automated campaign. The URLs used for this integration will be the ones in the shopping feed.
As for one eating the other, exact match keywords and exact search matches in your search campaigns will have priority over Performance Max. However, for the rest of your keywords, Google will prioritise the best-performing ad based on quality score.
As for the ad copy itself, when creating the Performance Max campaign, you’ll need to provide headlines and descriptions that will be used for the ads. Unfortunately, it won’t be possible to use any type of shopping feed connector to tailor your ads.
Performance Max auto-generates YouTube videos. Are they any good?
Well, do you remember doing slide presentations in school - the ones with funky animations and static images? That’s precisely how auto-generated video ads look in Performance Max. Not ideal, eh?
Google has not given any timelines yet as to when this will improve. However depending on the account budget it’s possible to ask for help in creating more bespoke video assets, edited by Google Support.
Tips and tricks: Workarounds for Performance Max video generation.
Ever resourceful members of the Kinase team have been trying ways of going around this. Short term fixes for sure, while you work on a full set of assets needed for Performance Max. So far we can give two tips:You can opt in and note that videos are pending. This way, Google will whitelist your campaign to run without this asset for the time being whilst you work on your content.
Don’t upload a logo. As video requires a logo, but the other assets can run without it, not uploading a logo would prevent the video from running without stopping the rest of the functionalities.
Display and Discovery rebooted and reloaded (yet again)?
Performance Max promises to renew both Display and Discovery, and if you have them already running, Performance Max won’t disrupt performance and should complement your existing campaigns nicely. We haven't seen disruption, but we haven't been able to measure incremental uplifts from having both running yet - we will report back our findings in our next Performance Max update.
Online and offline combined
Performance Max will take over from current Local Campaigns, and run in channels like Maps. If you want to ensure a prioritisation of in-store performance, or a combination of every sales point for a holistic connection of digital marketing to all of your sales, you will need to add offline metrics to your Performance Max campaigns (eg. Store Visits or Store Sales Direct - data which feeds back revenue numbers from shops). Tips and tricks: It might seem attractive to separate offline and online with separate Performance Max campaigns, but this isn’t the starting recommendation. This is the ideal new campaign type to get the most from testing a unified view of conversion points from the start.
Metrics surfaced by Performance Max
In a familiar pattern for Google roll-outs, Performance Max reduces the amount of data you can see relating to the campaign. This is what is available:
Overall campaign performance. It won’t be possible to see the performance of individual ad types or channels within it
Product performance
Ad Extension performance
Location performance
On the “insights” section, you can see “search categories”. This is not exactly a search term but a grouping of similar terms
How mature is Performance Max tech - and how it should be tested
Performance Max pulls together different channels and ad types, promising to unify them with Smart Bidding in pursuit of your marketing goal. In the way that Meta smoothly blends Facebook and Instagram - in reality very divergent ad environments - Google is offering to pull together the even more disparate suite of Google placements and ad types. This suite of channels brings in different emphases on every stage of the funnel, differing strengths of intention from consumers (from search to video to display), and differing levels of trackability from click attribution to view-through. It’s a complex mix for Google’s algorithms to parse in the name of boosting your stated goal, and it explains why initial campaigns show wildly different results.
Some of our Performance Max tests have ended up favouring one of the placement types - campaign analytics indicating a swing to YouTube, or Google Shopping, for example - and others have not driven clear positive results vs preceding campaigns at all.
This was a pattern we found with the launch of Google’s Smart Bidding technology. It promised a lot, but at the start the tech didn’t do what it promised. Continual tests and trials eventually found that a tipping point was reached where Google’s tech had improved to the point that it had fulfilled its promise - and was starting to edge ahead of rival automations in its results.
Performance Max is a big next step for Smart Bidding - and it’s still in an early phase of falling behind the promises with which it’s marketed. That’s why we recommend small-scale tests at the moment as the technology matures. As it does so in the months to come, the best plan will be for wide-scale A/B geo tests to determine if the uplift in your KPIs which Performance Max drives are really incremental for your business as a whole, given the relative lack of granularity in the data which the campaign comes with. A testing plan, such as the ones Kinase implements and analyses using Skai’s Impact Navigator tool for running flexible incrementality tests, will then be key to understanding how and if Performance Max should be a key part of your digital investment.
As we see the tech maturing and run more in depth tests we will follow up with a further Kinase Briefing with our insights on how to get the most from Performance Max, and when to launch more wide-scale tests.
