Google Ads Performance Max POV & Campaign Setup Best Practices (April 2024)

No time to read the full article? Here's a quick cheat sheet with caveats mixed in:

1. Start with a mix of your top and middle performing SEM Keyword themes for the asset groups/targeting. Don't try PMAX right away unless your business can afford to have one of your top performing themes go dark for 2 weeks or so - So you can see how PMAX performs independently of SEM. I would recommend starting with top performing Generic (Non-Brand) keywords first.
2. Make sure you use a Remarketing audience layer (doesn't have to be customer match, can be based on the Google Ads conversion pixel data or Google Analytics data) I wouldn't recommend using PMAX if your account is very new.
3. Add 5-10 relevant product or line of business/category keywords to your targeting at a mid-funnel level first before going granular (should be one step broader than a search ad group keyword theme)
4. Add direct competitor apps and websites to your targeting ("users who browse these sites" or "users who use these apps")
5. Since your asset groups will be broader - You'll need to be creative and leverage a multi-product/SKU approach to copy. For example if selling Socks the description line should say something like "100% Egyptian Cotton Socks: Olive Green, Turquoise, Burgundy and Yellow." Choose your top 3-4 selling variations to include in the copy. Users who click through from PMAX are higher in the funnel and don't have to be led to a specific LP to convert in my experience. So don't worry about lining up exact keywords to exact copy like in traditional SEM campaigns.
6. If you have YouTube videos: Include at least 1 short that's anywhere from 15-60 seconds and 1 landscape video (can be longer, 1-2 minutes). If not, the system will automatically create one after a few days. (Depending on the industry - They might not come out as bad as you think.)
7. You should start out testing lifestyle vs product related stock images 50/50 if your industries regulations allow you to.
8. Turn off Final URL expansion and automatically created assets if you're in a heavily regulated environment/industry.

Preface: GDPR and CCPA, along with other laws have changed the digital advertising space significantly in the past 5-7 years. We are already in a state where 3rd party cookies are all but defunct. Entire business models in the ad tech space have had to merge and pivot to adapt, sometimes twice or even three times. There are always good intentions to these types of regulations to protect the consumer, but the fallout typically is broader than anticipated. Challenges to digital marketing campaign performance and profitability persist. Now, if you are a growing a new business (or launching a product significantly different from the rest of your business) it can be that much harder to compete against bigger brands who have larger First Party (1P) CRM audiences. They have an edge in this environment. There are more opportunities for them to out-bid you - Because they have more visibility as well as more statistical significance on their side.

As many in the industry know - These privacy updates have moved Google to have minimum audience sizes for customer match/1P lists to avoid giving regulators ammunition to crack down on them. Generally it's very hard in my experience to get meaningful conversion volume on 1P audiences below 100,000 users and is very much impossible if the user pool is below 10,000.

However, what is not being emphasized in these discussions is big tech/social/media companies also now have a strengthened oligopoly. This is because large tech companies have the resources to not only comply with privacy regulation updates but profit from them. Meta and Google control a large majority of ad spend in the United States for the past 4 years, in an almost impenetrable duopoly. Both have lost some share to Amazon and TikTok but Google has taken the edge recently (vs Meta) in my opinion due to some of Facebook's recent Ad bot/Spam/UX blunders in the past couple of years. Additionally - Google is looking to grow it's YouTube ad business and beat TikTok (which is catching up quickly and could surpass YouTube in the next 5 years in terms of ad revenue, if it's not banned). Google can now leverage the fact that small to medium sized advertisers need to leverage Google's 2P data now more than ever. 2P data is the closest some advertisers will be able to get to effective audience targeting in absence of robust 1P CRM lists.

With a potential TikTok ban and Meta's recent blunders, Google is in a good position to double down on strengthening it's core ad business in a medium (video) that is still growing globally compared to it's much older search ads business.

Enter Performance Max...

When you combine these factors, PMAX makes total sense for Google to shift to and promote:

