Pre-launch: Make Performance Max measurable, teachable, and safe
Start with conversion goals that Smart Bidding can actually optimize
Performance Max is only as “smart” as the conversion goals you feed it. Before you build the campaign, audit your conversion actions and decide what you truly want to pay for. In most accounts I inherit, the biggest launch mistake is letting too many mixed-quality actions count as primary conversions (for example: page views, button clicks, and actual leads all optimized together). That forces the system to chase volume, not business outcomes.
If you’re transitioning from an upper-funnel action (like page views) to a lower-funnel action (like purchases or qualified leads), treat it as a measurement project first, not a bidding change. Track the lower-funnel conversion consistently for multiple conversion cycles, ensure it’s categorized appropriately, and only then switch optimization. The cleaner your “primary” actions are, the faster Performance Max learns and the fewer expensive misfires you’ll see in the first two weeks.
When different conversion types have different economic value (calls vs. forms vs. purchases), assign conversion values so you can bid toward value, not just volume. If you can’t reliably set values, keep the campaign focused on a single conversion type you’re comfortable paying for.
- Critical pre-launch checklist: Confirm your intended conversion actions are set to Primary, remove stale or irrelevant goals from campaign optimization, and set values wherever “a conversion” doesn’t always mean the same thing.
Choose the right bidding mode (and plan your new-customer approach up front)
In Performance Max you’re essentially choosing between optimizing for conversion volume or conversion value. If you track conversion values (revenue, profit proxy, lead scoring value), optimize for conversion value and optionally add a target ROAS. If you don’t track values and you view all conversions as equal, optimize for conversions and optionally add a target CPA.
If your growth plan depends on acquiring new customers (not just more orders from existing buyers), decide whether you want to bid higher for new customers or bid for new customers only. Be aware that “new customer only” requires sufficient audience eligibility (you’ll need an audience segment with at least 1,000 active members in at least one network). For customer acquisition reporting, your tracking needs to identify whether a purchase is from a new customer. That typically means passing a new_customer boolean parameter with your purchase event, where a returning vs. new customer is determined within a lapse window (commonly set to 540 days by default).
Lock down brand and landing-page governance before you spend
Performance Max can dynamically select where to send traffic and what combinations of assets to assemble, so your launch needs guardrails. At the campaign level, brand guidelines centralize business name, logos, colors, and fonts so your ads stay consistent across formats. Also note that if you don’t explicitly maintain these brand elements, the platform can default to using the business name and logos from the top-performing asset group (this change was scheduled to take effect by mid-April 2025), which can create surprises in multi-brand or multi-offer accounts.
On the landing-page side, Final URL expansion is on by default and can replace your chosen final URL with a more relevant landing page from the same domain based on intent. That can be a performance win, but only if you exclude sections of the site that should never receive paid traffic (careers pages, support pages, policy pages, low-converting blog posts, etc.). If you need tight control, plan whether you’ll use URL exclusions, page feeds, or turn Final URL expansion off for that campaign.
Build: A practical launch workflow for Performance Max campaigns
Create the campaign: goals first, then locations and language
When you create the campaign, start by confirming the conversion goals you want Performance Max to optimize toward. Then set your location targeting carefully, including exclusions. If you’re targeting specific service areas, use radius targeting rather than “whole country” shortcuts. Your location setup is one of the highest-leverage decisions you’ll make, because Performance Max can serve across many surfaces, and weak geo settings quickly turn into wasted spend.
For languages, select the languages your customers actually use (and avoid piling on extra languages “just in case” unless you have the creative and landing pages to support them). Keep ad scheduling simple at launch; if you have hard operational constraints (for example, you only answer phones during business hours), enforce them from day one rather than trying to fix lead quality later.
Finally, keep your tracking templates clean: Performance Max supports tracking templates at the account or campaign level, and lower-level templates may be removed. Build your measurement structure accordingly.
Design asset groups like a landing-page and intent map (not like ad groups)
An asset group is a themed collection of creatives (and optional signals) that can be assembled into ads across channels. Think of each asset group as “one promise + one destination.” The strongest launches I’ve run use asset groups aligned to website categories, service lines, or distinct conversion paths, rather than throwing everything into one blended group.
