Get better results across all Google Ads channels with Performance Max campaigns

Performance Max is a new campaign type that offers a streamlined and AI-powered solution to ensure your ads reach valuable customers online. It allows you to promote your business and what you offer in a single campaign across all Google’s advertising channels and inventory — including YouTube, Display, Search, Gmail, and Maps.

Performance Max uses Smart Bidding to optimize performance towards your goals in real-time and across all of Google, driving more conversions and enhancing value.

If you want to unlock new audiences and drive better results against your goals with a format that is simple to set up, measure, and manage, look to Performance Max for your next campaign.

Performance Max helps you to find more customers online and promote your business across the entire suite of Google Ads channels and inventory.

Whether you’re looking to drive online sales, generate leads, or increase in-store footfall, you can set your business goals and let Google AI optimise your campaign activity — including budget, ad placements, and creative — to boost your online advertising performance.

Increase conversions and value

Google AI optimises your budget and bids across Google channels in real-time to help drive more conversions. Advertisers making the most of Performance Max campaigns are already seeing an average increase of 18% total incremental conversions at a similar cost per action.¹

Find new and high-value customers

Performance Max uses Google AI to process complex intent signals, behaviour, and context. This helps your ads show up at the right moments — increasing relevancy and allowing you to connect with consumers most likely to convert. It’s the ideal way to unlock extra demand on the Google channels where you already advertise, while branching out into entirely new channels, too.

Gain richer insights

You’ll find Performance Max campaigns on the Insights page of your Google Ads account, where you can gain a direct understanding of how AI is working for you, such as your top audiences, what they’re searching for, and which creative assets are resonating with them. You can discover what steps can be taken to ensure your campaign is performing at its best across all channels. You can also click on the campaign itself for performance insights.

Optimise creatives for performance

Whether it’s headlines, descriptions, images, or videos, Performance Max uses all your assets to create customised, compelling ads across Google channels. Your assets are mixed and matched to find what performs best together, meaning your ads are optimised for relevance and performance. Google AI can also help suggest and create new assets for you to keep your ads as relevant and fresh as possible over time.

Performance Max works best with high-quality input from advertisers, which is used to steer or partner with AI. Here are five tips to help drive the results that deliver the most value for your business:

1. Know your goals

Performance Max is the best option to use if you have specific advertising and conversion goals, such as driving online sales or lead generation. Take time to select the right goals for your business, and Google AI will then prioritise the conversions most likely to achieve them.

2. Link your customer data

Feeding your existing first-party customer data into your Google Ads account will allow you to better reach audiences with similar characteristics and behaviours to your current high-value customers. This is key to unlocking entirely new segments and helping drive growth.

3. Provide as many creative assets as you can

Give AI a steer by ensuring you have a rich pool of assets. That way, Performance Max will be able to create more combinations when it gathers your assets and produce more relevant ads. This not only increases the likelihood of conversions but also simplifies the process of identifying what resonates most with your customers.

4. Understand your performance

From rising search trends to the combinations report, delving into detailed and AI-driven insights from your Performance Max campaigns will help you gain a unique view of performance across multiple channels — and improve conversions as a result.

5. Pair for power

Performance Max campaigns are even more effective when paired with keyword-based Search campaigns. Performance Max uses keyword-less AI technology to find new converting queries and generate relevant text ads that match a user’s intent. The result: improved incremental reach and supercharged performance on Search.

It’s more important than ever to make your marketing budgets count. Performance Max — powered by Google’s AI and combined with your own expertise and inputs — can help you reach potential customers wherever they are online and in the most efficient way possible.

1.  Source: Google Data, Global, Ads, November–December 2022