• Most smaller advertisers can't afford the time to manage PPC or the cost associated with hiring internally (or working with an external agency to manage the program). Especially with interest rates this high. They can't borrow as much money to hire. PMAX is the first step of many towards a more heavily automated ads experience which allows businesses to get their "foot in the door" to run Ads just to see if it could work for their business more quickly vs. how it was even 2-3 years ago. This doesn't entirely eliminate the need for a PPC/SEM manager, but it does shift the value add to a more strategic vs. operational role.
• Many smaller brands can't produce high quality image and video assets at the rate Meta's algorithm needs to maintain performance there. Creative fatigue is quicker there vs Google. (I have theories on why this is, but that's another post). The creative fatigue threshold for PMAX is much, much higher from my observation. You could potentially go 2-3 months depending on the budget and industry without doing a complete creative refresh. That translates to lower management/bandwidth hours.
• Performance MAX allows for stock image selection as well as automated video creation using the headlines/descriptions and images you selected. (Caveat: There are still challenges with arbitrary aspect ratio restrictions. But you'll be able to find other stock images faster than it would take to get your graphic designer to re-size these to the exact aspect ratio PMAX "likes") Not sure if Meta has this yet: The last time I tried to setup a Meta campaign I got stuck in an administrative 2-factor authentication doom loop. Not to mention issues with Google Tag Manager conversion implementation... As I've mentioned above it has become quite a cumbersome ads platform recently.
• If advertisers are automatically opted into YouTube video inventory via PMAX with automatically created video assets (created by AI) = More ad revenue for the YouTube product.

Now for the Best Practices. Some of us in the industry know the downsides of PMAX. Less control, less transparency and actionable insights. Before I give what I have seen work, here are some caveats:

• Final URL expansion is going to remain a key setting to pay attention to for certain industries. If you are in a highly restricted/regulated vertical you may want to turn this off - But know that performance will likely suffer somewhat in exchange. It might be worth using the URL exclusion rule first. But if it becomes too much of a game of whack-a-mole and you risk heavy regulatory fines then I would say uncheck this feature.
• Automatically created assets I would temporarily allow these in the beginning and remove them later if needed. From the reporting side I have seen these don't generate a ton of impressions or clicks if your main copy is doing well, it won't drag performance. If your ad strength becomes "Excellent" by adding one of these and you have nothing else to say in creative, my POV is just add it.

Best Practices Setup:

1) Start with Conversions and don't assign a Target cost per action in the beginning. The best progression I've seen is Max Conversions > Target CPA > Target ROAS (Conversion Value). If you try to skip this natural progression the results usually aren't good. Don't check "Bid for new customers only" yet.

Don't run PMAX if your account has low conversion volume for the targeting you'd be looking to select (either keyword or audience based). My personal opinion on low conversion volume is:

• Less than 100 up funnel conversions such as a lead
• Less than 25 down funnel conversions such as a purchase or other revenue generating event (or event that has 50% probability to convert at a later point for a long funnel journey)

2) Try a restricted geo-target first if your available daily budget is below $250. Leverage the conversion data from your keyword based SEM campaigns for guidance. This can help ensure that your ad saturation or SOV can be high enough to drive conversion activity:

3) Don't daypart campaigns yet. Wait for the campaign to get more data first and exit the bid learning period. Leave "Text Assets" and "Final URL" checked for now unless you are in a regulated industry. You can always uncheck it later.

4) Name your asset group and select a destination URL. Your asset group ads and targeting should be at a level that is "one click" higher in the funnel than an SEM ad group. (i.e. - Instead of "Green Socks" make the ad group "Socks", as PMAX will automatically stretch to select the Green Socks landing page where the intent is "Green", as long as you have final URL expansion on). This not only simplifies campaign management complexity but it yields higher performance by not being overly granular in segmentation.

Select the maximum allowed images from the stock image section. Search in the bar for images related to your product/service. For headlines and descriptions you can take this from your SEM copy and use some of the AI generated headlines where appropriate. The goal is to get a "Good" or "Excellent" rating in the ad strength:

Select your logos and enter in some headlines. As you click into the fields you will notice suggested options will automatically appear based on a scan of the landing page you provided:

As you begin to fill out more you will start to see the ad previews come to life, (which is very useful for getting legal/compliance/brand approval). The ad strength meter will increase with guidance around what else to add to increase it:

Aside from your own 1P data and best performing keywords for the given product/line of business (as mentioned above in the intro to this article) - Start with Google's 2P "In-Market" audiences which will yield the best conversion performance (and usually is safe for heavily regulated industries). Note that "other" In-market audiences may yield lower volume vs. bigger In-Market segments:

Hit next to set the budget and you're basically done (rinse and repeat for other products/LOBs). Note that the wider the geo or targeting the more budget may be recommended here. Although PMAX can operate with very low budgets, I would not recommend going below about $25 (and even that is on the low side to get definitive data unless you are a hyper local business).

5) Use Google Ads Desktop editor to duplicate asset groups and campaigns once you create your first one. Leverage the "find and replace" tool in Ads editor for ads and keywords. Just be careful with nuances between your asset groups (i.e. - Product lines, SKUs, geographic areas etc.)

Advanced: Make sure your tracking templates for your SEM campaigns are carried over and if you're using a bid management tool such as Search Ads 360 (which I highly recommend) that you have selected the appropriate SA360 floodlights within SA360 for the PMAX campaign.