If you have a product feed, listing groups inside the asset group become a key control lever. Listing groups let you decide which products (based on feed attributes) are eligible to serve, and misconfigured listing groups are a common reason Performance Max under-delivers or spends unpredictably.
For Search coverage, add search themes when you want to declare the language your customers use. Search themes are optional and additive (they don’t replace keywordless matching), and you can add up to 50 unique search themes per asset group. Avoid near-duplicates (like “car” and “automobile”) because they reach the same audience and don’t add meaningful direction.
For audience guidance, add audience signals when you have strong first-party data or clear intent proxies (customer lists, remarketing lists, custom segments based on search terms/URLs/apps). Signals guide learning, but they do not hard-restrict reach, so you still need negatives and landing-page controls for safety.
- Asset coverage launch rule: Don’t publish with “thin” creative. Aim to cover text, images, and video in every asset group, and create multiple variations so the system has real options to test.
Build creatives to prevent “auto-fill surprises” (especially video)
If you don’t upload a video, the system may auto-generate one from your other assets, and those auto-generated videos can be formatted to serve in standard placements and vertical placements (including short-form environments). That can be helpful when you truly have no video, but brand-sensitive advertisers should provide their own videos early to control messaging and avoid awkward crops or mismatched visuals.
As a baseline, plan to include multiple headlines, long headlines, and descriptions, plus a strong set of images and logos. Treat this like building a modular creative kit, not writing “one perfect ad.” Your job is to provide accurate building blocks; the system’s job is to assemble and test combinations at scale.
Set a budget that allows learning (and don’t strangle it on day three)
Performance Max needs enough daily volume to learn. A practical budgeting guideline is setting an average daily budget of at least three times your expected CPA (or cost per conversion) for the conversion actions you’ve selected. That doesn’t mean you’ll hit the CPA immediately; it means you’re giving the model enough auctions to calibrate.
Remember how billing works: the effective monthly charging limit is your average daily budget multiplied by the average number of days in a month, and daily spend can fluctuate (including spending up to roughly two times your average daily budget on higher-opportunity days). If you panic and throttle budget during the initial learning period, you often extend the learning phase and end up paying more per conversion over the first month.
First 30 days: Optimize Performance Max without breaking momentum
Evaluate performance like a Performance Max operator (not like a Search-only manager)
In the first two weeks, prioritize conversion performance over click-based metrics. Because Performance Max can drive conversions across multiple platforms (including video-heavy inventory), you may see conversion behavior that doesn’t map cleanly to last-click expectations. This can also produce CTRs or CPMs that look “off” if you’re evaluating the campaign like a traditional Search campaign.
Use the search terms report to understand what queries are triggering your ads and to shape both your negative keyword strategy and your creative direction. Also be aware that search terms reporting has a defined historical window (data begins in March 2023), and certain store-focused conversion types aren’t compatible with the search terms report.
Steer Search traffic with the right control for the job: search themes, negatives, brands
Use search themes to expand into known high-intent query areas you care about, especially when your site content is broad and you want to emphasize specific demand pockets. Use negative keywords when you see irrelevant intent you never want to pay for on Search and Shopping inventory. For operational efficiency across multiple campaigns, campaign-level negative keyword lists are now available, so you can manage a shared exclusion set and apply it across Performance Max campaigns (while still keeping the option for campaign-specific negatives).
If you’re trying to prevent overlap with competitor brands or control branded-query behavior, brand exclusions can prevent serving on queries associated with brands you want to avoid (and they apply to Search and Shopping inventory in Performance Max). Brand settings are powerful but easy to overuse; apply them only where you truly need them, because they inherently reduce reachable conversion opportunities. Also note that interface locations for brand settings have evolved; since May 27, 2025, some brand settings workflows were scheduled to move into an AI Max settings panel area, so train your team on where to find these controls in your current UI.
