So you’re out of time and can’t afford to hire an advertising specialist or marketing agency. But Black Friday and Cyber Monday are just around the corner and you want to capitalize on the two largest spending holidays in the United States. Well thankfully for you, Google still wants your money and will gladly take it with their new(er) Performance Max campaign type.
What is Google’s Performance Max?
Well, in Google’s own words, “Performance Max is a new goal-based campaign type that allows performance advertisers to access all of their Google Ads inventory through a single campaign.”
Reference: https://support.google.com/google-ads/answer/10724817?hl=en
I remember the announcement but really didn’t think much of it until I started getting calls, emails, and notifications pop up all over my Google Ads accounts notifying me to try Performance Max late last year. I also heard about it on the rare occasion when I actually booked time with a Google Ads Support rep.
The conversions usually sounded the same. “Yes, Mr. Kirby you should really try our new Performance Max campaign. Also, you should really change all your campaigns’ bidding types to maximize conversions.”
It wasn’t until a few months ago that I was actually able to try it out. And I have to say… I was fairly disappointed.
Performance Max In Action
After applying it to an account that spends a few hundred thousand every month with Google, I found the return on investment just wasn’t up to the account’s standards. Where we were seeing a 5-7x return on many of our campaigns (even a display and video campaign), the P-Max campaign was only giving us a 2.6x return. Considering the amount of time it took to set up, that isn’t a bad return. But as a specialist who is always seeking the highest return on investment from our advertising dollars, I wasn’t impressed.
I also didn’t enjoy the fact that I couldn’t see where the best ROI was coming from. Everything was automated to the max. I enjoy balancing automation with human oversight but complete automation turned me off from recommending it.
There are some pros and cons that each advertiser should consider when thinking about a Performance Max campaign. And to stay trendy, I designed an infographic for you.
In Conclusion
Seriously, no judgment if you use a P-Max campaign. They are fast and easy and tend to get the job done. As a specialist, I shy away from it for the same reason a car detailer doesn’t like automated car washes. But if you need something easy that gets the job done without having to onboard a full agency or Google Ads specialist, then get it going with clear goals in mind.
You can set up your conversion events by going to the tools & settings tab along the top and selecting “conversions”.
From there, you can create new conversion actions that you want to measure and optimize for. This will be vital if you choose to launch a Performance Max campaign.