If you’ve been inside a Google Ads account recently, you’ve probably seen Performance Max campaigns (PMax) pop up all over the place. Google really wants advertisers to start using Performance Max more often.
PMax is one of Google’s latest campaign types that uses automation and machine learning to run ads across all of its advertising channels (Search, Display, YouTube and more). However, what is it exactly and is it any good?
In this article, we’ll walk you through what Google Performance Max actually is, how it works, where it fits into your ad strategy and what you should know before launching one. Full disclosure, when it comes to Performance Max campaigns, I am a bit biased as it is not my favourite campaign type, but more on that later. Let’s get into it.
What Is PMax?
Performance Max is a campaign type in Google Ads that basically hands a lot of control over to Google’s algorithms. You provide it with some basic information such as your goal, ad copy, images and some audience signals and then Google starts doing the rest.
It takes care of where to place your ads across formats, who sees them, what the search terms are and how much to bid. All of this is made possible thanks to Google’s smart bidding and machine learning system. It uses your inputs and past performance data to automatically optimise your ads for the best chance it thinks you have of getting conversions.
In other words, the main idea is that Google’s machine learning figures out the best combination of placements, audiences and creative assets to drive online sales. Instead of managing multiple separate search campaigns, YouTube or Display campaigns, Performance Max combines them all into one.
This makes it easier to run ads across Google’s entire network just from a single performance max campaign. To make the appeal of this campaign type even more sweeter, according to research, PMax increases conversion rates by 15% compared to traditional online campaigns. Now, while all that does sound amazing, it does come with a significant trade-off: limited control.
How Does a Google Performance Max Campaign Work?
Setting up a Performance Max campaign is less about manually picking keywords or placements and more about providing Google with the right ingredients so it can do the work for you. In other words, it’s less paid media management involved for you, as Google does a lot of the heavy lifting.
Here’s what you’ll need to set up and run a performance max campaign:
A clear goal: Usually conversions like sales or leads. This tells Google what success for your campaign will look like so it can optimise towards that goal and maximise your return on ad spend.
Creative assets: You’ll upload headlines, descriptions, logos and images. You can also go for videos, as they are one of the ad formats supported. However, they are optional. Just keep in mind, if you do choose to skip the videos, Google may auto-generate one for you.
Audience signals: These are suggestions and not strict targeting. They can include new customer segments, custom segments (e.g., people who searched for specific terms), website visitors, customer lists and lookalike-style audiences.
Conversion tracking: This needs to be properly set up and working. Google relies heavily on your conversion data to learn and improve.
Budget & bidding strategy: You’ll have to set a daily budget and choose a bidding option.
Once all of that is in place, Google takes the steering wheel. It will decide where and when to show your ads. It will also pick which assets to show to users based on what it thinks will perform best. Google will then automatically adjust bids in real time, using your conversion data and audience behaviour to help drive its decision-making.
The Benefits of Performance Max
PMax does have its strengths, especially if you have limited time, resources or creative bandwidth. Here are some of the benefits it could include:
Works well for larger budgets: PMax tends to perform best for businesses with bigger budgets because the higher spend gives Google’s machine learning more data to work with. This allows it to optimise faster and more effectively towards conversions. Simply put, more budget equals more data, which translates to the algorithm learning quicker and better optimisation.
All-in-one reach: You get exposure across YouTube, Search, Gmail, Display and more, just from one campaign.
Automation: Google handles the heavy lifting, like bidding and audience targeting. Thanks to Google handling most of the work, it can save a lot of time. In other words, it frees you up from managing separate search campaigns or smart shopping campaigns.
Can be good for e-commerce: If you’re running an online store with a product feed and good conversion data, PMax can help generate online sales and increase conversion value in some cases.
Creative testing: It mixes and matches your creative assets and learns what performs best over time within each Performance Max asset group.