If a term still shows up via Display or Video environments, remember that negative keywords don’t control those inventories the same way. For that, you’ll rely on content suitability controls (such as excluded content keywords) and placement exclusions.
Control Final URL expansion and page feeds to protect conversion paths
Final URL expansion can improve performance by matching users to more relevant landing pages on your domain, but only if the domain is “ad-ready.” Use URL exclusions (including rule-based exclusions) to block pages that create friction or waste. If your business has multiple distinct lines, marketplace pages, or multi-domain complexity, watch closely for mismatched messaging and tighten with page feeds or more generic creative where needed.
Page feeds are especially useful when you want the system to focus on a curated set of URLs, confirm indexing, and organize URLs with custom labels. They require text customization to be enabled and aren’t available in Performance Max campaigns that have a Merchant Center attached. Operationally, keep feed URLs clean (don’t include tracking parameters) and use custom labels both to target specific URL sets per asset group and to exclude specific feed URLs from URL expansion when necessary.
Use account-level brand safety controls to clean up the edges
Beyond Search intent controls, use account-level content suitability settings to exclude sensitive content categories, and use placement exclusions to prevent your ads from serving on specific pages, apps, or videos. Performance Max respects account-level (and manager-level) placement exclusions, so this is where experienced advertisers enforce “global guardrails” while letting campaigns optimize within those bounds.
Know when to consolidate (and how to do it without causing a performance cliff)
In most accounts, fewer, cleaner Performance Max campaigns outperform many fragmented campaigns—assuming your settings and goals truly align. If you do consolidate or shift budgets between similar Performance Max campaigns, do it gradually. A steady approach (for example, moving budget in roughly 20% weekly increments when setups are identical) reduces volatility and makes it easier to diagnose changes.
Let AI handle
the Google Ads grunt work
Let AI handle
the Google Ads grunt work
Step-by-Step Guide to Creating a Performance Max Campaign
Step 1: Create Campaign and Choose Goal
To get started, navigate to your Google Ads account and click on the "Campaigns" tab. Then, select the "+" button to create a new campaign.
In the "New Campaign" window, choose your campaign objective, such as "Sales," "Leads," or "Website traffic." This goal will guide Google's machine learning algorithms to optimize your campaign for the desired outcome.
Next, select "Performance Max" as your campaign type. This option leverages Google's automation capabilities to maximize performance across all Google Ads channels and inventory.
If you have connected your Merchant Center to Google Ads to promote your products, you can select here the account.
Note: Performance Max works best for advertisers selling products, rather than services. This is one the things to take into account before choosing to launch a PMax campaign.
Step 2: Set Bidding Preferences
After selecting your campaign goal, you'll need to configure your bidding preferences. Performance Max campaigns use automated bidding, meaning Google will optimize your bids in real-time to achieve your specified goal.
Depending on your campaign objective, you can choose from various bidding strategies, such as:
- Maximize conversions
- Maximize conversion value
- Target CPA (cost per acquisition)
- Target ROAS (return on ad spend)
Read our guides for each Bidding strategies if you wish to better understand their goals, and which one is the best for you.
For example, if your goal is to drive sales while maintaining a specific return on investment, you might select the "Target ROAS" strategy and set your desired ROAS percentage.
This step is also where you can choose if you want to target only new customers.
If you're selling products, we recommend to start without it if this is your first campaign. If you already have PMax campaigns running you can, seconding the goal of your campaign, choose to activate it. If you're selling products, it will depend on the evolution of the conversion value brought by your returning visitors.
If you're selling a service, always activate it. This is the kind of little things that can loose you lots of money.
Step 3: Configure Campaign Settings
In this step, you'll define your campaign's settings, including:
- Locations: Select the geographic areas where you want your ads to appear.
- Languages: Specify the languages your audience speaks.
- Budget: Set your daily campaign budget.
- Campaign dates: Choose start and end dates, or set the campaign to run continuously.
- Brand exclusion: Select the brands you want to exclude yourself from searches, including yours.
About Brand Exclusion, this is another little setting that can loose you a LOT of money if not properly configured.
