August 8, 2022
Performance Max is one of the most talked about campaign types in the PPC industry right now, and rightly so. It’s caused quite a stir since its launch and with Google in the process of sunsetting Smart Shopping campaigns in favour of this newer campaign type.
Although we’ve seen nothing but positive results across our retail accounts since migrating to Performance Max, the campaign type has gained quite a bad rep in terms of how marketers can manage and optimise. Thankfully, Google has confirmed they are planning to give marketers (a bit) more control & transparency over Performance Max campaigns!
Here’s the 4 new Performance Max features Google are about to release:
Added Control
- Seasonality adjustments (these were a game changer when this feature was introduced way back when smart bidding first came around, so it's great to see them adding this to the Performance Max campaign type). It will mean brands can tell the campaign to adjust the bid strategy based on what they anticipate happening, e.g. launch of a sale, promotional weekend etc. I see this feature really benefiting brands who run short bursts of promotional/sale periods and give more control over setting performance expectations.
- Data exclusions - this feature will allow advertisers to retrospectively add exclusion dates and feed this to their smart bidding strategy. If you have website outages, tagging issues etc, the smart bidding can be told to ignore data from a set date range. I love the idea of this feature, so you can support the smart bidding by telling it what is anomaly data and therefore unreliable.
Transparency/Support Features
- Explanations - one thing brands have been begging for! More insight around WHY performance fluctuations occurred and diagnosis of issues too. With so little granular data available on performance currently, it’ll be really interesting to see how in-depth these explanations will end up being.
- Optimisation score - From what I gather, this will appear similar to what we see already at account level, but for Performance Max specifically on areas for improvement within the campaign setup. Expect to see recommendations that should in theory prompt you to take action to improve performance.
What this means for you
We’re over the moon to see these new features roll out - these positive steps will enable advertisers to gain a little control back and better visibility on what’s going on with the campaign and support on improving them too. My only suggestion to advertisers is to take the optimisation score recommendations with a pinch of salt - some are great, but remember they aren’t tailored to your account or business itself, so only make changes that will be positive and support achieving your objective!
We've seen success after success with Performance Max on our client accounts, and recently achieved a 26% in revenue for footwear client, Moda in Pelle. View the full results using the button below!