The Downsides of Performance Max
While PMax can have some great advantages, the campaign type does have some significant cons. Here is a quick overview:
Limited control: You can’t see exactly where your ads are running or exclude certain placements easily (though account-level exclusions are possible). In addition, with Performance Max, you don’t have the ability to choose specific keywords. Google’s automation decides which keywords to target based on your inputs and goals. This can lead to Google targeting overly broad or irrelevant keywords, potentially resulting in wasted ad spend or lower-quality traffic.
Limited reporting transparency: With Performance Max, you don’t get the detailed insights you would with other campaigns, such as exact search terms or specific placements. Instead, you’ll only see broad search categories and general asset performance. This makes it harder to understand what’s driving your results and leaves you with limited visibility into how your campaigns are actually performing.
Needs a larger budget to work well: As mentioned, PMax tends to perform better for businesses with bigger budgets because Google’s machine learning needs enough data to optimise effectively. For smaller advertisers, limited spend can mean slower learning, less reliable optimisation and weaker results.
Limited control over brand traffic: If you’re not careful, PMax can soak up branded searches and make it look like it’s performing better than it actually is. While account-level brand exclusions are now available, they still don’t offer the same precision as traditional keyword targeting.
Not ideal for cold testing: If you don’t already have good conversion tracking and data in place, PMax will struggle. The thing is that Performance Max relies heavily on existing conversion data to optimise your campaigns. If you don’t have enough reliable data to begin with, the system won’t be able to make accurate predictions, thus leading to subpar results.
Why Do I Not Like Performance Max?
Well, it’s mostly for the reasons laid out above. The thing is that while PMax does have some nice benefits, giving up most of your control is not a good thing, even if this automatic campaign type helps you save a lot of time.
In addition, from all the people/agencies I have talked to and the performance max campaigns we have run, very few of them were actually successful. All of this makes it very difficult for me to recommend it to someone.
At the end of the day, Google Ads is a game of efficiency. To be efficient, you need control: control to steer your budget, block what’s not working and double down on what is. The challenge with Performance Max is that it takes away much of that control.
Instead of letting you fine-tune or cut underperforming areas, you’re forced to trust Google’s automation. This can slow down optimisation, especially if you’re working with a smaller budget that doesn’t give Google enough data to learn quickly.
Until you reach the point where you can afford to spend more to feed Google’s algorithms, PMax often just makes it harder to get the efficiency you need.
It’s not that PMax can’t work; it can. But when it does, it usually needs great conversion tracking, a lot of historical data, a massive budget and a business model that already performs well across multiple Google surfaces.
For everyone else, especially businesses still figuring things out, the results often end up being mediocre, expensive and unclear. (If you wanna dive deeper into why I generally don’t recommend PMax, you can check out another blog where I outline why it is usually not a good option to go for).
Tips to Get Better Results with PMax
If you do decide to run a PMax campaign, here are a few practical tips to help you along the way:
Use audience signals: While Google can find users on its own, giving it a hint (like your customer list or high-intent visitors) helps speed things up.
Provide strong creative assets: The system relies on your headlines, images and videos. As mentioned, if you don’t provide it with video assets, Google might generate its own, which makes it difficult for you to control the quality of those assets.
Make sure your conversion tracking is solid: If your tracking is broken or inaccurate, Google will optimise toward the wrong actions, or worse, nothing at all.
Review insights regularly: Check the asset performance ratings and search categories to see what’s working.
Watch branded traffic: Use exclusions or separate brand campaigns if needed to keep results honest.
Final Thoughts
PMax is a powerful tool that is very tempting. It can save time and simplify your ad structure, but it also hides a lot of detail that can make optimisation tricky, which can lead to lacklustre results. And while it can work for some e-commerce businesses, my own experiences have shown that most of the time, it does not.
As with most things in digital marketing, there’s no simple answer that will work for every business. Instead, test it if you’re curious, but I would say don’t expect any miracles and definitely don’t rely on it as your only paid ads strategy. To put it simply, go in with good data, clear goals and realistic expectations.
Need help making sense of your paid ads or figuring out what strategy works best for your business? Contact Snowball Creations today for your free ad audit and discover how you can make the most out of your ad spend.