Introduction

With Microsoft Advertising’s most recent announcement of Performance Max campaigns being launched globally, and Google’s continued growth into the world of AI in advertising, understanding Performance Max has never been more important for marketers.

So, what is performance max? Should you use it? How do you create a performance max campaign? We’ll take a look at all of these questions (and answers!) below.

Table of Contents

1. Introduction

2. Table of Contents

3. What is Performance Max?

4. What Are the Benefits of Creating a Performance Max Campaign?

5. Should I Create a Performance Max Campaign?

6. How to Create a Performance Max Campaign on Google Ads

7. How to Create a Performance Max Campaign on  Microsoft Ads

8. Performance Max Best Practices

9. Final Thoughts on Performance Max

What Is Performance Max & How Does It Work? [2024]

What is Performance Max?

Originally launched in 2021, Performance Max is a campaign type that uses multiple channels within Google’s inventory from a single campaign. One of the main purposes for this was time-saving: advertisers no longer needed to create separate campaigns and budgets across Gmail, Discovery, Maps, YouTube, Search, and the Google Display Network.

Designed to work alongside (not instead of) keyword-based campaigns, Performance Max allows advertisers to create a single campaign across the full customer journey. Your business no longer needs to cross-reference customer and prospect lists to create a full-funnel journey, PMax does this for you.

What Are the Benefits of Creating a Performance Max Campaign?

One of the most significant benefits of using Performance Max ads is the significant time savings; not only when it comes to building the campaigns, but in auto-optimizations too. Instead of creating multiple campaigns and ads, simply input all of your assets into a single asset group, and Performance Max will automatically generate the best possible combination of assets for each user and their stage in the customer journey.

This campaign type is goal-based and utilizes smart bidding strategies and AI to turn a single asset group into a full-funnel customer journey. You can also utilize settings to prefer new and ‘high-value’ customers over current customers.

As well as this, Google is keen to remind us that ‘Advertisers who use Performance Max experience an average of 18% more conversions at a similar cost per action’ - a boost that many businesses can’t afford to turn down.

One of our favorite benefits of this campaign type is the data-driven attribution modeling. This gives advertisers a much clearer view of the impact of all relevant touchpoints that lead a user to convert, instead of the traditional last-click attribution model which isn’t as holistic.

The other benefits of Performance Max campaigns include:

• The use of smart bidding to enable auction-time bidding based on an individual user’s context, location, intent, browser, OS, and more!
• A URL expansion option to serve each user with the most relevant landing page on your website for their search query
• Audience insights such as In-market and Affinity audiences are catered to as standard, without the need to manually add them as targeting or tweak bids
• In-depth reporting and insights
• Brand safety measures such as negative keywords, brand queries, content labels, and content exclusions.

Should I Create a Performance Max Campaign?

In short, yes! If your advertising goal is to drive conversions, PMax can be used to facilitate this. While early Performance Max betas were promoted with eCommerce and online sales in mind, it has subsequently grown into a campaign type that works for businesses with varying goals in mind.

For eCommerce brands, the opportunity to connect your Google Merchant Centre feed to your PMax campaign is a must-have, as an evolution from ‘Smart Shopping’ campaigns. However, PMax also works for a wide variety of other goals such as lead generation, (offline) store visits, or even hotel bookings.

How to Create a Performance Max Campaign on Google Ads

Step one: Start by creating a new campaign in your Google Ads account by clicking the blue ‘+’ icon from the Campaign view. 

Side note: you’ll need functional conversion tracking in place before you get much further than the first couple of steps.

Step two: Choose your objective, select your conversion goal(s), and then click Performance Max as the campaign format. After this, you’ll follow the usual campaign setup flow where you can input a daily budget and location targeting before creating your asset group

Step three: Create your asset group. At this point, you’ll need to add all of your assets (such as images, logos, headlines, descriptions, and videos) to your asset group. You’ll need:

• A final URL (and you can tick Final URL Expansion in the settings too to enable/disable this as required)
• Display path(s) for your final URL 
• Up to 15 relevant images of your business or brand 
• Up to 5 business logos
• Up to 5 videos (another side note here: if you don’t have or upload a video, Google may auto-create one based on the images and copy uploaded. They aren’t always of the highest quality, so we’d encourage you to utilize a video if you can.)
• Up to 5 x 30-character headlines
• Up to 5 x 90-character ‘extended’ or long headlines
• 1 x 60-character description
• Up to 4 x 90-character descriptions
• A CTA (select from a pre-defined list)
• Your business name.

If you don’t have all of these assets, try to add as many as you’re able to. You can take inspiration for these from your website, other Responsive Search Ads, or even by using Google’s AI suggestions which are automatically populated from your landing page copy. (Don’t worry, you can apply or remove these as required).

Step four: You’ll then need to add your audience signals for your target audience. These can be based on your data, custom segments, demographics, and interests. Remember, PMax will optimize these over time too.

Step five: Publish! Google’s guidance suggests, for brand new PMax campaigns, to start with a daily budget of $250 and a campaign length of 4 weeks (without making significant changes) for the best possible start. Remember, data is key to PMax's success and optimization.

How to Create a Performance Max Campaign on  Microsoft Ads

As you can probably imagine, the process is similar for creating a Performance Max campaign on Microsoft Ads is similar to that on Google Ads. You can also now import PMax campaigns to Microsoft Ads from Google Ads if the settings are similar between the two.

Step one: Go to ‘All campaigns’ and select Create.

Step two: Choose your conversion goal(s) - either ‘Drive conversions’ or ‘Sell products’ as your campaign goal. Then select Performance Max. Then, add your campaign’s name, and budget and select a bidding strategy. For any conversion-based bidding strategies (Maximize Conversions, Maximize Conversion Value, Target CPA, Target ROAS) you’ll need conversion tracking set up.

Step three: Complete the information about the locations and languages of your audience that you want to target with your campaign.

Step four: Next up, your asset group. For Microsoft Ads you’ll need:

• A final URL (and you can tick Final URL Expansion in the settings too to enable/disable this as required)
• Display path(s) for your final URL 
• Up to 20 relevant images of your business or brand 
• Up to 5 business logos
• Up to 15 x 30-character (‘short’) headlines
• Up to 5 x 90-character (‘long’) headlines
• Business name
• A CTA.

As of the time of writing, video assets aren’t available to be added, but Microsoft has said they’ll be adding this feature ‘in the coming months’.

Step five: At this point, there is the option to add audience signals for targeting. Then publish! 

Performance Max Best Practices

• Per Google and Microsoft’s advice, Performance Max works best when used alongside keyword-based search campaigns.
• If you’re an eCommerce brand, utilize your product feed from the Merchant Centre for the best possible results.
• Don’t overlap product groups in multiple asset groups or multiple Pmax campaigns if they have the same goals. Otherwise, you’ll be competing against yourself!
• Try your best not to fiddle with the campaign and campaign settings; particularly for the first 2 weeks but ideally for the first 4 weeks. Each significant change may reset the learning phase, pushing progress and conversions back even further

Final Thoughts on Performance Max

To summarize, Performance Max campaigns are a must-try for most businesses who advertise online. The time savings, cost savings, and full-funnel approach to targeting make it a no-brainer for most.

While smart bidding has always allowed for auction-time bidding based on thousands of signals, this, combined with the AI power behind Google and Microsoft, makes these campaigns even more enticing for brands and marketers alike. And, as AI continues to learn and grow, Performance Max could one day be the only campaign type we need…