Google Performance Max is a new format of contextual product advertising recently introduced by Google. According to the service’s announcement, it should become an alternative to, and later completely replace, smart shopping campaigns.
A tool controlled by artificial intelligence and requiring minimal involvement of the marketer opens a new page in the history of the development of automated campaigns. But you should not give product promotion solely to it and refuse to use other contextual advertising tools.
What is Google Performance Max?
Google Performance Max is the latest type of advertising campaign that dynamically distributes the allocated marketing budget between different sites. As a result, ads are shown not only in search results, but also in the contextual media network, YouTube, Google Maps, Discover and Gmail. At the same time, the whole process is fine-tuned and works without the advertiser’s involvement, thanks to the use of machine learning.
Automated campaigns Performance Max can work in parallel with the usual search advertising, greatly enhancing its effect and allows you to influence the audience that is difficult to reach with the help of conventional formats.
This technology is based on artificial intelligence and machine learning. They allow real-time optimization of bids and testing of creatives to get higher conversions.
Intelligent algorithms analyze a huge number of factors – people’s behavior, the ads themselves, budget, attribution information, and more. This allows the system to independently select the best creative options for product promotion, ensuring maximum conversions at minimum cost.
However, for this tool to work as efficiently as possible, it is necessary to provide it with high-quality input data:
Well-designed objects (texts, images, videos);
Choose the right optimization and bid assignment strategy;
Choose the right target audience.
What are the advantages of Performance Max Google Ads?
Among the many advantages of Performance Max Google Ads, let’s highlight the main ones:
Ads of different formats in one RC. All existing channels and types of ads can be used when promoting a product using Performance Max campaigns. This approach allows you to reach the widest possible audience without significantly increasing your budget. And if before advertisers had to set up, for example, trade and search campaigns separately, distributing funds between them manually, now the whole routine is taken over by GPM, and the process of setting up advertising has become unified.
Automation of most operations. A marketer only needs to specify the characteristics that the attracted audience should have, as well as set the values of target parameters to assess the effectiveness, after which Google will analyze all the information provided using a special intelligent mechanism, group users into segments, set up targeting and display ads. The system will also help to form creatives, but on condition that you upload the appropriate images, videos and text fragments.
Bid assignment strategies. In addition to the existing types of strategies in product campaigns (target return on investment in promotion and the highest number of conversions), there is an additional one – target cost per conversion. The new strategy is attractive for businesses with low profitability of sales of one unit of goods, because if properly set up, such a campaign will always show positive results.
High performance indicators. When developing the Performance Max format, Google put maximum effort into training the new artificial intelligence, which is more effective than all previous algorithms. A significant contribution to the success of the new technology is the ability to publish ads on any site in the Google advertising network, as well as intelligent processing of behavioral signals, automated bidding and target audience formation.
The methodology of Google Performance Max campaigns does not provide for the use of key queries – the algorithm selects the audience itself. Therefore, there is a risk of excluding those whose interest in the product is momentary, who are trying to find your product right now.
Tip: Don’t limit yourself to Performance Max campaigns and launch them in parallel with your existing search campaigns.
It is more recommended to allocate only a small part of the investment for the test period for the new format and, only after making sure that the launch of GPM had a positive impact on the overall results of promotion, gradually increase its share in the total advertising budget.
Disadvantages of PMax automated campaigns
You cannot independently control the sites where ads and keywords are shown. Artificial intelligence independently analyzes various signals and makes decisions, providing the advertiser with rather limited statistics. In addition, by default, ads are automatically displayed across the entire Contextual Media Network, mobile apps and YouTube. The user has no possibility to manually exclude ineffective sites, which may cause displays in not quite relevant places.
Poor performance with a limited budget. PMax campaigns will fail if the number of conversions in your account is small. For the tool to work effectively, you need to collect at least 15 targeted events over the last 30 days before launching it. The more there are, the better the results will be. Considering that Performance Max shows advertising in all possible channels, it requires a fairly substantial budget to achieve a good return.
It is difficult to predict advertising costs. It is more difficult for marketers to anticipate exactly how much will be spent over a given period. Automated budget and rate management makes this more difficult.
Long training period. Artificial intelligence algorithms usually take about two weeks to train and optimize. However, in the case of Performance Max, this period can be much longer. According to the experience of many advertisers, stable work can be observed about a month after launch, and tangible results begin to appear closer to the third month of promotion.
Sensitivity to downtime. If a campaign in this service is suspended for a long period of time (for example, during holidays or seasonal decrease in demand), the reliability of the trained algorithm may significantly decrease. Then the system may need to be retrained again after marketing activity resumes.
Who is suited to the Performance Max format?
You should start testing the Performance Max format if you have:
You have certain marketing goals – you plan to increase online sales, attract potential customers to your website, etc. The system will independently optimize the campaign based on your goals, so only those who are likely to take the specified action will see the ads.
There is a need to use several Google promotion channels for one campaign. The ability to run ads on all platforms at once is provided in the Performance Max settings. You can promote your product on YouTube, search, CMC, Gmail or Discover without creating independent campaigns for all of these channels.
You already have up-to-date information about audience targeting accumulated earlier. Then in the process of setting up advertising you can specify the characteristics of your target audience, and the system will select a segment of users that will be as similar to it as possible.
You already have a stable traffic generated by standard campaigns, and you want to increase your reach. The artificial intelligence of Google Performance Max constantly analyzes user actions and, using its results, shows ads to those who have not yet searched for the promoted product, but are likely to show interest in it, and such interaction will result in conversion.
How to set up a Google Performance Max advertising campaign?
Although setting up Google Performance Max usually seems complicated and confusing for a PPC newbie, especially for those who are new to this type of campaign, the tool is almost completely automated, so working with it doesn’t require much training.
