Google Ads Performance Max Issues

Many companies have gone all in with Google’s New campaign type Performance Max.

While Performance Max is not bad you just need to be very aware of its limitations and the implications of starting a Performance Max Campaign.

So in this video I am going to give you some key points on how Performance Max campaigns work and what you need to be aware of make sure that you see success & profit with your performance max campaigns. 

How Performance Max Campaigns work?

Performance Max campaigns are 1 campaign that display your ads across all of Google’s platforms including:

•  Search
•  Display
•  Shopping
•  Google Maps
•  Gmail 
•  & Youtube

While this is a great idea and function in theory there are some core issues that you need to be very careful of, which are:

1. Performance Max campaigns will become your PRIORITY campaign for Google

Meaning that Google will prioritise a performance max campaign over any other types of campaign even if the other campaigns have:

•  A higher daily budget
•  And better conversion data

2. Performance Max DO NOT work well with other shopping & search campaigns that are targeting the same products or keywords 

Some campaign types in Google play really nice with each other - meaning that they assist each other to help generate more conversions.

For example:

•  Search & Shopping campaigns work together really well for eCom brands as shopping drives your impressions and visibility while Search campaigns assist you in selling products that have some core selling points by allowing you to add in extra headlines & call to actions
•  Search & Display campaigns: work really well for service based campaigns because your display ads retarget people who have recently clicked on your ad but have not converted yet meaning that people continue to see your ads until they complete a conversion action

But this is not the case with Performance Max! Because Performance Max campaigns do all of this in one campaign, if you have products that are being targeted both Shopping & Performance Max or Search & Performance Max.

Your Performance Max campaign will take over and can quite quickly lower the performance of your search or shopping campaigns.

3. They are a smart campaign - means Google NOT YOU has control!

While I have never been the biggest fan of Smart campaigns and never really used Smart Shopping campaigns, I do see place for Performance Max campaigns and I am using them as campaigns for my clients. 

However you do need to remember that Google is in control of the campaigns and not you! So you just don’t have the same level of control or options for optimising a Performance Max campaign as what you do for Search, Shopping, Display & YouTube campaigns. 

And this for 2 main reasons:

1. When you add in keywords for the asset groups in a Performance Max campaign these are automatically added as a broad match keyword and you can’t add in negative KWs. So these campaigns will target any search term which is at all related to your product - even if the search term includes words like: free, cheap or discount codes. 
2. Any audiences you add are a guide with Google making it very clear that they will go beyond your selections to find additional conversions

Now while most people will only use audiences in the observation method, the fact is with Performance Max you cannot add in bid adjustments or exclusions so you can’t focus more budget on the best performing audiences or exclude audiences that are spending a lot of money but not getting you any conversions. 

So if you are going to use Performance Max campaigns remember to:

•  Only target specific products rather than having 1 performance Max campaign that targets all of your products
•  Set up asset groups with targeted images & ad copies
•  Test turning off the URL expansion feature in the campaign settings