Joan PorioPerformance Max is the future, and it’s just getting bigger — it’s set to replace Smart Shopping and Local campaigns in the 3rd quarter of 2022.
But how about the other campaign types? Should you disregard them too and focus everything on Performance Max?
In this blog, we’ll share Google’s comparison of the other campaigns against Performance Max, and how you should apply this knowledge to your own Google Ads campaigns. As well as how you can stop PMax from stealing traffic from your other campaigns.
Content:
Why you should run a Performance Max campaign
Performance Max seems great but it affects my other campaigns negatively
Performance Max vs other campaign types
What you should run a Performance Max campaign
Google has a large inventory that can be used to reach a lot of people.
Advertisers reach a decent portion of this inventory, but the vast majority is not reached for various reasons.
The solution is automation, which allows you to maximize the effectiveness of Google Ads while also achieving higher returns on investment (ROI).
Performance Max campaigns leverage your automation efforts to significantly increase the number of customers who see your Google Ads and drive more conversions based on your goals.
It accomplishes this by optimizing Google Ads across multiple platforms, including YouTube, Display, Search, Discover, Gmail, and Google Maps.
In fact, Google reported that advertisers who use Performance Max campaigns see a 13% increase in total incremental conversions at a similar cost per action.
If you want to know more reasons why you should run the latest Google Ads campaign, you can read more in our ultimate guide on Performance Max.
Performance Max seems great but it affects my other campaigns negatively
Though the power of automation combined with a goal-driven marketing approach is good and promising, Performance Max actually steals from other campaigns.
We’re seeing promising results with PMax campaigns for eCommerce.
But no one likes how it’s stealing from other campaigns, especially from Brand campaigns.
Brand campaigns are one of the key campaigns we run for all of our clients. It’s also a great campaign to generate quality leads in high competition markets.
That’s why we don’t want anyone or anything (Performance Max) stealing from it.
One of our Google Ads strategists figured out that you can put an end to the greed that is Performance Max by adding exact match phrases to act as negative keywords.
Kasim talks more about the solution in this video so you can save money and time… and sleep well at night without having to worry about your Brand campaign.
If PMax is pushing heavily on your Display and Discovery campaigns when you want to prioritize your Search and Shopping campaigns, we also have a hack for that.
All you have to do is run Search and Shopping campaigns to trick Google into correcting its course for stealing traffic. Learn more about the hack here.
Performance Max vs other campaign types
Here’s the image from Google itself which answers which campaign is going to win when being run against Performance Max.
Take note that this only applies when campaigns are in the same CID and there is overlapping targeting (i.e. product, geo, etc.)
Performance Max was compared to the following campaign types:
- Search campaign Exact match
- Search campaign Broad/Phrase/BMM
- Smart Shopping campaigns
- Shopping campaigns
- Display Dynamic Remarketing
- YouTube In-Stream
- Discovery
Out of all the seven campaigns, only Search campaign Exact match definitively wins against Performance Max.
If the following three campaigns are run against Performance Max, the campaign with the higher ad rank wins:
- Search campaign Broad/Phrase/BMM
- YouTube In-Stream
- Discovery
And interestingly, Performance Max always wins against Smart Shopping campaigns, Shopping campaigns, and Display Dynamic Remarketing.
This makes Performance Max wins definitively about 43% against the other types of campaigns.
Back to PMax beating Smart Shopping, at Solutions 8, we consider Smart Shopping as the most powerful eCommerce ad tool…
Does this mean you have to stop your other campaigns and switch over to Performance Max entirely?
Nope, use the data given by Google as a guide to see where you can get the most out of your campaigns with PMax.
Experiment with your campaigns, but always prioritize your main goals.
Use your existing campaign data, specifically, your Smart Shopping campaign data to optimize your Performance Max campaigns.
As we know, Google Ads tends to release updates every now and then so always tread lightly.
Learn more about Performance Max with our three-part guide series on how to build and manage a successful Performance Max campaign for 2022. You can start by watching the first part of the ultimate guide.
If you have other questions about Performance Max or anything about Google Ads, you can comment your questions on one of our YouTube videos.
Better yet, you can ask Kasim and John directly during the Weekly LIVE Q&A To Scale Your Business with Google Ads.
Catch Kasim and John every Friday at 1 PM PST as they answer everything you want to know about Google Ads – strategies, secrets, guides, and so much more!
We hope to hear from you on Friday! 💚
