Running Effective Performance Max Campaigns in Google Ads

Performance Max campaigns are the newest type of campaign you can create in Google Ads. They’re designed to help businesses target ads to users who are more likely to convert while also helping to limit wasted spend on users who may be less likely to convert. Performance Max campaigns can be a powerful addition to your account when used correctly. Let’s take a look at how to use Performance Max campaigns effectively.

What Is A Performance Max Campaign?

Performance Max campaigns allow advertisers to automatically target users that are more likely to convert across all of Google’s advertising networks. This means your ads can be seen across the search and display networks, including Google, YouTube, and more.

Performance Max campaigns also automate bidding using Google’s Smart Bidding. You only need to choose between ‘Maximize Conversion Value’ or ‘Maximize Conversions’ for your bidding strategy and set your daily budget for the campaign. You can enter details about your ideal audience members and provide your ad creative. Google Ads will then automatically create the final ads people will see, decide where the ad should be placed and set an appropriate bid for you.

What Makes A Good Performance Max Campaign?

There are a few key criteria that you should look for when setting up a Performance Max campaign. These include:

A Good Volume of Conversion Data

To use a Performance Max campaign effectively, you must supply Google with enough conversion data. This allows Google’s machine learning to determine what works (and doesn’t) for your campaign.

For Smart Bidding, Google recommends “measuring performance over longer time periods that have at least 30 conversions”. And while this requirement isn’t specifically for Performance Max campaigns, the more conversion data available, the better the results will be from your campaign.

Appropriate Audience Signals

While defining audience signals for your Performance Max campaign is optional, taking the time to add them can improve the results from Google’s machine learning. For example, if you have a remarketing list of people most likely to convert on your website, then adding this to the campaign can help ensure your ads are more likely to be seen by your prospects.

Signals you can (and should add) to your campaign include:

• Custom segments you create based on the keywords people search for, the websites they visit, and more.
• Remarketing lists including people who’ve visited your website, engaged with your YouTube channel, provided their contact details, and more.
• Interests including in-market segments, life events, affinity segments, and more.
• Demographics including age, gender, parental status, and more.

Google will also target your ads beyond the audience signals you provide, but again, the signals you provide will guide Google’s machine learning.

Enough Time to See Results

Google recommends running a new Performance Max campaign for at least six weeks, so you will need to factor this into your advertising schedule. It might sound like a long time, but it can take Google Ads up to two weeks to collect enough data to feed its machine learning models for your campaign. Then you will need four weeks to run your ads and additional time to review the results.

A Range of Good Ad Creative

The performance of your ads can vary significantly based on the ad creative (or assets) you provide for your Performance Max campaign. When you create your campaign, you will need images, logos, videos, text, and other details ready. This is because Google will automatically take these elements and combine them in different combinations to create the final ads people see as they search and browse online.

You should aim to provide high-quality and engaging content, plus you should also have variety. For example, have a range of different images and graphics ready for your Performance Max campaign. You might find the blue version of your company logo performs better than your green version, but unless you have this mix of ad creative running in your campaign, you won’t know what works and doesn’t work for your audience.

How Do You Setup A Performance Max Campaign?

Watch our tutorial to learn the steps to setup and create a Performance Max Campaign in Google Ads:

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Conclusion

Performance Max campaigns can be a powerful tool for businesses wanting to target users who are more likely to convert. Be sure to take the time to learn about how this campaign works and how to use it to its full potential.

When you’re ready to create a Performance Max campaign in your account, we recommend starting with a trial campaign with a small dedicated budget. This lets you experiment before making major changes in your account, like restructuring your campaigns or reallocating your budget.

And if you are looking for Google Ads training, trust Loves Data. We are all about getting the most out of your data and campaigns. We’re specialists in Google Ads and Google Analytics and have worked with some of the biggest brands and trained thousands of people to do it themselves. Join our course now!