Performance Max Campaigns – What are they & what do they do?
Every year, Google brings us news about their advertising platform and this year has not been any different, as they have announced the implementation of a new type of Google Ads campaign, Performance Max Campaigns.
- Your eCommerce Ads campaigns are essential!
The Performance Max campaigns are the ones that from September 2022 will replace the Smart Shopping campaigns. The main benefit or strength of this new type of campaign is that they will incorporate automation and machine learning technology.
Using this new type of campaign we will get our ads to be shown, according to Google, in the most efficient way and in every channel where our potential customers are. This way, if Google’s algorithm detects that our clients are in the Display and Youtube channel, our ads will show on those channels more often than on others, so you can get the maximum chances of getting conversions.
What are the benefits of Performance Max
Among the main benefits that we can find for Performance Max campaigns, we can highlight the following ones:
- As we have mentioned before, Google with its artificial intelligence and machine learning, will detect in which channels our customers are, and will focus our campaigns and budget to show our ads in those channels (Search, Display, Discover, Gmail, Youtube, Maps and Shopping)
- The campaigns automation will make it a lot easier and effortless to have your ads running on Google because it will be a totally automated campaign.
- We won’t have to investigate which are the campaigns that adapt better to our business because Google, using artificial intelligence will obtain that information and will focus our ads to those channels.
- Performance Max campaigns can adjust the bidding in real time based on the conversion probability of the user.
- We will get valuable information on how our customers behave and which channels they visit more.
What creative elements do I need for Performance Max
When creating a Performance Max campaign, there is a minimum number of creative elements that we must upload to Google Ads so that our new campaign can start running. By creative elements, we mean components such as banners, images and videos. As we have mentioned before, this type of campaign can appear on any Google channel, so we will need to upload many more elements when compared to a traditional campaign. The requirements for these creative elements are:
- About the images for our Display campaigns, we will need:
- A landscape image with 1200 x 628 px size.
- A square image with 1200 x 1200 px size.
- A square image with 300 x 300 px size.
- A logo image with 1200 x 1200 px size.
- Since it is also possible to appear in Youtube, having a video is a requirement to activate your Performance Max campaign. If we don’t upload a video, Google will automatically generate one based on our previous Ads. Although, we strongly recommend you to create one yourself, so that you are in full control of the creative aspect. The recommended length of the video is 10 seconds.
How does Performance Max interact with the rest of the campaigns
As we mentioned before, Performance Max campaigns will include the rest of the ad channels that exist in Google. The question here is easy: How does the Performance Max campaign interact with the rest of the campaigns? Should I remove the previous campaigns and stick with my new Performance Max campaign? Let’s try to solve these questions:
- In the case we activate Performance Max campaigns and we have previous Search campaigns:
- For exact match keywords, our previous Search campaign will appear on page.
- For the rest of the keywords matches, the one that has the better ad ranking will appear.
- In the case we activate Performance Max campaigns and we have previous Smart Shopping campaigns:
- For Shopping campaigns, Performance Max campaigns will be always displayed.
- For local inventory ads, Performance Max campaigns will be always displayed.
- For dynamic remarketing campaigns, Performance Max campaigns will be always displayed.
- For other Display campaigns, the one with the better ad ranking will be displayed.
- In the case we activate Performance Max campaigns and we have previous traditional Shopping campaigns:
- For the Shopping campaigns or Shopping in search, Performance Max campaigns will be always displayed.
- For the Shopping campaigns on search partners, Performance will be always displayed.
- In Gmail and Youtube, the ads with the better ad ranking will be displayed.
- In the case we activate Performance Max and we have previous Video campaigns:
- Ads with the better ad ranking will be displayed.
- In the case we activate Performance Max and we have previous Discover campaigns:
- Ads with the better ad ranking will be displayed.
- In the case we activate Performance Max and we have previous local campaigns:
- Ads with the better ad ranking will be displayed.
Tips for your Performance Max campaigns
According to information from Google, Performance Max has released some key features requested by users. Check out this brief summary:
Account-level negative kecywords.
This allows you to add account-level negative keywords to help you maintain brand suitability and exclude traffic you don’t want to reach. These negative keywords apply to all of your campaigns that are served in Search and Shopping inventory, except Discovery campaigns.
Campaign-level brand exclusions
This allows you to control which brands your campaign is matched to, including your own brand, with campaign-level brand exclusions. Brand exclusions apply to Search and Shopping traffic in Performance Max.
Page Feeds
You will now have the ability to upload page feeds that will help refine your results when using the final URL expansion feature. This can inform and guide Google’s AI to better understand what the intent of search queries is and generate more relevant ads.
Did you find this information useful? Would you add any other information that we have missed?
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