Why Performance Max is now number 1
Mar 21, 2023If you are not currently using Performance Max campaigns, my strong recommendation is that this is the year that you start!
This is regardless of whether your focus is eCommerce, service-based industries, tourism coaching courses or whatever you are marketing with Google Ads.
And the reason for this is that over the next 2 years, the dominant campaign types in Google Ads will be: Performance Max & Video campaigns.
This is a massive move away from Google’s historical focus over the past 10 years on Search & Shopping campaigns.
Now I do believe that Search & Shopping campaigns will still be relevant and widely used campaigns, but in terms of total spend, Performance Max & Video Campaigns will be the number #1 & #2 earners for Google.
The reasons for why I firmly believe that by the end of 2025, Performance Max & Video campaigns will be the core campaign types for Google Ads for 3 core reasons
- Search behaviours are changing, and they are changing FAST.
Unless you have just got back from a 3-month visit to space, you have already heard about the introduction of AI tools like ChatGPT & Bard.
The rise of these AI tools will have a huge impact on future search behaviours by users who, rather than just going to Google search, will also have the options of chatbots like Bard & ChatGPT along with greater voice search functionality of tools like Siri, Alexa and of course hey Google…
The impact of this is that successful marketing of Google won’t just be done through targeting specific search campaigns but by being able to target people through all of the available platforms of:
Search, display, youtube, google maps & Gmail
Which is what Performance Max allows you to do over just straight search campaigns.
Speaking of targeting specific search terms…. That brings us to the 2nd core reason why Performance Max & Video campaigns will be the 2 dominant campaigns by 2025
- Exact Match Keywords are already dead.
As I have spoken about at length on this channel already, exact match keywords are dead.
Yes, they are still an available option you can select in Google Ads, but they do not function as they did before late 2021.
One of the best features of search campaigns was that you were able to target specific user search terms, ensuring that your ads were only triggered when someone completed a very specific search term.
For example, you could target your ads to only appear when someone searched for the search term:
“Lawn mowing service” using those exact terms and in that order
So if someone searches “grass cutting service”, your ads would not appear, or if someone searches “the cheapest lawn mowing service”, would ads would not also appear.
But that has now changed.
The 3rd reason why Performance Max Campaigns & Video campaigns will be the dominant campaigns by 2025 is because:
- The consumer demand for video content is growing rapidly.
Oberlo data reports that:
In 2019, users spent a weekly average of six hours and 48 minutes watching online videos—a 59% increase from just three years prior in 2016 (Limelight, 2019).
And .technavio.com has data showing that video will continue to grow by 14.84% between 2022 - 2027
The above is the reason why Google is rapidly targeting video content, with the big move being Youtube making the decision to already start monetising shorts from February 2023.
So now that we know this is the focus what does this mean for you & Google Ads right now?
These are the 2 scenarios.
1. If you have successful - I mean profitable - shopping & search campaigns, I would NOT be turning them off right now, and I would keep them continuing to run.
But I would also be looking to introduce Performance Max campaigns at some stage this year.
A safe way of doing this is to start a test or trial performance Max campaign for 1 of your products or services, and then when you have got confidence in this type of campaign, you can move more & more of your spend to Performance Max.
But I would also start to create video content and also run some video campaigns at the same time.
2. If you are starting to see that the performance of your existing search & shopping campaigns has dropped by more than 2 - 3 ROI (so if your conversion value/cost was 8.0 and that is now below 6.0)
I would look to move over to Performance Max as soon as possible, ensuring that you also have some specific video content created.
