Google has announced this week that their Performance Max campaign, which has now left the bakery since October 2020, is live. It will be unrolled into all advertiser’s accounts starting November 2, 2021.
We had already explained what Performance Max campaigns were back when the first announcement was released. We will briefly cover it again.
Performance Max highlights
Performance Max is a new campaign type that aims to unify all existing campaigns into 1 place. It can reach across the entire Google ecosystem, guided by machine learning, to reach audiences in the entire purchase funnel.
Advertisers will be able to advertise on YouTube, Display, Search, Discover, Gmail and Maps from a single campaign.
They will also become the next generation of Smart Shopping and Local campaigns, which will both upgrade to Performance Max next year. So retailers who are using Smart Shopping Campaign now should anticipate it being upgraded into Performance Max soon. This is not an unusually big deal since current Smart Shopping is already automatically targeting most of these platforms, with the exception of Discover and Maps.
Insights page
Performance Max campaigns are now part of the Insights page to help you understand how automation is working and how you can improve your campaign. Using the Combinations report, you can also see how your top-performing assets are being combined to build creatives.
Insights is a reasonably new tool within Google Ads, albeit mostly under-utilized by advertisers. Google will now add Performance Max campaign details within Insights.
What to expect?
We suggest advertisers be pre-mature with their account strategies and actively experiment and put their feet into the water. Test out Performance Max campaigns as soon as they are available in your accounts!
Google cites that “Consumers are moving seamlessly between online experiences to find buying inspiration. 70% of U.S. shoppers report buying from a brand after seeing it on YouTube,4 and 91% of Google feed users say they took some kind of shopping or product-related action immediately after discovering new products, services or brands on their feed.”
Performance Max directly addresses users’ new online purchasing behavior — seamlessly floating across different platforms and devices during the day. Having your ad appear at all stages of the funnel, whether a person is just being introduced to an ad, or getting ready to checkout on your site, will benefit most businesses.
Why is this important?
Google’s approach to advertising has always been about powerful machine learning automation built on simplicity for the end-user. And this update is no different. With the wide adoption of 5G Network and more prevalent internet usage, users are likely to be all around the internet. Therefore, a campaign just targeting on 1 platform is often not enough and will suffer the consequences of not being seen at opportunistic moments.
Google has claimed a 13% average increase in incremental conversions for advertisers that use Performance Max. However, as always, it is best to test new campaigns to evaluate whether they provide suitable returns on your ad investment.
