Google Performance Max: Ad Examples & Tips
Google’s Performance Max campaigns came out of beta more than three years ago, and have grown to be a wildly popular campaign type among new and experienced marketers alike. In this article, we’ll unpack what Google Performance Max campaigns are, how they differ from other campaign types, benefits and best practices, reporting functionality, ad optimization tips, and Tinuiti’s PMax approach.
What is Google Performance Max?
Google Performance Max (PMax) is an automated, goal-based campaign type that enables advertisers to promote across all Google networks, including Google Search, Shopping, Display, YouTube, Gmail, and Maps, from a single campaign. Launched in 2020, PMax is designed to complement existing keyword-based Search and Shopping campaigns, offering a broader reach and deeper automation capabilities to drive better performance across diverse marketing objectives.
Through consolidation of inventories and ad types, PMax reduces complexity while expanding access to ad inventory, formats, and insights that weren’t previously available with other campaign types, like Smart Shopping or Local campaigns. Not only that, but Google is rolling out new updates for PMax on a regular basis. In 2024, Google introduced advanced AI features, asset-level reporting and placement visibility, as well as new A/B testing capabilities and brand guidelines.
Why Use Performance Max?
PMax campaigns leverage Google’s AI to streamline and optimize ad performance. Instead of manually managing multiple campaigns, advertisers provide assets (like headlines, images, and videos) and inputs (like audience signals and goals), and Google automates the ad creation and delivery process. Google’s AI identifies the most effective asset combinations and optimizes them for conversion, showing the right ad to the right audience on the right platform.
Key benefits include:
- Wide reach: Advertisers can reach potential customers across all Google channels in a single campaign.
- AI-driven optimization: Google’s real-time analysis of user intent, behavior, and context ensures ads are shown to audiences most likely to convert.
- Improved efficiency: PMax simplifies campaign management while uncovering new customer opportunities.
How It Works
Think of PMax as a chef: you supply the ingredients (creative assets) and recipe (campaign structure), and Google’s automation cooks and serves the final dish. The system analyzes inputs like goals, audience signals, and creative assets to deliver ads tailored to user preferences and behaviors across platforms.
The automation prioritizes efficiency, constantly learning from real-time data to enhance ad delivery and performance. Google’s AI can even leverage first-party data to predict when a user is most likely to take action, maximizing campaign outcomes.
Who Should Use Performance Max?
PMax is ideal for advertisers seeking:
- Broad exposure across multiple Google networks with minimal setup.
- Enhanced performance through AI-driven insights and optimizations.
- Streamlined management, especially for campaigns with diverse audiences or complex goals.
Retailers, local marketers, and businesses looking to increase conversions and revenue while simplifying campaign operations can particularly benefit from PMax.
For example, one of our clients specializing in software sought to expand their search campaign’s reach and drive more qualified traffic to their site. After evaluating the options, we recommended testing a new Performance Max campaign. We kept their existing traditional search campaigns targeted at highly qualified leads, then helped them set up a PMax campaign targeting highly qualified, qualified, and net new leads.
Initially, the client focused on the holistic client service asset group and allocated a small amount of money to the PMax campaign. When that experimental spend materialized into a growing volume of qualified leads, we expanded our scope. Campaign spend scaled each week, and our targeting advanced to more niche asset groups focused on product categories and size of the organization. By month two, this test campaign had become the client’s most efficient Non-Brand campaign for generating qualified leads, driving 21% more qualified leads than other Non-Brand campaigns.
Insights and Reporting
Although PMax minimizes manual optimization, it offers unique insights into audience behavior, performance drivers, and search trends. Advanced reporting features, including asset performance recommendations and placement visibility, help advertisers fine-tune their strategies for maximum impact.
By combining AI-driven efficiency with cross-channel reach, Google Performance Max campaigns empower advertisers to connect with audiences more effectively and drive stronger business results.
“The Insights piece is a shift from what we have been accustomed to, but Google has slowly begun to provide us with more reports to help us better understand this campaign type. Performance Max aims to look at things holistically—client gives you X budget, and here is X ROI across the funnel. Trusting in Performance Max to do its thing with the signals you give it, and shifting the way we analyze performance, is the biggest hurdle with the campaign type.”
