Three Excellent New Google Performance Max Features

Advertisers eagerly anticipated the launch of Performance Max advertising in 2021. These ads use AI learning to provide advertisers a significantly greater reach across many Google networks, including YouTube, Discovery, Search, Display, and Gmail. When they were first developed and used by advertisers, Performance Max campaigns (like their Smart Shopping precursor) were problematic for advertisers because they required more data insights. 

Over the last two years, Google has addressed some of these issues by providing capabilities that allow us to understand better what is and isn’t functioning. This helps us to make improvements to the campaigns’ performance. Here are three of the most recent changes to Performance Max campaigns we are thrilled to implement.

Search Term Insights

The overview tab first showed us the search categories where advertisements were shown when we searched. These categories comprised a tiny list of example keywords, their search traffic, and the total number of conversions you received for the category. Google now provides thorough reports. These reports show you which specific categories and subcategories resulted in conversions. This allows us to add negative keywords and uncover new terms for our supplemental search accounts. The Insights tab in Consumer Spotlight provides access to extensive reports.

Asset Group Performance Views

Originally, we could only see the summary view for asset groups. This view shows you some of the images, headlines, and audience signals that a given asset group uses. The new table view displays performance data unique to each asset group. Instead of breaking up asset categories into separate campaigns to track performance metrics like clicks, impressions, and conversions, we can now combine them all into a single campaign. This allows us to suspend underperforming asset groupings or separate high-performing groups into their campaigns for budgeting considerations.

Video Creation Tool

Previously, organizations without video assets could only produce them using YouTube Video Builder, which was in beta and not available to everyone. This program allows you to select a template, add text and images, and set a music background. Once the video was posted, you couldn’t make any modifications and had to start over.

The most interesting aspect for me is that Video Builder has been integrated straight into the Google Ads interface. Under Asset Library, you can now upload movies directly from YouTube or use the builder to make them. Google has included additional capabilities such as voiceovers and the ability for users to copy and modify already generated films, as well as rim existing recordings.

Whether you’re new to PPC advertising or an experienced professional, Performance Max campaigns are an excellent way to test and augment your existing Search ads. I’ve seen them work successfully for both my eCommerce and lead-generation clients (Dain Ferrero’s latest post explains how to obtain quality leads using Performance Max campaigns). With all of Google’s rapid breakthroughs in AI, I’m curious to watch how this campaign type and others will progress.