Performance Max: when it works and when it hides waste

How to read the reports of a campaign Google does not break down, and which signs show the budget is going to the wrong place.

Performance Max is a single campaign that advertises across all of Google's inventory: Search, Shopping, YouTube, Gmail and the Display network. Google decides by itself where to appear and to whom. When it works, the results are good. The difficulty is knowing when it does not.

When it works well

• When there is a healthy product feed, with accurate titles, images and prices.
• When conversion tracking is accurate and passes real purchase value.
• When there are enough conversions per month for the system to learn.

The signs of waste

The first sign is branded search. The campaign tends to appear on searches for the company name, take credit for purchases that would have happened anyway, and show a high return. When branded search is separated into its own campaign, the campaign's real return is revealed.

The second sign is concentration. In many stores a small number of products receives most of the budget, and the rest of the catalogue is barely shown. The third sign is high spend on Display and YouTube without conversions that can be attributed to them.

What to do about it

Split the campaign by product groups with different return targets, exclude branded search, and examine the report by product and not only by campaign. Performance Max is not a complete black box. It requires knowing where to look.