— Courtney O’Donnell, Sr. Director, Client Partner at Tinuiti
Key Elements & Specs for Performance Max Campaigns
To maximize PMax effectiveness, it’s essential to understand the key elements, specs, and best practices for each asset type. Here’s a breakdown:
1. Headlines
Brands can create up to 5 different headlines up to 30 characters long, giving them an opportunity to use a variety of messages to appeal to different audience segments. Google will then get to work mixing and matching various headlines with various descriptions.
When writing headlines, remember that you only have a moment to catch the reader’s attention. We recommend starting with using action-oriented language to encourage them to quickly click through. For example, your target consumer may respond better to an emotional headline telling them they can “Save time today,” or they might respond better to a benefit-oriented statement like “Our solutions streamline workflows.” Thankfully, Performance Max will figure that out for you on the back end.
2. Long Headlines
While some ad placements only allow for shorter headlines, others allow marketers to use one long headline that’s up to 90 characters long.
Long headlines should be used to display your most important messaging in a prominent way since they appear instead of the two shorter headlines mentioned above. In some cases, your long headline may even appear without a description included. For that reason, make sure you’re hitting all of your important selling points, building trust, and encouraging people to click through with a compelling call to action.
3. Descriptions
Each Performance Max ad can have up to 5 descriptions that are 90 characters long. This will appear under two different headlines for most types of PMax ads. While your headlines are designed to attract attention, descriptions should highlight your unique value propositions and explain key product benefits. Then, use the remaining 10 or so characters to include a CTA like “Learn more” or “Shop now!”
4. Images & Logos
Performance Max lets advertisers upload up to 20 image assets for three different ad dimensions, following these specifications:
- At least one Square (1:1) image, minimum 300×300 pixels. Google recommends at least 4 images up to 1200×1200 pixels.
- At least one landscape (1.91:1) image, minimum 600×314 pixels. Google recommends at least 4 images up to 1200×628 pixels.
- The option to add portrait (4:5) images, minimum 480×600 pixels. Google recommends at least 2 images up to 960×1200 pixels.
For best results, we recommend using high-quality visuals and engaging in creative testing to ensure the visuals resonate with your audience. The possibilities for creative testing are endless, but we recommend testing images that shows the product in various use cases, or its alignment with a certain lifestyle. Advertisers can also easily try out new creative using Google Gemini, whether it’s a small tweak to an image’s background or a complete reimagining.
Unlike some social media advertising platforms, Google welcomes text on image assets. Just keep in mind too much text can dilute the messaging behind your image asset. For this reason, Google recommends advertisers upload at least one image asset without significant text overlay.
5. Logos
For certain ad placements, such as YouTube ads, Google will display a square or landscape logo along with ad copy. The recommended specs are as follows:
- Upload at least one square (1:1) logo, at minimum 128×128 pixels. Advertisers may upload up to five logos as large as 1200×1200 pixels.
- Advertisers may also upload up to five landscape (4:1) logos, at minimum 512×128 pixels and as large as 1200×300 pixels.
Before uploading your logo, ensure the image is high quality and centered. It’s also important to note Google does not support transparent backgrounds for ads, and all transparent space will be rendered with a white background.
6. Videos
Since they open up more ad placements, uploading video assets for your Performance Max campaign is highly recommended. Videos must follow these requirements:
- Use HD video
- Use the MPG-2 or MPG-4 formats
- Videos must be horizontal (16:9), vertical (9:16), or square (1:1)
- You may upload at most 5 videos for each of the ratios above
- Videos must be at least 10 seconds long
- If you’d like to be eligible for ads on YouTube Shorts, upload at least one 9:16 video between 10-60 seconds long
- If you’d like to advertise on YouTube, do not upload audio files such as MP3, WAV, or PCM
When designing video ads, remember that less is more. Try to create thumb-stopping interest within the first 5 seconds of your video, and include brand visuals and incentive to clickthrough early. Remember that many consumers are more ad fatigued than ever and liable to stop paying attention just a few moments after seeing an ad.
Additionally, don’t forget to provide captions for your video ads. It’ll make your brand’s messaging more accessible to a wider audience.
7. Call-to-Action (CTA)
Advertisers can also choose a call to action (CTA) to include with an ad. For example, when a user views a video ad it may include a brief slide with a button asking people to “RSVP Now.” Google offers simple pre-set CTAs, or you can create a custom CTA.
