What is Performance Max?
This article discusses the new campaign form within Google Ads Performance Max. In the article, we explain what the campaign form entails, its applications and how to get the most out of it.
About Performance Max
Performance Max is a new campaign form that, as the name implies, for performance marketers to get the maximum results from their budget. In which the advanced machine learning of Google Ads makes many choices for you as an advertiser. This has the following benefits:
- Getting the most out of your budget
- Little optimization work, due to automation
- Visibility across all of Google’s channels
With this campaign form, you no longer need to create separate campaigns per channel from Google. The Performance Max campaign delivers on all Google advertising platforms such as:
- YouTube advertising
- Display advertising
- Search engine advertising
- Advertising shopping
- Discover advertising
- Google Maps advertising
In short, it’s a campaign that supports a lot to automate and, according to Google, gives you the best results.
Applications Performance Max
The Performance max campaign is a great campaign type for performance advertisers. These are advertisers who have revenue or lead generation goals and are less concerned with building awareness or brand associations. In 2021 PureDigital was one of the first online marketing agencies in the Netherlands to test the Performance Max campaign extensively, we wrote extensively about this on Emerce. Based on our experience, we see that Performance Max works especially well in the following circumstances:
- Minimum of 30 conversions over the last 30 days
- Campaigns driven by hard conversion points such as a transaction or completed contact form
- A clear ROAS target or CPA target
With such conditions, we almost always see that a Performance Max campaign runs better than separate Search or Shopping campaigns.
Getting the most out of Performance Max
An optimal setup of a Performance Max campaign looks like this:
- Create 1 campaign per objective
- Use different asset groups by category or service
- Complete all assets as far as possible, use the maximum here
- Add audience signals, focus here on 1st party data
- Turn on URL expansion
After the campaign goes live, if there are enough conversions, it is important to switch to a Target CPA or Target ROAS bidding strategy as soon as possible. This way you can scale the budget to the maximum.
Do you need help setting up a Performance Max campaign? Or would you like to get more results from a Performance Max campaign? Then read more about our Performance Max approach and contact us!
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