Create a new campaign
At the same time, the advertising account must be active and 30 or more sales must have been recorded in the last 30 days. This is necessary so that the algorithms can analyze data about the target audience, which will ensure maximum effectiveness of the campaign.
When selecting a goal, you should specify “Sales”. Then, in the window that opens, select the campaign type – “Performance Max” (this is a translation of the English phrase Performance Max).
Select a bid assignment strategy
By default, the “Conversion Value” strategy will be selected in this field. If you do not have specific information about the margins of certain product categories, you can leave this option unchanged.
If necessary, you can set the cost profitability, but it makes sense to do this only if you have accurate information about the margin for each product group. For example, if the margin is 20%, the profitability should be set at 500%. This means that with an investment of 1000 hryvnias, the company should earn 5000 hryvnias. If the margin is lower, the promotion costs may simply not pay off.
Customize geography and language settings
If you are setting up a campaign for Ukraine, be sure to exclude temporarily occupied territories when setting up location targeting. This will avoid untargeted impressions and wasted budget.
Below you should select the languages spoken by your audience. Also don’t forget about the language that can be activated in the browser settings of potential clients. For example, in Ukraine people most often use Ukrainian and Russian interfaces, respectively, they enter search queries in the same languages. Therefore, you should specify both of these languages in the settings.
Customize automatically created objects
Here you need to disable displays on untargeted URLs. The list of exceptions should include “About”, “Payment and Delivery”, “Privacy Policy” and other technical sections.
If this is not done, Google will at its discretion show customers not product cards, but information about the company, which is unlikely to attract many conversions. Usually, when setting up targeting, exclude blog articles, “Contact Us”, “Warranty and Returns” and other similar pages. People will be able to find this data on their own if necessary.
Add your own objects
PMax campaigns can be run both for online stores with product feeds and for individual pages with services, so when setting up objects, it’s important to provide all possible options to form any creative (from photos and videos to headlines and descriptions).
In addition to uploading a product feed, don’t forget to also set universal slogans and media files. These will be used in the search and media network, while the products from the feed will be displayed in the shopping blocks.
Be sure to add product photos. For general promotion, you can use images from the homepage, but for individual categories, use photos of the highest-priority and best-selling products. Upload pre-saved images and adjust the visible area, cropping if necessary.
Ideally, if possible, add 2-3 images in each of the formats (horizontal, square, vertical). Don’t forget to add logos as well (at least one should be in a 4:1 aspect ratio).
Also, create a minimum of 5 original headlines. Two of them should relate to the name of your niche or product category, and three should reflect your key benefits.
Customize your audience signals
This is information about potential buyers of your services, which together determine the pattern of their behavior. It is this pattern that Google uses when choosing who to show your ads to.
Although it’s not mandatory, it will help you find the right audience faster to optimize your ads. With the help of signals you can cover CA by demographics, interests, previous interactions with your company, etc.
You can add these signals during campaign creation via the “Target Groups” section. Here, include special segments from the Audience Manager, information about the target audience for remarketing, and specify the hobbies and demographics of future customers. Then add existing customers to the exclusions if the promotion is no longer relevant to them.
Remember that signals are additional markers, a kind of compass that points the system to the audience that may be interested in your ads. These are not strict restrictions, but rather recommendations for targeting algorithms.
Properly tuned signals help to improve the accuracy of automatic targeting and find new non-obvious audience segments ready for purchases and other interactions. Performance Max doesn’t just show ads to selected audiences, but simply uses that information to find similar leads.
Create segments
At this stage, you need to upload relevant keyword phrases for each product category to be advertised. If you are launching a campaign for the entire product range, add queries that characterize the highest-priority product groups. If you are focusing on a specific product category, specify different variations of search queries for it.
You can also add competitor sites to the segments. Then Google will target shows to people with similar behavior to visitors of those sites.
Download audience data
For a general campaign that is shown for the entire assortment, it is better to add all available audiences – website visitors, users who added something to the cart, visited the checkout page and made a purchase.
If you are promoting a specific product group and the number of visitors to this category exceeds 500 per month, create a separate audience for it. If the number of visitors is less, use the existing settings.
Don’t forget to also specify interest audiences according to the topic of the advertised services.
Determine the budget
Set a limit to avoid excessive spending at the stage of algorithm training. But at the same time, we do not recommend limiting the budget too strictly, otherwise the service will not have enough information for optimization, and you will not get the desired results.
If you know the average cost per conversion, focus on a daily budget of at least 5 x CPA. This will provide enough traffic for the automated bid assignment algorithms to work effectively.
Tips for working with Google PMax
Test the service in parallel with your current campaigns. At the initial stage, it is wise to use Google PMax as an auxiliary tool, not as the main promotion channel. It will help you get additional conversions, while your existing campaigns will provide a stable flow of traffic. This approach will allow you to evaluate a new marketing tool without the risk of losing your current results.
If you need to run several campaigns on the platform for different product categories, simply copy the one you set up earlier the required number of times. Disable unnecessary groups, change ads and signals. Copywriting will save time, as part of the settings (logo, budgets, common slogans and benefits) will already be filled in.
Do not rush to draw conclusions about the performance of the service in the first days or even weeks after launch. This format needs time for learning and optimization. If after 1-2 weeks you haven’t seen significant results, that’s normal. Campaigns with Maximum Effectiveness gain momentum within 1-1.5 months. Don’t jump to conclusions that this tool is not suitable for your business, give it time.
Add as many different objects as possible. The platform shows the best results when the system is loaded with relevant texts, images and videos in different variations. This allows the artificial intelligence to use different formats and alternate object variants to find the most effective combinations for each segment of the target audience. If the results do not meet expectations – try adding more descriptions and images to give the algorithms more opportunities for optimization.
