Performance Max takes your headlines, descriptions, images, video and a conversion goal, then decides for itself where to show them across search, Maps, YouTube, Display and Gmail. There are no keywords in the usual sense and very little control over placement. You supply the ingredients and the target, and the system does the rest.
Briefly explained
- One campaign across all of Google’s inventory.
- No keywords, limited placement control.
- It optimizes toward whatever you tell it to count.
- Weak tracking turns it into an expensive way to buy cheap clicks.
What does it actually control?
Nearly everything you would normally set by hand: which surface the ad runs on, which audience sees it, which combination of your assets is shown, and how much to bid for each opportunity.
Your remaining controls: how much, where, what counts as success, the material itself, and a handful of exclusions. That is the whole steering wheel.
When is it worth running?
When four conditions hold at once. Miss any of them and it will still spend the budget.
- Conversion tracking you trust, counting calls over a sensible duration and forms that are real
- Enough conversion volume for the bidding to learn from
- Brand exclusions, so it does not claim credit for people already searching your name
- Tight geography, set to presence rather than interest in an area
Why does the counting matter so much?
Because the system optimizes toward the thing you told it to count, with no judgment about whether that thing is valuable.
Tell it to count form submissions, and it will find people who fill in forms. Tell it to count calls over two minutes from the areas you serve, and it looks for something much closer to a customer. The campaign is only ever as good as its definition of success.
How do you judge it fairly?
Compare cost per booked job against your search campaigns over a full season, not a fortnight.
After that, look at which conversions it is claiming. If Performance Max looks strong mainly because it absorbed brand searches and retargeting that would have converted anyway, the result is borrowed rather than earned.
What do the terms mean?
- Asset group: The set of headlines, images and video the campaign draws from. The closest thing to an ad group.
- Audience signal: A hint about who to target. A suggestion, not a restriction.
- Brand exclusion: Keeps the campaign off searches for your own name.
- Final URL expansion: Lets Google send traffic to pages you did not nominate. Worth turning off until you trust it.
- Learning period: The weeks after a change while the bidding recalibrates.
Owner questions
