Since making the switch from traditional shopping campaigns to Performance Max campaigns, there has been a lot of learning taking place.
Our understanding has improved greatly as we gain more insight into the effectiveness of the machine learning and AI that forms a huge part of this campaign type.
To ensure the campaigns are performing to the best of their ability it’s important to understand how you can fully optimise them as it is crucial to their success.
Firstly, what are Performance Max campaigns?
Performance Max is a relatively new addition to traditional campaigns. Initially rolled out in 2021, Performance Max aims to show content on YouTube, display, search, shopping, and other channels in a single campaign.
This entirely automated method, which makes use of machine learning and AI, enables advertisers to reach a larger audience for a lower CPC. To ensure the campaign matches your strategy, Performance Max will give you the option to select your objective at the start of the campaign.
Similar to a responsive display ad, the ad creation will include images, logos, headlines, descriptions and video which are also known as asset groups. After you give Google the necessary assets, its machine learning will distribute your ads through the relevant channels whenever it can provide the appropriate ad at the right time with the right bid to help you achieve your objective.
Within the campaign, you also have a listing group, this is where your shopping products are organised and served if you sell products from your website. This section functions the same as Google’s old Smart Shopping campaigns which they removed in place of this new campaign type.
So now you’re familiar with what they are – what should you be doing to optimise them?
Here are seven tips to get you started:
1) Asset Groups
As mentioned above, Performance Max uses asset groups. An asset group is essentially the information you provide to Google for your ad, whether this is for search, shopping, display or YouTube.
Providing Google with more information about your services or products will increase your chances of the ad being eligible across all types of inventory. We would recommend going for more lifestyle or brand content to ensure the creative makes sense with the products being served.
Similar to a search campaign, Google will optimise the assets and push them towards your intended audience, if you are too product-specific, it might not make sense.
One area where Google is encouraging advertisers to promote their ads is YouTube. For retailers and e-commerce stores, we see a great benefit in running ads on YouTube as around 5 billion videos are viewed on YouTube a day!
This huge statistic shows there’s so much opportunity for advertisers out there to get their product in the eyes of their consumers. However, to be effective across the platform you’ll need to ensure you can reach a relevant audience as well as having good quality video content.
If you only want to use Performance Max to push your products on the shopping channel, we would recommend not adding assets and just using your product feed. This way the campaign will primarily push shopping ads along with some YouTube and display, however, they will be shown in the shopping format.
2) Feed Optimisation
As machine learning becomes more advanced, user control is getting reduced – so feed optimisation has become a crucial part of ensuring your Performance Max campaigns succeed.
Ensuring your feed is up-to-date and relevant by including as much information about each product as possible can help make a positive impact on the overall campaigns.
Google needs to understand what the product does so providing detailed information is key. It is always best practice to include the brand name, manufacturer number (SKU) and the barcode (GTIN).
We would also recommend including descriptive titles, detailed product categories and product types to ensure the product can find the correct customer.
Optimising the feed can be a lengthy process, so some companies will opt to use a feed optimisation tool, however, title and description changes can be done manually in the Merchant Centre.
The feed will be the foundation of the Performance Max campaign so this will have the biggest impact on results over anything else.
3) Audience Signals
Another feature of Performance Max is giving your asset groups audience signals. Unlike traditional campaigns using affinity and in-market audiences directly, Performance Max uses audience signals through machine learning.
Unlike the main audiences, audience signals allow you to input traits about your target audience such as demographics, interests, intentions and behaviour to help the algorithm target the right users.
Customer lists are a valuable asset when it comes to audience signals as they hold real customer data. Providing you can do so we would definitely recommend adding this to your asset group.
Customer intent audiences are another good way to make your audience signals more specific as you can include keywords.
Using keywords that you know your target audience uses will help take Google’s algorithm to the next level, increasing performance.
Website visitor audiences are also a good option if you are unable to access customer lists. These work similarly to remarketing audiences so are more likely to reach a high-intent audience.
4) Customer Acquisition
A new feature which was introduced for only Performance Max campaigns is the ‘new customer acquisition’ feature. When creating the Performance Max campaign, it will give you an option in the settings to opt for new customers.
If the aim of your campaign is to go after new customers who aren’t familiar with your brand then this feature should complement your strategy as it essentially targets new customers who haven’t previously visited your site or purchased from you.
5) Campaign Exclusions
When it comes to creating Performance Max campaigns, there are a lot of campaign exclusions which can be added. Adding a brand exclusion can be an important part of growing your non-brand presence.
If you receive a lot of conversions through your brand and want to grow the non-brand side, then brand exclusions can be crucial to building that.
Similarly to adding a negative keyword list, the brand exclusions list will allow you to exclude your brand as well as other branded terms you don’t want your ads to show for.
To find the brand exclusion you will need to visit the settings of your Performance Max campaign – here you can add a list of any brands you want to exclude your ads from being shown.
Due to the nature of the campaigns harnessing AI and machine learning to find the best places to send your audiences to, the campaigns will find pages that have been indexed by Google and may take users to web pages outside of the pages you have set in your campaigns.
Because of this, you also have the option to exclude certain URLs that you do not want to take users to.
As previously mentioned, Performance Max has lots of audience signals available for your campaigns. It enables you to add potential audience exclusions that can focus on attracting new clients rather than existing clients.
When choosing to use these exclusions, the ads will mostly be displayed to visitors who have never visited your website. If your goal is to attract new clients, this can complement the brand exclusion list.
6) Insights
As Performance Max is a relatively new campaign type which runs off Google’s algorithm, the data they allow us access to is very important. In the insights tab, you can see various bits of data, including what search terms are showing up in your campaign.
Review the search terms and use them to your advantage by adding them to the headlines and descriptions of the ads – if a user has searched for this then they are more likely to interact with the ad.
However, if you see terms that don’t look relevant, you can reach out to a Google rep and ask them to add a negative keyword list.
Unfortunately, one of the main drawbacks of this campaign type is that the level of insights you can see is fairly limited and the action that you can take on these insights is even more so.
7) Commit to Your Campaigns
It’s natural to want to make adjustments to campaigns as soon as possible, particularly if you’re not getting the desired results. But, since Performance Max campaigns use an algorithm to learn, it’s critical to stick with them.
Making too many changes might have a detrimental effect on the campaigns, particularly when it comes to bid and budget management.
The Performance Max campaigns will enter a learning phase when changes are made; during this period, the algorithm will attempt to determine how to split your money and reach potential customers most effectively.
It’s crucial to wait to make any adjustments until the learning period is over, which can take up to two weeks. However, be aware that if you make significant changes to the campaign, it could go back into learning.
Conclusion
When Performance Max initially launched, advertisers could only access a small amount of data to inform optimisation decisions.
We can see a growing amount of data with Performance Max’s advancement, which allows us to make more informed optimisations. However, seeing trends and changes in this data requires regular evaluation of the campaign.
By following these best practices you can gain greater control over your shopping strategy.
Are you still struggling to get the most out of your campaigns?
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Hi! I’m Ben, CEO of The SEO Works
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