In most cases, it’s best to customize your CTA to ensure it aligns with your audience’s motivations and current stage in the marketing funnel. For example, awareness campaigns may benefit from a “See more” CTA, while a conversion-focused campaign may ask the viewer to “Buy Now.”
8. Audience Signals
Audience signals provide Google with insights into your ideal audience based on demographics, intent, and behaviors. It’s completely optional, but it will give Google some initial direction in targeting your campaign.
The best way to get started is to connect your first-party data. For example, you can upload your email list via Customer Match to target customers at the bottom of the funnel, or website visitors for mid-funnel targeting. From there, you can layer in Google’s in-market and affinity audiences to expand beyond your known audience. From there, keep track of which audience segments are performing well and optimize accordingly.
9. Final URL
Finally, provide Google with a destination URL for your landing page. However, this step should not be as simple as copying and pasting a link. At the very least, employ basic landing page best practices to improve page speed and mobile friendliness. Marketers with a more advanced strategy may use more tactics like custom landing pages for each ad campaign or ongoing optimization through split testing.
10. Search Themes
Search themes are a new AI-driven feature within Google Performance Max. Advertisers can give Google up to 25 different topics that are relevant to their target audience, such as “family activities” or “vacation planning.” From there, Google will show your ads for keywords that are related to those topics. It’s not too unlike how phrase or broad match keywords work, but are a little less prescriptive and a little more tangible.
Adding search themes is almost always a net positive for campaigns, since you’re directly telling Google’s AI which topics are interesting to your consumers. This is especially helpful if Google’s AI doesn’t have much landing page copy to reference or if you’re launching a new product with limited information online. However, it can help any brand expand their reach and optimize performance by bidding on more relevant queries.
Best Practices when Setting Up a Performance Max Campaign
Advertisers have compared Performance Max Campaigns to several other campaign types, including Smart campaigns, Social campaigns, and responsive Display campaigns. And while there are elements that bear similarity in varying ways to all of the above, it’s important to consider the functionality and benefits of this campaign type specifically.
Give Performance Max campaigns freedom to function as intended
We’re of the belief that if you are going to test Performance Max you should lean in, and not try to make this campaign something it was never meant to be. Sure, there are tutorials online for finagling a Performance Max campaign to be a Search campaign or a Shopping campaign – it is possible! However, time can be better spent focusing on how to best leverage a campaign that was designed by its very nature to bring all of that together.
Implement audience signals to set automated targeting up for speedy success
Think of audience signals as customer personas that Performance Max uses as your ideal shopper, functioning similarly to lookalike audiences on social platforms. This won’t be the only customer type that your campaign reaches, rather it will be the foundational core upon which other audiences are built—your seed audience.
The audience signals you provide Google are used to determine ‘the right direction’; Google then follows those paths to find additional users it feels your campaign is also suitable for. Audience signals work best when used in combination with your own data and custom segments.
Because you can create multiple audience signals, we recommend experimenting with different signals to see how each performs. Consider including the following:
- Remarketing
- Customer Match
- Search Themes
- Interests
- Foundational Demographics
The impact of audience signals is significant. We recently worked with a specialty apparel brand that ran multiple overlapping PMax assets groups segmented by brand. This resulted in placements that reached the right audience, but didn’t always align with search intent. Our paid search team helped them restructure to an audience-first approach using audience signals, search themes, and first party data. Then, we created custom tailored creative for each audience.
The results were astounding – not only did clickthroughs increase by 19%, their onsite conversion rate increased by 44%. For that reason, we highly recommend most brands utilize audience-first targeting approaches on PMax.
Decide if you’ll use Final URL expansion
If you want to give Google even more control with Performance Max campaigns, similar to dynamic search ad campaigns, you can allow Google’s AI to choose the landing page URLs for each of your ads. LP exclusions are available if there are specific pages you never want used; these can include exclusions based on URL parameters (ex. blocking a full sub-folder) or individual landing pages.
While this type of testing for PMax is still in beta, at Tinuiti, we recommend using A/B Experiments to test final URL expansion.