In Performance Max campaigns, Google has the upper hand on where and when your ads will show. This include your own brand. The goal of Google is a) to spend your money, b) bring you conversions at all costs so you will continue bringing up the money.
Brand keywords (when someone types your brand name on Google) has the highest conversion rate. This means, if left untouched, that Google will basically turn your Performance Max into a brand campaign. Not a good bet if your wish to expand your customers' base and explore new markets.
So always add you brand to the exclusion list:
Step 4: Set Up Asset Groups and Upload Assets
Performance Max campaigns use asset groups to create and manage your ad content. An asset group contains a collection of images, videos, logos, headlines, descriptions, and call-to-action phrases that Google combines to create responsive ads tailored to your audience.
To set up your asset group:
- Click "Create asset group" and provide a name.
- Upload your visual assets (images, logos, and videos) in the recommended sizes and formats.
- Add multiple headlines, descriptions, and call-to-action phrases to give Google's machine learning algorithms more options for creating effective ad combinations.
- Preview your ads to ensure they appear as intended.
- Signals and Audiences: enter the signals you have identified as relevant from converting leads, and the audiences you have created in your Google Ads account.
You can create multiple asset groups within a single Performance Max campaign to test different creative approaches or target specific signal and audience segments.
Step 5: Set Campaign Budget
Determine your campaign's daily budget based on your advertising goals and overall marketing budget. Performance Max campaigns allow you to set a daily average budget, which gives Google the flexibility to adjust your spending based on daily fluctuations in search traffic and ad performance.
For instance, if you set a daily budget of $100, Google may spend slightly more on high-performing days and less on others, while ensuring your monthly spend remains within your budget (i.e., approximately $3,000 per month for a 30-day month).
Step 6: Review and Publish Campaign
Before launching your Performance Max campaign, take the time to review all your settings, targeting preferences, and creative assets. Ensure that your ad content aligns with your brand guidelines and campaign objectives.
Once you've confirmed that everything is set up correctly, click "Publish" to activate your campaign. Google will then start serving your ads across its various channels, optimizing performance based on your specified goals and budget.
After launch, monitor your campaign's performance regularly using Google Ads' reporting tools. Analyze key metrics such as impressions, clicks, conversions, and cost-per-conversion to gauge your campaign's success and identify areas for improvement. Use these insights to refine your targeting, adjust your budget, and optimize your creative assets for better results over time.
Pre-launch: Make Performance Max measurable, teachable, and safe
Start with conversion goals that Smart Bidding can actually optimize
Performance Max is only as “smart” as the conversion goals you feed it. Before you build the campaign, audit your conversion actions and decide what you truly want to pay for. In most accounts I inherit, the biggest launch mistake is letting too many mixed-quality actions count as primary conversions (for example: page views, button clicks, and actual leads all optimized together). That forces the system to chase volume, not business outcomes.
If you’re transitioning from an upper-funnel action (like page views) to a lower-funnel action (like purchases or qualified leads), treat it as a measurement project first, not a bidding change. Track the lower-funnel conversion consistently for multiple conversion cycles, ensure it’s categorized appropriately, and only then switch optimization. The cleaner your “primary” actions are, the faster Performance Max learns and the fewer expensive misfires you’ll see in the first two weeks.
When different conversion types have different economic value (calls vs. forms vs. purchases), assign conversion values so you can bid toward value, not just volume. If you can’t reliably set values, keep the campaign focused on a single conversion type you’re comfortable paying for.
- Critical pre-launch checklist: Confirm your intended conversion actions are set to Primary, remove stale or irrelevant goals from campaign optimization, and set values wherever “a conversion” doesn’t always mean the same thing.
Choose the right bidding mode (and plan your new-customer approach up front)
In Performance Max you’re essentially choosing between optimizing for conversion volume or conversion value. If you track conversion values (revenue, profit proxy, lead scoring value), optimize for conversion value and optionally add a target ROAS. If you don’t track values and you view all conversions as equal, optimize for conversions and optionally add a target CPA.
