Performance max
BY HON LAU, SENIOR PPC MANAGER
Last year, Google introduced Performance Max campaigns. We’re here to walk you through what they are exactly and, if you’re a digital marketer, how to utilise them.
After strong beta results, Performance Max campaigns were rolled out, and they’re also the next generation of Smart Shopping and Local campaigns, set to be rolled out in 2023.
So,what are Performance Max Campaigns?
Performance Max is a new goal-based campaign type , and it’s a new way to buy Google ads across YouTube, Display, Search, Discover, Gmail and Maps from a single campaign. In all, Performance Max campaigns will complement your keyword-based Search campaigns to help you grow your campaign performance across Google’s full range of advertising channels and inventory.
They’re designed to help you find more converting customers across all of Google's channels and, being eligible to run across all of Google’s inventory, it’s a big difference from Google’s other campaign types. However, Performance Max isn’t appropriate for branding objectives nor can it be used to target specific audiences for remarketing.
Google says in this article that “Performance Max will help advertisers drive performance based on your specified conversion goals, delivering more conversions and value by optimizing performance in real-time and across channels using Smart Bidding.
Performance Max combines Google's automation technologies across bidding, budget optimization, audiences, creatives, attribution, and more; all empowered by your specific advertising objective (for example, if you have a CPA or ROAS target) and the creative assets, audience signals, and optional data feeds you provide.”
Benefits of Performance Max Campaigns
Find more converting customers
You can customise the goals that matter to your business and maximise conversions or conversion value.
Performance Max allows you to engage customers across Google's channels.
With Google’s real-time understanding of consumer intents and preferences paired with your input using audience signals, Performance Max unlocks new customer segments you may not have expected.
Drive more value
Data-driven attribution across channels optimises for touchpoints that will drive customers to conversion.
Additionally, machine learning models are used to make more accurate predictions about which ads, audiences, and creative combinations perform best for you.
Acquire rich insights
Performance Max asset reporting helps you understand which creatives are impacting performance and helps you optimise campaign creatives to drive ROI.
New insights, such as rising search trends, can help you understand changes in performance and inform your broader business strategy for your campaigns.
How it works: a step by step.
When you set up a Performance Max campaign, you choose your objective. Depending on your goals, it’s possible to connect product feeds and store locations.
Budget and Bidding- You then set your budget and choose your bidding strategy. These bidding strategy options include max conversions and max value, but you can also set a max CPA or a target value/conversion, which allows you to leverage Target CPA and Target ROAS strategies.
Location, Language, Ad Scheduling- Next, choose your locations. Currently, Performance Max is not supported by Google Ads editor, so setting up the targeting can be more tedious than most campaigns. But you can then choose languages, your ad schedule, and your campaign run dates.
Advanced URL Options- The URL options are important because, by default, Google will define its own final URLs unless you turn the option off. If you allow Google to send traffic to whatever links it wants, you do have the option to exclude links as well as add tracking templates.
Setting up “Asset Groups” - AKA Ads. You’ll then be directed to set up an “asset group”, which is effectively an ad, which will be similar to a responsive display asset. This “asset group” is called an asset group because it acts as an asset to all platforms. Advertisers can also create multiple “asset groups”.
Informing the Automated Targeting -Each campaign only has one set of targeting, and you can select audiences to help give insight into who Google should target. Google notes, “Your ads will automatically be shown to people who are most likely to convert for your goals. You can speed up optimisation by providing audience signals.”
This means that your campaigns may not only be delivered to those audiences. Rather, Google is looking at the audiences you provide for signals; this time, it’s on you. They’ll use that data to identify similar consumers that are likely to exhibit the same behaviours and interests.
Setting Up Ad Extensions- Lastly, you can add your extensions. You can opt to use existing account-level sitelink extensions or select and create specific sitelinks for the Performance Max campaigns. The campaign will suggest extension formats based on your goals. So, if your primary goal includes lead generation, the campaign will suggest creating a lead form extension. You can also add structured snippets, price extensions, promotion extensions, callouts, and call extensions.
And that’s how to set up a Performance Max campaign, in simplified terms! Overall, Performance Max campaigns are a good option to use in order for your campaigns to drive conversions and boost to brand awareness for your campaign.