TPE #31: 6 new pMax updates (and what they mean)

Read time: 3 minutes

Welcome back to The PPC Edge!

Last week, Google announced new updates to Performance Max… And for once: the updates are actually really good.

In this issue of The PPC Edge, we’ll not only show you all the upcoming changes, but also share our thoughts on what they mean for your performance (good or bad).

Let’s dive right in!

Overview of upcoming Performance Max updates

We’ll begin with a quick overview of all upcoming changes:

1. Campaign-level brand exclusions
2. Improved asset group reporting
3. New video creation tools
4. Budget pacing insights
5. New experiments
6. Page feeds

Now let’s look at each individually.

Update 1: Campaign-level brand exclusions

As you probably know, your Performance Max data is inflated with branded search conversions (these are people that would’ve converted anyway, and pMax takes credit for them).

The solution: exclude brand from pMax and catch that traffic in Branded Search + Branded Standard Shopping campaigns (read this blog we wrote about how to do this).

Up until now, you needed a workaround to exclude branded search terms from pMax (letting Google support add a negative keyword list to your campaigns).

With this new update, that might no longer be needed. We say ‘might’ because the official documentation is a bit unclear:

“You’ll be able to exclude your own brand terms, and choose from a list of other brands to exclude. If any brands are missing from the list, you’ll see an option in Google Ads to request additions.”

We assume you will be able to easily exclude your brand name from your pMax campaigns, but we don’t know exactly how.

Regardless, this is a great update for most advertisers that weren’t using the negative keyword list workaround before.

Just remember: if you’re an ecom brand and you exclude brand from pMax, you NEED a Branded Standard Shopping campaign to ensure branded visibility on the Shopping network.

Update 2: Improved asset group reporting

Google is FINALLY releasing better asset group-level insights. We’ll soon be able to see conversions, conversion value and cost data for individual asset groups. That’s huge! Other metrics will be added too but there’s nothing about it in the official documentation so we just have to assume it’s secondary (click-based) metrics.

This makes it easier to analyze and evaluate asset group performance, because we’ll be able to see real data. We assume creative testing will become easier and better as well.

This is a big step forward in getting more insights back from Google, and we’ll be able to make more sense of the black box that is Performance Max.

Update 3: New video creation tools

This one is a bit meh. Google wants to make it easier for advertisers to create video ads, so you can now directly create and edit videos within your Performance Max campaigns (based on templates).

The templates are somewhat generic. It’s nice if you have 0 budget to create videos, but we recommend to invest some budget in creating your own, high quality videos that aren’t based on entry-level templates.

Update 4: Budget pacing insights

Google is releasing new and better insights into how your budget is spent, and what the projections for the upcoming period are. We expect you will see notifications like: “you’ve only spent 33% of your budget, maybe distribute that to other campaigns”.

Let’s see how this one works out but we’re not too excited for it, because it feels like something that will benefit Google, and not the advertiser.

Update 5: New experiments

Performance Max experiments were recently launched, and Google is taking them a step further. You will be able to test Performance Max vs. Standard Shopping campaigns, and see how a new pMax campaign drives incremental value to your entire campaign structure.

We’re especially curious about the latter: A/B testing how pMax drives incremental value to your ENTIRE account. It’s easy to drive up individual Performance Max campaign results, because it cannibalizes on other campaign types like Non-branded Search. Seeing incremental value for the entire account, that’s where the gold lies!

Update 6: Page feeds

And the final update: Performance Max campaigns will support page feeds, just like Dynamic Search Ads. This is a great layer of additional control, as you will be able to send traffic to a specific set of landing pages.

One thing to note: we don’t know for sure whether the page feeds will serve as a targeting signal, or actual targeting. Check out what the official documentation says:

“When you combine page feeds with final URL expansion turned on, keywordless AI technology uses this collection of URLs to better understand which landing pages are most important to your business. This gives you another way to inform and guide AI within the final URL expansion feature to help you drive valuable conversions from new queries you didn’t expect or that aren’t captured by your Search campaigns.”

We’ll just have to wait and find out - but it’s a good development nonetheless.

Recap: 6 new pMax updates

It seems like Google is listening and improving Performance Max campaigns with the following updates:

1. Campaign-level brand exclusions
2. Improved asset group reporting
3. New video creation tools
4. Budget pacing insights
5. New experiments
6. Page feeds

Everything will be rolled out in the upcoming months.

We’ll make sure to report on any new insights we learn as we go.

Read the full announcement here.

See you again next week!

Cheers,

Bob & Miles