What Is Performance Max?

Recently, Google has launched a brand new advertising tool called “Performance Max” to help you optimise your ads. If you advertise via Google Ads, you may have already seen it. But, if you’re still wondering what Performance Max is and how it can benefit your business, read on. We have gathered the information every marketer needs to know about Google Ads’ Performance Max!

What Is Performance Max?

Performance Max is a newly launched automated ad-maker tool from Google. As the name suggests, Performance Max aims to maximise ad performance by placing ads on every Google channel, including YouTube, Display, Search, Discover, and Gmail. The highlight of Performance Max is that it can create and distribute ads on all of those channels mentioned simultaneously. You simply upload the text, images, and videos that you want to create for your ad set, then determine your target group, choose the ad purpose, and you are set to place your ads!

Google uses machine learning to help you find your target audience and achieve your advertising objectives. It also facilitates access to new ad spaces, reduces the time needed to create an ad set, and helps boost sales.

Performance Max Features

Campaign Objective & Goal

Campaign Objective & Goal is where you determine your target group and set your objectives. This lets the Performance Max campaign understand why your ad is being created, such as to boost online sales, leads, or drive traffic to your website. After choosing the marketing objectives, you have to select which target audience you want to see your ads.

Asset Group & Ads Strength

Adding assets like images, videos, and text allows Performance Max to distribute these assets across Google’s platforms. Ads Strength is an indicator of whether your Asset Group is qualified enough to drive the best results.

Audience Signals

Audience Signals is a new feature that will help you better determine the target audience for each ad. This feature uses Google’s machine learning to suggest which target group your ad is best suited to so that your ad can reach your target customers.

Performance Max Results

Another highlight of Performance Max is the analytics provided by the Performance Max Results feature. It helps you analyse the effectiveness of your ad campaign. You can also compare the results with those of other campaigns you’re running simultaneously.

Advantages of Performance Max

Helps you achieve your goals.

Whether your performance goals are around boosting sales, leads, or website traffic, the Performance Max campaign will help generate conversions by using machine learning to distribute ads across multiple platforms. 

Expands your reach.

Performance Max helps you reach customers across Google’s various platforms. You just have to add the assets, and Performance Max will automatically search for potential customers across different channels for you.

Optimises your ads.

Since Google has incorporated machine learning systems to help analyse and run Performance Max campaigns, your ads can reach the target audience that is most likely to achieve your intended objectives, which also helps you save on advertising costs.

Simple to use.

Adding ad assets is very simple and intuitive. Simply add images or videos along with your advertising text, select the most suitable target audience, and then you can your campaign immediately.

Things to Consider Before Running Your Campaign

As the name suggests, Performance Max helps drive ad performance; however, it does have some limitations:

It’s multi-channel only. 

As Performance Max is a cross-channel ad campaign tool, the ads are distributed across various platforms for maximum effectiveness. However, that also means you cannot choose just one platform to place your ads on. They will need to be displayed on every platform, including YouTube, Display, Search, Discover, and Gmail. If this doesn’t suit your strategy, then you may have to pass on Performance Max.

Top-level reporting.

If you have used Google Ads before, you will know that Google’s reports usually provide in-depth information. However, Performance Max doesn’t give you details like Asset Group or how much budget you have spent, for example. You can only see a top-level overview of the campaign, such as conversions and impressions.

What You Need Before Running Performance Max Campaigns:

• Conversion Tracking to see if conversions are happening.
• Creative Assets such as text, logo, images, or videos as follows: 
  • Images: at least 5 images, a maximum size of 5120 KB.
    • Landscape: 1200 x 628 or 600 x 314 px
    • Square: 300 x 300 or 1200 x 1200 px
    • Portrait: 480 x 600 or 960 x 1200 px
  • Logos: a maximum file size of 5120 KB.
    • Square: 128 x 128 or 1200 x 1200 px
    • Landscape: 512 x 128 or 1200 x 300 px
  • Videos: Optional (if you have no videos, Performance Max can create them for you)
    • Horizontal, Vertical, and Square videos
• Target Signals:
  • • The system automatically selects the target audience.
    • You can add your target group manually.
• Location: You can choose the placement location of your ads.
• Product Feed: Optional.

Performance Max Campaigns Best Practices 

Budget

You should set your budget at 3-10 times your CPA (Cost Per Acquisition). However, this very much depends on your business type, as each has different performance returns.

Creative

Design your campaigns to be appealing, creative, and suitable for every channel they are placed on. More importantly, include a clear call-to-action and key message.

Audience

Performance Max has a function called “Audience Signals”, so you can also add a remarketing audience list or a first-party audience to help the machine learning learn faster and more effectively.

Conversions

The number of conversions over the past 28 days should be above 50.

Conclusion

Performance Max is now available for general accounts. If you want to connect with potential customers, increase leads, and drive more conversions via different channels, a Performance Max campaign can help you meet those objectives. Performance Max can lower your CPA more than the old format of ad campaigns, resulting in more profit from your investment.

If you’d rather hand your ad campaigns over to the experts, contact Primal Digital Agency. We have more than 150 digital marketing experts ready to help you achieve your objectives. Contact us for a free marketing plan today!