Performance Max
campaigns
Performance Max campaigns let Google's automation buy ads across Search, Shopping, YouTube, Display, Gmail and Maps from one budget. Fed with good data, they find buyers you'd never target by hand. Fed with bad data, they spend fast and report nicely. My job is to make sure it's the first case.
Free: a 30-minute call, an action plan and a price range in writing.
Six levers that keep
Performance Max honest
You can't pick placements in Performance Max, but you can decide what it learns from.
Conversion goals
Only purchases, qualified leads and booked calls count. Newsletter sign-ups and page views stay as secondary goals.
Conversion values
If a kitchen job is worth fifty times a repair, the values say so, and bidding follows the money.
Asset groups
Separate groups per product line or service, each with its own headlines, images, videos and audience signals.
Audience signals
Your customer list, site visitors and custom segments based on search terms tell the system where to start looking.
Brand exclusions
Without them, PMax happily takes credit for people who were already searching for your name.
Feed quality
For stores, titles, prices and images in Merchant Center decide which products show and how often.
You see where
customers come from
The report shows which channels bring enquiries and which only spend the budget.
- All sources in one place
- Conversions, not visits
- A report once a month
Performance Max,
Shopping or Search?
| Performance Max | Shopping | Search | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Where ads show | All Google channels | Shopping tab and results | Search results |
| Your control | Low, through signals | Medium, by product | High, by keyword |
| Data it needs | Plenty of conversions | Good product feed | Keyword list |
| Best for | Stores and lead gen with history | Stores with a clear catalogue | Local services, any budget |
| Risk | Spending on weak placements | Feed errors | Paying for wrong searches |
Launching PMax
in 5 steps
Data check
I confirm conversions are accurate and that you have enough of them. Without that, I start with Search or Shopping instead.
Structure
Asset groups by category or margin, with feeds or final URLs that match each group.
Assets
Headlines, descriptions, images and at least one real video. Google's auto-made videos rarely flatter a brand.
Guardrails
Brand exclusions, negative keywords at account level, URL expansion rules and location settings.
Reading the results
Channel and search term insights reviewed every week, with budget moved by profit, not reported ROAS alone.
What Performance Max
with me costs
Prices in Canadian dollars. Ad spend goes to Google directly.
Tracking check, structure, assets and guardrails.
- Conversion goals and values
- Asset groups by product line
- Brand exclusions
- Merchant Center link for stores
Weekly work, no minimum term.
- Asset tests and refreshes
- Insights and placement checks
- Budget split with Search and Shopping
- Report every 2 weeks
What Performance Max campaigns really are
Performance Max is a single Google Ads campaign that shows your ads on every Google surface: Search, Shopping, YouTube, Display, Discover, Gmail and Maps. You give it a goal, a budget, creative assets and some hints about your audience. Google decides who sees what, where and at what price.
That sounds like the perfect tool for a busy owner, and sometimes it is. In my experience, Performance Max campaigns do well for online stores with a clean product feed and for lead businesses that already record dozens of real conversions a month. They do poorly when the only signal is “someone filled in a form”, because the cheapest way to get forms is often low-quality traffic.
The data comes first
Before I launch Performance Max, I check three things. First, are conversions real? A form that bots fill in, or a “thank you” page that loads twice, will teach the system to find more bots. Second, are there enough of them? As a rough rule, a few dozen conversions a month gives the algorithm something to work with. Third, do values reflect profit? A store selling both $20 accessories and $900 furniture should tell Google which sale matters.
If any of these fail, I fix conversion tracking first and run Search or Shopping in the meantime. It's slower, but cheaper than paying the algorithm to learn the wrong lesson.
Structure that keeps you in control
Inside a campaign I build separate asset groups for different product lines, services or price points. Each one gets its own headlines, images, video and audience signals, and for stores a listing group with matching products. That way I can see which group earns and shift budget accordingly.
I also add guardrails: brand exclusions so PMax doesn't harvest people already searching for your name, account-level negative keywords, and control over which URLs Google is allowed to send traffic to. For stores selling only in Canada, shipping and location settings need to match, or you'll pay for clicks from places you can't deliver to.
Reading Performance Max reports without fooling yourself
The platform's reported return can look excellent while total sales stay flat, because PMax often catches buyers who would have come anyway. I compare three numbers each month: revenue reported in Google Ads, revenue in your store or CRM, and total revenue for the business. If only the first one grows, something is being double counted.
Assets: the part owners underestimate
Performance Max needs creative for every placement: short and long headlines, descriptions, landscape, square and portrait images, logos and video. Many accounts launch with stock photos and the same three headlines everywhere, then wonder why YouTube and Display bring nothing. I ask for real photos of your products, your team or finished work, and I write copy for each asset group separately. Every few weeks I look at the asset ratings, replace the weakest ones and keep a record of what was tried, so tests build on each other instead of starting from zero.
When to choose something else
For a local business with a small budget, Search campaigns are usually a better start. For a store with fewer than a few hundred products, standard Google Shopping gives more control at first. Performance Max is the next step once those campaigns prove there's demand and the tracking is trustworthy.
Setup is $650 and management starts from $750 a month, the same as any Google Ads campaign I run. To see where PMax fits among the other options, start from the Google Ads services overview.
Performance Max
questions
Is Performance Max good for a small business?
It can be, once the account has steady conversions. With only a handful of leads a month, the algorithm has little to learn from and tends to drift towards cheap Display and video placements. For most small local businesses I start with Search, then add Performance Max when tracking is solid and the budget allows a fair test.
Will PMax steal sales from my Search campaigns?
If your Search campaign has the exact keyword, it usually wins. For everything else, PMax can overlap. I use brand exclusions and account-level negatives, and I compare results before and after launch, so you see whether new sales were added or just moved.
Do I need videos for Performance Max?
Strongly recommended. Without your video, Google builds one from your images and text, and the result often looks cheap. A short phone-shot clip of your product or team is better than nothing. If you need proper ad videos, I can make them as part of my creative work, quoted separately.
Can I see where my PMax ads showed?
Partly. Google now shows more than before: channel performance, search term insights and some placement data. It's still less than in Search or Shopping. I review what's available every week and exclude poor placements and brand terms where the platform allows.
How long does Performance Max take to learn?
Expect about two to six weeks before results settle, depending on how many conversions come in. Changing budgets or assets heavily during that period resets part of the learning, so I plan changes in steps rather than reacting to every daily swing.
Around
Performance Max
Let me check where
the money actually goes
Send me read access and your goals. On a free 30-minute call I'll tell you whether Performance Max is earning or just taking credit.