In an era defined by rapid digital transformation, performance marketers are increasingly challenged to rethink their strategies, reimagine tools, and reinvent the way they connect with audiences. Google’s Performance Max (PMax) campaign type, despite representing one of the most significant shifts to the broader advertising landscape in recent years, is still not as well understood as it needs to be. In this article I will attempt to shed light on some myths and increase the understanding of the product to enable marketers to maximize its value.
Search: The greatest platform for capturing intent
With over 2 billion daily users1 and 5 trillion searches annually2, Google Search remains a powerful tool for understanding and responding to user intent. Gen Z are also the heaviest users of Google Search overall. Signed-in users aged 18-24 issue more queries than any other age group.3 Notably, 80% of Gen Z uses Google for all their shopping needs, including discovery, browsing, getting ideas, researching, and/or purchasing.
And search isn’t just text anymore. You can now ask your questions with your camera, with your voice, or even with a simple circle (or scribble!) on your screen. Tools like Google Lens searches grew 65% year-on-year4, with one in five of those carrying commercial intent.5
People are coming to Google to ask more of their questions with 15% of daily searches continuing to be entirely new. But now we also see more complex, longer and multimodal questions. And we’re moving beyond simply matching to users’ queries — even on the most nuanced and complex questions — to predicting what they might need next. This underscores the need for keywordless technology.
YouTube’s Role in the Purchase Journey
YouTube has become a key player in the intent journey, with users watching it on average billion hours daily on TV screens alone6 and Shorts reaching over 2 billion monthly active users across all surfaces. In fact, When making online purchases involving multiple touchpoints, logged-in UK consumers turn to Google and YouTube about twice as often as the leading social media platforms to inform their purchase journey.10
Why Performance Max? The Need for AI-Powered Agility
With users simultaneously searching, scrolling, streaming and shopping, advertisers need a campaign type that matches this complexity. That’s where Performance Max (PMax) comes in. Designed to leverage the latest of Google’s AI stack, PMax provides one consolidated campaign format that operates across all Google inventory—Search, Display, YouTube, Discover, Gmail, and Maps.
Marketers provide PMax with inputs—goals, audience signals, creative assets—and the AI works as an intelligent agent, optimizing performance holistically.
Common Concern: Cannibalisation
A frequent concern is whether PMax cannibalises search campaigns. The answer? No—if configured correctly. PMax is designed to complement, not compete. Exact-match keywords in Search campaigns still take precedence while your comparative “Ad Rank” scores decide which campaign will serve ads from your account PMax fills gaps and captures missed queries like a safety net to drive additional impact.Early studies show that advertisers using PMax saw up to 27%7 more conversions or value at a similar CPA/ROAS compared to those who didn’t include it in their mix.
Best Practices: Getting the Most Out of PMax
1. Set Clear Goals and Conversions
- Define objectives clearly—qualified leads, sales, or customer acquisition.
- Align your conversion tracking to your true business goals, not just micro-conversions like “add to cart” or page views.
- Use Enhanced Conversions for Leads to improve data quality and reduce inappropriate leads .
2. Enable URL Expansion—But Use It Smartly
- This setting helps PMax serve relevant ads based on understanding your landing pages.
- Avoid irrelevant traffic (e.g., career pages) using URL exclusions.
3. Leverage Search Themes
- Add up to 25 topics at the asset group level to guide the AI toward non-obvious but valuable opportunities (e.g., similar products and services , trending topics).
4. Invest in Strong Creative Assets
- Follow the ABCD framework: Attention, Branding, Connection, Direction.
- Include video assets—campaigns with at least one custom video asset perform up to 12% 8 better.
- Monitor Ad Strength ratings; aim for “Good” or “Excellent”. Ads with “Excellent” ratings tend to drive up to 6% 9 better performance.
5. Protect Lead Quality
- Install reCAPTCHA, use double opt-ins, and trigger conversions only for qualified leads.
- Avoid optimization based on bad leads—it misguides the algorithm.
6. Apply Smart Bidding and Budgeting
- Use portfolio bidding and shared budgets to allow flexibility.
- Avoid over-restricting high-performing campaigns due to rigid budgets.
Advanced Controls and Settings
- Conversion Value Rules: Adjust the value for specific locations, devices, and audiences to inform value based bidding
- New Customer Acquisition Goals: Focus on bringing in new users over existing ones.
- Brand Safety & Suitability Account Settings: Automatically applies across your PMax campaigns in the same Ads account
- Placement Exclusions: Manually exclude poor-performing sites or content areas.
Actionable Insights Through AI Reporting
Use the Insights tab in Google Ads to track campaign effectiveness and uncover optimization opportunities. The new Performance Shift Insights feature, for example, highlights performance changes that highly correlates with actions you’ve taken—like creative changes, budget shifts, or targeting updates.
Final Thoughts: A New Era for Practitioners
Performance Max represents more than just another campaign type—it’s the embodiment of AI-powered marketing, where automation meets intent, and scale meets personalisation. While the AI does the heavy lifting, the marketer’s role becomes even more strategic: defining clear objectives, delivering strong data and creative inputs, and interpreting results to iterate forward.The digital landscape is shifting. As the speaker emphasized, agile growth isn’t a buzzword—it’s a necessity. And Performance Max is Google’s answer to that need.
