Performance Max Eats the World

We knew the rollout of Performance Max campaigns within Google Ads would be aggressive. Google's always pushed their preferred campaign types, and only sometimes took away the previous version right away.

Performance Max didn't seem like it was going to be a good fit for enterprise advertisers, or even most savvy mid-market companies, as it lacked the configurability, control, and transparency that those users tend to demand. Our early testing came back basically inconclusive, so I advocated against PMax unless the use-case was more focused on reducing the labor required by the account than maximizing the performance.

I grabbed a rather striking snapshot of the past 10 years from all of the accounts we have data sharing agreements with, and I was floored by what it showed me:

First, covid is obvious, with the transition between Shopping and PMax overlapping with the crest of that wave.

Second, I was stunned by how much PMax eviscerated Shopping. I didn't expect that to happen as quickly, or as thoroughly, as it already has!

Third, Standard Text is gradually being consumed, too. Interesting to see that the shifts are so dissimilar between Text and Shopping, but there you have it.

So, what does this mean for marketers?

• Focus on what you can still control. Feed hygiene is always on everyone's back burner, but should not be any longer! Create the best creative assets you can, too, as that's more important than it has been in the past.
• Marketing fundamentals aren't going anywhere. Are your offers compelling, and competitive? Are your customer service ratings up to snuff? Are you keeping your important skus in stock? How's your pricing?
• Measurement is getting harder, as the tools become more opaque. This means that it's all the more critical to measure what you can. Consider what biases may be baked into the lens you're using, and find any opportunity to separate the wheat from the chaff.

For some implications of this type of shift in the toolset, check out this post on the relative ad inventory quality we can expect in the future.