Performance Max is the newest Google Ads campaign type with the most channel and inventory coverage to help you deliver better ROI. Today, we’re excited to announce new features to help you in three key areas:
- Get more ideas to improve your results
- Use new levers to steer automation based on your unique understanding of your business
- Gain deeper transparency into your performance
1. Get more ideas to improve your results
Optimization score
Optimization score helps you find new ways to improve performance and is now fully launched for Performance Max campaigns. Using optimization score, you can see where your campaign has room to grow and find recommendations that help you take quick action to drive better results. For example, apply recommendations to optimize for new customer acquisition or to apply a ROAS target. We’re continuing to add new recommendations over time, so keep an eye out for those!
2. Use new levers to steer automation based on your unique understanding of your business
Seasonality adjustments
Seasonality adjustments are now available to help you inform your Performance Max bid strategy of changes you’re anticipating in conversion rates for future events like promotions or sales. Keep in mind that Smart Bidding already accounts for predicted seasonal events. So you should only use seasonality adjustments if you foresee major changes to conversion rates that are sudden or atypical. Use seasonality adjustments for short periods and events, usually ranging from 1-7 days, such as a week-long promotion or sale.
Data exclusions
Use data exclusions to prevent unintended issues with conversion tracking from affecting your Performance Max bid strategy. This tool tells Smart Bidding to ignore data from dates where you encountered issues with your conversion tracking that impacted the accuracy of your reported conversions or conversion value—such as tagging issues or website outages.
Advanced location targeting controls
New advanced location options in Performance Max help you be more precise with your targeting. In your campaign settings under “Location options”, you’ll now find the ability to target based on physical “Presence” or “Presence or interest”.
3. Gain deeper transparency into performance
Explanations
Explanations are coming to all Performance Max campaigns in the coming weeks. When evaluating your campaigns, it’s important to understand shifts in performance so you can respond quickly. Explanations make it easier to identify performance fluctuations and diagnose issues. They can even provide recommendations to help you improve your performance going forward.
In Performance Max campaigns for online sales with a product feed, you’ll see explanations that offer analysis on your product status and your top-moving products, listing groups, and product types. These are the products that saw the biggest changes in performance.
Use Explanations to save time, better understand performance changes, and troubleshoot any challenges without having to spend hours manually cross-referencing reports and spreadsheets.
Diagnostic insights
When you first set up a Performance Max campaign, diagnostic insights are another easy way to check if your campaigns are running smoothly. Quickly identify potential issues related to ad policy, billing, budget, and more. You’ll also get tailored recommendations to help you fix any issues that may come up. Learn more about diagnostic insights.
These new features in Performance Max will help you further customize your campaigns and drive even stronger results. To get more tips on how to optimize your Performance Max campaigns, check out our best practices guide.
Posted by Tal Akabas, Group Product Manager, Performance Max campaigns