Google Highlights Performance Max Campaigns In Weekly PPC Chat

Every week, digital advertisers gather widely on Twitter to discuss relevant PPC topics. This week’s topic was about Google’s new Performance Max campaign type.

Below is a summary of the discussion, highlighting recent successes and pitfalls from advertisers.

As a special feature, PPC Chat was hosted by the official advertising coordinator, Ginny Marvin of Google.

Question 1: Do you run Performance Max campaigns?

This question was mostly met with a ‘Yes’ by the advertisers in the chat. However, brands in the B2B space don’t seem to be using it due to a lack of good use cases.

Gabriele Benedetti made a comment that while testing Performance Max campaigns, this campaign type requires a different approach to managing Google Ads.

Question 2: If you haven’t run anything yet, why not?

This question in particular has gotten more honest feedback from advertisers. The main reasons why marketers don’t use Performance Max campaigns include:

• Lead generation customers see no value in it.
• This type of campaign appears to provide a similar approach to other platforms, such as Facebook.
• There is not enough control for enterprise customers.

Julia Vyse states that her reasoning is due to her omnichannel marketing strategy.

Image credit: Screenshot taken by the author, February 2022

Question 3: How have Performance Max campaigns fared?

This question turned up a mix of fluctuating results, from “scary” to “surprisingly good.” Some key responses included:

• Performance Max ends up canceling out the other individual high-performance channels.
• It seems to work well for e-commerce customers, especially for campaigns that haven’t been doing well in Shopping.
• Many say it’s too early to tell and difficult to pin down due to the cannibalization of other campaigns.

There were many concerns raised about cannibalism and the lack of exceptions for the campaigns.

Marvin has been able to address concerns and bring clarity and hope to advertisers.

Regarding the exceptions, Marvin emphasized the following:

• Content exceptions are already available.
• Google will introduce keyword exclusion at the account level (TBD) to address brand safety concerns.

In terms of cannibalism, Marvin outlined Google’s priorities, summarized here:

Image credit: Screenshot taken by the author, February 2022

Basically, in theory, your existing search campaigns should be prioritized over Performance Max campaigns if the search query exactly matches an identical keyword, phrase, or broad keyword within your existing campaigns.

Question 4: What is the biggest challenge you face with Performance Max campaigns?

The responses were pretty much the same from everyone. Advertisers have not wavered in their desires for this particular type of campaign. The main challenges facing marketers are:

• fix one another
• Automation management (lack of control + exceptions)
• Reporting deaths (lack of data, underreporting of placements, etc.)
• Google automatically generates video assets for you (most people don’t like that)

Then this question asked a similar question:

Question 5: Is there anything you would like different about Performance Max campaigns?

This question brought a lot of great feedback and discussion to the table. Key requests for Performance Max campaigns include:

• Ability to build in Google Ads Editor
• Campaign level keyword exclusion, placement exclusion, device modifier, and targeting
• Ability to test without all assets available (Video)
• reporting

Marvin was able to provide valuable feedback and answers to our advertisers wish list.

First, Marvin confirmed Performance Max support in Google Ads Editor:

Image credit: Screenshot taken by the author, February 2022

Next, Marvin tackled reporting and controlling (or lack thereof) for campaigns.

Image credit: Screenshot taken by the author, February 2022

In terms of campaign control, Marvin stresses how important your input is when creating these campaigns. For example, if you don’t identify the most important conversions, you may end up with a lot of conversions that don’t matter as much as your primary conversions.

If your main goal is ecommerce buying, but you also have secondary conversion email subscriptions, make sure you prioritize and decide which ones are most important. Campaign success will be directly attributed to how thoughtful you are in building the campaign structure.

summary

Performance Max campaigns have a long way to go. Not just the performance itself, but the confidence that lies within advertisers to use it.

Google actively listens to advertisers’ feedback and has offered some hope for the future of this type of campaign.

Source: Twitter

Featured image: TarikVision/Shutterstock