Performance Max management
The default report gives you one number for seven surfaces. We manage and report Performance Max at the level where the budget decisions actually sit, as part of our Google Ads management.
£160M+ in ad spend managed
Google Ads · CampaignsPerformance Max - All Products
Last 30 days · one blended result
Eligible · no action suggested
The same 30 days, by surface
What the scorecard blends together.
Searchoverlaps the search campaigns it sits beside
YouTubeauto-generated video eligible to serveChannel split pulled through scripts and the Google Ads API. Proportions illustrative.
Performance Max spans Search, Shopping, YouTube, Display, Gmail, Maps and Discover from a single campaign, and hands the orchestration to Google's automation. Used well, it finds incremental conversions across surfaces you could not manage by hand. Used without clear controls, it cannibalises brand search, leans on cheap placements, and reports a flattering blended number while non-brand growth stalls.
Performance Max asset groups and search themes
You cannot set bids or pick placements in Performance Max, so the campaign is managed through its inputs. Each part of an asset group is a lever, and each one left on its default hands a decision back to Google.
Search themes
Your strongest steer on queriesUp to 25 phrases per asset group telling Google which searches to lean into. They work like broad hints, not keywords, so they need the same review discipline as search terms: check what they matched, add negatives, refine.
Audience signals
Only a starting pointCustomer lists, site visitors and in-market segments seed the automation. Google expands beyond them quickly, so a lazy signal means a slow, expensive learning phase spent finding your buyer the hard way.
Text, image and video assets
Eligibility across surfacesWeak coverage quietly narrows where the campaign can serve, and a missing video means Google generates one for you. Full, deliberate asset coverage is how you keep control of what the brand looks like on YouTube and Display.
Product feed
The retail engineFor ecommerce, the feed decides which queries you can enter and at what price. Titles, GTINs, product types and custom labels do more for PMax Shopping performance than most bid changes.
Final URL expansion
Set the rules earlyLeft on, Google sends clicks to any page it judges relevant, including blog posts and out-of-stock pages. We set the URL rules and exclusions so traffic lands where it can convert.
Performance Max for ecommerce and lead generation
The same campaign type behaves completely differently depending on what it is optimising toward. Managing it well means knowing which version you are running and where that version goes wrong.
Performance Max for ecommerce
Feed-led. Most serving is Shopping, so the product feed sets the targeting.
- Feed quality decides query entry: titles, GTINs, product types and images control which auctions you can win.
- Margin and value signals matter more than volume. Feeding real basket values or profit lets bidding chase the orders worth having.
- Watch the Shopping split. If PMax mostly re-serves your best sellers to brand searchers, the budget is not finding new customers.
- Custom labels segment bestsellers, clearance and seasonal lines so budget follows the commercial plan.
Performance Max for lead generation
Signal-led. Without purchase values, the campaign optimises to whatever a conversion is defined as.
- The junk-lead spiral is the classic failure: PMax finds cheap form fills on Display, learns from them, and finds more.
- Lead quality gates are non-negotiable: qualified-lead conversions, CRM stage imports and lead scoring keep the automation honest.
- Offline conversion imports let bidding learn from sales-accepted leads rather than raw submissions.
- Stricter placement and content exclusions, because low-intent surfaces produce the worst leads.
Where Performance Max spend actually goes
Performance Max reports one number by default. That is not enough to defend a budget, so we pull the campaign apart every month with scripts, the Google Ads API and the reports Google does expose. The question each read answers is the same: is this spend buying demand we did not already have?
Search Terms Insights
The query categories PMax entered, reviewed the way we review search terms: which themes earn budget, which get negatives.
Channel split via scripts and the API
How spend and conversions divide across Search, Shopping, YouTube, Display and Gmail, because a campaign drifting toward cheap Display placements looks identical in the default interface.
Placement reports
Where Display and video actually served, with exclusion lists maintained the same way we run them in programmatic.
Asset and asset-group performance
Which creative earns impressions and which is dead weight, so refresh decisions follow evidence.
Brand vs non-brand overlap
What PMax won that a brand or search campaign would have won anyway, checked against the search campaigns it sits beside.
How we optimise Performance Max
Stop brand cannibalisation
Brand exclusions and account-level negatives keep Performance Max on incremental demand, with brand search kept in a dedicated, separately measured campaign.
Steer it with inputs
Search themes set the queries to lean into, audience signals seed who to prioritise, and strong asset coverage means more eligible formats.
Force the visibility
Search Terms Insights to find and suppress off-target queries, the placement view to exclude weak inventory, and demographic exclusions where serving is irrelevant.
One objective, clean inputs
A single funnel stage per strategy, fed by accurate, deduplicated conversions and a clean product feed for retail.
What we manage
- Brand exclusions and account-level negatives
- Search themes and audience signals
- Asset group structure and creative coverage
- Search Terms Insights review and negatives
- Placement and content exclusions
- Demographic exclusions where irrelevant
- Single-objective bidding with real values
- Channel-level reporting via scripts and the API
Go deeper
- Account-level negative keywords: one list to rule them allThe negative-keyword discipline that also reins in Performance Max.
- Value-based bidding: what it is and why you need itFeeding real values so automation optimises for profit.
- PPC best practice: search termsReading search terms to find waste and intent.
Related services & tools
Common questions
What teams ask about performance max before they hand over an account.
Find out what Performance Max is really doing
Get a free senior review of your Performance Max setup, where it is cannibalising brand, where spend is going, and what to exclude and steer first, from a Google Premier Partner managing £160M+ in ad spend.
- Where budget produced no profitable return in the last 90 days
- Whether your conversion tracking and values are reliable
- How much of your performance is genuinely incremental vs demand you already had
- Which campaigns are worth more budget and which to cut
“A useful PPC review should make the next decision obvious: what to cut, what to protect, and what is worth more investment.”
Fraser Smith, Chief Strategy Officer, reviews every submissionFree senior PPC review
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