Tampa, FL · nationwidePaid search
Should you run Performance Max?
The three conditions that decide whether Performance Max adds leads or takes credit for them.
Published · Updated · 3 min read
Key takeaways
- Run Performance Max only when conversion tracking is clean, a Search campaign already catches your high-intent terms, and your brand terms are excluded.
- Performance Max trades control and visibility for reach and automation, so its results depend on the conversions and signals you give it.
- If Search conversions fell as Performance Max rose and total conversions stayed flat, Performance Max is taking credit rather than adding volume.
- Performance Max works best beside Search, never alone, for feed-based retail and dealers and for lead-gen accounts with offline conversion data.
- Skip Performance Max on new accounts, accounts with broken tracking, and budgets under about $3,000 a month.
On this page
Run Performance Max when three things are true: your conversion tracking is clean and includes what a real lead or sale looks like, a Search campaign already catches your high-intent terms so PMax can't take credit for them, and your brand terms are excluded. When all three hold, PMax is a good way to find volume you couldn't reach with keywords. When any one is missing, it's the fastest way in Google Ads to spend a budget on people who would have converted anyway and report it as growth.
What Performance Max is
One campaign that serves across Search, Display, YouTube, Gmail, Discover and Maps, with Google choosing placements, audiences and bids from the assets and signals you give it. You get less control and less visibility than any other campaign type. In return you get reach and automation. Whether that trade is worth it depends on what you feed it.
The three conditions
1. Conversion tracking that means something. PMax optimizes toward whatever you call a conversion. If that's a thank-you page view that fires on refresh, or every form including spam, it will find more of those. Enhanced conversions, call tracking, and offline import of qualified leads or sales are what make its optimization worth having. How we set up tracking.
2. A Search campaign catching intent first. Without one, PMax serves on your best keywords and takes the credit. Run Search for the terms that carry the business, and PMax finds what's left.
3. Brand excluded. By default PMax serves on your brand name. Those people were already coming. Brand exclusions exist; almost no inherited account has them set.
How to tell if PMax is cannibalizing
Look at the Search campaign's impression share and conversions before and after PMax launched. If Search dropped while PMax rose and total conversions stayed flat, PMax is taking credit rather than adding volume. Check the search terms report and search category insights for what PMax is serving on; if they're your brand and your top keywords, that's the answer.
When we do run it
Retail and dealers with a product or vehicle feed, where PMax with the feed is effectively Shopping plus reach. Lead-gen accounts that have exhausted Search and have offline conversion data flowing. Multi-location accounts where a well-built PMax per market adds reach the Search template can't. Always beside Search, never alone, and with audience signals built from actual converters.
When we don't
New accounts with no conversion history. Accounts with broken tracking. Accounts where the client can't tell us what a good lead is. Small budgets under about $3,000 a month, where PMax won't get enough data to learn and Search will do more.