If your growth plan depends on acquiring new customers (not just more orders from existing buyers), decide whether you want to bid higher for new customers or bid for new customers only. Be aware that “new customer only” requires sufficient audience eligibility (you’ll need an audience segment with at least 1,000 active members in at least one network). For customer acquisition reporting, your tracking needs to identify whether a purchase is from a new customer. That typically means passing a new_customer boolean parameter with your purchase event, where a returning vs. new customer is determined within a lapse window (commonly set to 540 days by default).
Lock down brand and landing-page governance before you spend
Performance Max can dynamically select where to send traffic and what combinations of assets to assemble, so your launch needs guardrails. At the campaign level, brand guidelines centralize business name, logos, colors, and fonts so your ads stay consistent across formats. Also note that if you don’t explicitly maintain these brand elements, the platform can default to using the business name and logos from the top-performing asset group (this change was scheduled to take effect by mid-April 2025), which can create surprises in multi-brand or multi-offer accounts.
On the landing-page side, Final URL expansion is on by default and can replace your chosen final URL with a more relevant landing page from the same domain based on intent. That can be a performance win, but only if you exclude sections of the site that should never receive paid traffic (careers pages, support pages, policy pages, low-converting blog posts, etc.). If you need tight control, plan whether you’ll use URL exclusions, page feeds, or turn Final URL expansion off for that campaign.
Build: A practical launch workflow for Performance Max campaigns
Create the campaign: goals first, then locations and language
When you create the campaign, start by confirming the conversion goals you want Performance Max to optimize toward. Then set your location targeting carefully, including exclusions. If you’re targeting specific service areas, use radius targeting rather than “whole country” shortcuts. Your location setup is one of the highest-leverage decisions you’ll make, because Performance Max can serve across many surfaces, and weak geo settings quickly turn into wasted spend.
For languages, select the languages your customers actually use (and avoid piling on extra languages “just in case” unless you have the creative and landing pages to support them). Keep ad scheduling simple at launch; if you have hard operational constraints (for example, you only answer phones during business hours), enforce them from day one rather than trying to fix lead quality later.
Finally, keep your tracking templates clean: Performance Max supports tracking templates at the account or campaign level, and lower-level templates may be removed. Build your measurement structure accordingly.
Design asset groups like a landing-page and intent map (not like ad groups)
An asset group is a themed collection of creatives (and optional signals) that can be assembled into ads across channels. Think of each asset group as “one promise + one destination.” The strongest launches I’ve run use asset groups aligned to website categories, service lines, or distinct conversion paths, rather than throwing everything into one blended group.
If you have a product feed, listing groups inside the asset group become a key control lever. Listing groups let you decide which products (based on feed attributes) are eligible to serve, and misconfigured listing groups are a common reason Performance Max under-delivers or spends unpredictably.
For Search coverage, add search themes when you want to declare the language your customers use. Search themes are optional and additive (they don’t replace keywordless matching), and you can add up to 50 unique search themes per asset group. Avoid near-duplicates (like “car” and “automobile”) because they reach the same audience and don’t add meaningful direction.
For audience guidance, add audience signals when you have strong first-party data or clear intent proxies (customer lists, remarketing lists, custom segments based on search terms/URLs/apps). Signals guide learning, but they do not hard-restrict reach, so you still need negatives and landing-page controls for safety.
- Asset coverage launch rule: Don’t publish with “thin” creative. Aim to cover text, images, and video in every asset group, and create multiple variations so the system has real options to test.
Build creatives to prevent “auto-fill surprises” (especially video)
If you don’t upload a video, the system may auto-generate one from your other assets, and those auto-generated videos can be formatted to serve in standard placements and vertical placements (including short-form environments). That can be helpful when you truly have no video, but brand-sensitive advertisers should provide their own videos early to control messaging and avoid awkward crops or mismatched visuals.
As a baseline, plan to include multiple headlines, long headlines, and descriptions, plus a strong set of images and logos. Treat this like building a modular creative kit, not writing “one perfect ad.” Your job is to provide accurate building blocks; the system’s job is to assemble and test combinations at scale.