Decide whether the New Customer Acquisition goal is right for you
The new customer acquisition goal, also available for Search campaigns, presents an exciting opportunity for advertisers looking to target new-to-brand audiences. Using this goal, advertisers can choose from the following bidding options:
- New Customer Value mode: Campaigns are optimized to bid higher for new customers (not available for store goals)
- New Customer Only mode: Campaigns are optimized to only bid for new customers
- High Value New Customer Mode (Beta): Campaigns are optimized to bid higher for high value new customers than regular new customers and existing
- High Value Win-Back Mode (Beta): Campaigns are optimized to bid higher for high-value lapsed customers than for regular lapsed customers
Define Asset Groups
Keep all your creative organized by breaking out thematically-similar or same-audience assets into their own asset groups, using multiple asset groups for each campaign. Asset groups help you to give Google the best array of options to choose from, while ensuring you don’t get a ‘mixed bag’ of creative for a given ad.
Think of building out your asset group as packing a lunch, except the lunch is for Google. In each asset group you’ll want to pack a nice selection of images, videos, headlines, logos, and other textual elements. The higher-quality assets you feed Google, the better your ads will look.
If you are a promotional brand, you should consider creating evergreen asset groups and promotional asset groups in order to easily shift creative between promotional and non-promotional periods.
Don’t turn off your Search campaigns
Performance Max is designed to complement your existing Search campaigns, not replace them. In fact, according to Google’s latest claims (2024), Performance Max delivers 8% higher return on ad spend (ROAS) than search strategies alone. There is some campaign overlap on non-exact match keywords you’ll have to consider to safeguard against self-cannibalization.
We recommend that for any keyword for which you’ll want to have complete control and in-depth reporting, you ensure it is an exact match keyword in Search. Exact match keywords that are identical to the search term are prioritized over any other broad or phrase keyword or a Performance Max campaign. Also, monitor Search performance after launching to see if broad match keywords dropped off for a specific category once PMax was launched.
Consider brand safety
The lack of control over what ads will show where, and with which creative, is what makes many brands nervous about Performance Max campaigns. That said, despite it being true that there is less control overall, you can run a placement report, sort destinations by impression volume (unfortunately you cannot see spend by placement), and then exclude any sites you don’t want to show ads on. Exclusions are set at the account level.
Tinuiti’s Google Performance Max Approach
Thanks to Performance Max’s unparalleled audience targeting that leverages the most sophisticated machine learning, our teams consider Performance Max the perfect complement to your current Search strategy. We develop Performance Max campaigns in tandem with existing Paid Search efforts to minimize potential cannibalization or duplicated targeting. Here’s how we do it:
1. Adopt an Audience-First Approach
Our audience-first strategy focuses on understanding and prioritizing the needs of your target audience to create impactful campaigns by:
- Establishing goals and metrics (e.g., new customer growth, revenue, brand awareness).
- Defining key audience segments using three pillars: first-party audiences, search themes and demographics, and in-market and affinity audiences.
- Collaborating with Lifecycle Marketing experts for refined audience segmentation and list automation.
When setting up campaigns, a one-campaign-to-one-asset-group ratio allows clear performance insights, such as how a “women’s winter jackets” campaign performs independently. However, over-segmentation can limit data, while overly broad grouping reduces insights into sub-categories. Striking the right balance is critical and requires close collaboration with stakeholders to decide what to run through PMax and address other strategic considerations.
2. Optimize Your Creative
Compelling, high-quality creative assets are vital to Performance Max success. Tinuiti helps clients test headlines, images, and more to find what resonates with target audiences. Our video creation service offers tailored support for PMax campaigns, using existing assets or producing new ones from scratch.
3. Control Your Product Feed Levers
We test and refine feed attributes—like titles, descriptions, and images—to improve visibility and revenue. A scheduled cadence for feed optimizations and tests helps maintain strong campaign performance.
4. Tinuiti’s Enhanced Performance Max Reporting
Tinuiti’s proprietary Performance Max reporting offers deeper insights than standard PMax tools. These customized reports analyze spend and revenue distribution by channel and track performance changes after bid or creative adjustments, enabling more informed, data-driven decisions.
Conclusion
In addition to the benefits Google Performance Max offers today, it will continue to evolve as AI advances, future-proofing your marketing strategy. Simply put, Google isn’t going to let one of their key products fall behind. The time and energy you put into learning and optimizing Performance Max campaigns will continue to be time well-spent for the foreseeable future.
Wondering how your Google Ads campaigns stack up? Check out our most recent Digital Ads Benchmark report to see how factors like AI and new video advertising channels influenced ad spend. Or, if you’re ready to speak with an expert about your Google Ads strategy drop us a line and we’ll be in touch!
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