Set a budget that allows learning (and don’t strangle it on day three)
Performance Max needs enough daily volume to learn. A practical budgeting guideline is setting an average daily budget of at least three times your expected CPA (or cost per conversion) for the conversion actions you’ve selected. That doesn’t mean you’ll hit the CPA immediately; it means you’re giving the model enough auctions to calibrate.
Remember how billing works: the effective monthly charging limit is your average daily budget multiplied by the average number of days in a month, and daily spend can fluctuate (including spending up to roughly two times your average daily budget on higher-opportunity days). If you panic and throttle budget during the initial learning period, you often extend the learning phase and end up paying more per conversion over the first month.
First 30 days: Optimize Performance Max without breaking momentum
Evaluate performance like a Performance Max operator (not like a Search-only manager)
In the first two weeks, prioritize conversion performance over click-based metrics. Because Performance Max can drive conversions across multiple platforms (including video-heavy inventory), you may see conversion behavior that doesn’t map cleanly to last-click expectations. This can also produce CTRs or CPMs that look “off” if you’re evaluating the campaign like a traditional Search campaign.
Use the search terms report to understand what queries are triggering your ads and to shape both your negative keyword strategy and your creative direction. Also be aware that search terms reporting has a defined historical window (data begins in March 2023), and certain store-focused conversion types aren’t compatible with the search terms report.
Steer Search traffic with the right control for the job: search themes, negatives, brands
Use search themes to expand into known high-intent query areas you care about, especially when your site content is broad and you want to emphasize specific demand pockets. Use negative keywords when you see irrelevant intent you never want to pay for on Search and Shopping inventory. For operational efficiency across multiple campaigns, campaign-level negative keyword lists are now available, so you can manage a shared exclusion set and apply it across Performance Max campaigns (while still keeping the option for campaign-specific negatives).
If you’re trying to prevent overlap with competitor brands or control branded-query behavior, brand exclusions can prevent serving on queries associated with brands you want to avoid (and they apply to Search and Shopping inventory in Performance Max). Brand settings are powerful but easy to overuse; apply them only where you truly need them, because they inherently reduce reachable conversion opportunities. Also note that interface locations for brand settings have evolved; since May 27, 2025, some brand settings workflows were scheduled to move into an AI Max settings panel area, so train your team on where to find these controls in your current UI.
If a term still shows up via Display or Video environments, remember that negative keywords don’t control those inventories the same way. For that, you’ll rely on content suitability controls (such as excluded content keywords) and placement exclusions.
Control Final URL expansion and page feeds to protect conversion paths
Final URL expansion can improve performance by matching users to more relevant landing pages on your domain, but only if the domain is “ad-ready.” Use URL exclusions (including rule-based exclusions) to block pages that create friction or waste. If your business has multiple distinct lines, marketplace pages, or multi-domain complexity, watch closely for mismatched messaging and tighten with page feeds or more generic creative where needed.
Page feeds are especially useful when you want the system to focus on a curated set of URLs, confirm indexing, and organize URLs with custom labels. They require text customization to be enabled and aren’t available in Performance Max campaigns that have a Merchant Center attached. Operationally, keep feed URLs clean (don’t include tracking parameters) and use custom labels both to target specific URL sets per asset group and to exclude specific feed URLs from URL expansion when necessary.
Use account-level brand safety controls to clean up the edges
Beyond Search intent controls, use account-level content suitability settings to exclude sensitive content categories, and use placement exclusions to prevent your ads from serving on specific pages, apps, or videos. Performance Max respects account-level (and manager-level) placement exclusions, so this is where experienced advertisers enforce “global guardrails” while letting campaigns optimize within those bounds.
Know when to consolidate (and how to do it without causing a performance cliff)
In most accounts, fewer, cleaner Performance Max campaigns outperform many fragmented campaigns—assuming your settings and goals truly align. If you do consolidate or shift budgets between similar Performance Max campaigns, do it gradually. A steady approach (for example, moving budget in roughly 20% weekly increments when setups are identical) reduces volatility and makes it easier to diagnose changes.
