What you'll learn
- Use page feeds to pick the pages pMax can targetAdd a feed of landing pages and choose them per asset group. Turn final URL expansion off too, or Google can still send traffic to any page on your site.
- Exclude your brand from pMaxCampaign-level brand exclusions keep branded searches out of your pMax search and Shopping placements, so pMax stops taking credit for brand conversions. Some people say it misses misspellings, so keep an eye on it.
- Check new customer goals against third-party dataRe-engagement goals use your customer lists to win back lapsed customers, and new customer lifecycle goals focus on high-value customers. In my experience, new customer goals inflate the data in Google Ads, so always compare it with a third-party attribution tool.
- Treat the AI campaign setup as a first draftGoogle will build a campaign outline from your URL and a few details about your business. You still need to do keyword research, add good assets and check the structure and landing pages.
- Test one update at a timepMax experiments finally let you A/B test two pMax campaigns, for example with and without page feeds or final URL expansion. Don't test everything at once: check what's live in your account and start with one.
About this episode
Performance Max used to feel like an unfinished product.
That’s changing. At its Performance Max event in Dublin, Google announced 12 updates that give us more control and more insights, and some of them were already showing up in my accounts when I recorded this.
Google sorted them into three groups, and I go through each one and tell you whether it’s live yet:
- Controls to guide AI: page feeds, re-engagement goals, new customer lifecycle goals, account-level negatives, brand exclusions and Smart Bidding for in-store sales
- Ease of use: generative AI tools for creating assets, and recommendations built into campaign setup
- Proving value: pMax experiments, better search term insights, conversion lift studies and Merchant Center issues inside Google Ads
- Where I see red flags, like the AI setup that builds a full campaign from just your URL
- Which updates I started testing first
Page feeds and pMax experiments are the two I’m most excited about.
Chapters
Full transcript
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00:00this is what we've been speculating on for years and and even when I was still working at an agency four years ago I remember one of my mentors he he said one day it's just going to be you just with the Google Ads you just enter your your landing page you throw in a coin and you say okay this is what I want to achieve and then you connect your credit card and boom Google does the rest and we were all laughing about it yeah that's the future and it kind of is what it is we're kind of at that stage now where you just add your url let's see you you say something about your products and your services and and then some additional information and then Google is going to give you the outline for your campaign welcome back to the PPC Mastery podcast smiles here with another solo episode and in this episode I'm actually going to touch on 12 new performance Max updates that Google announced somewhere around June July and they're actually rolling them out now in Q3 Q4 so in this episode I just wanted to take you through these 12 uh upcoming pmax updates and I've already seen that Google has rolled some of them out in some of my accounts so as I go through them I will just tell you okay this is still to be rolled out soon or this is being rolled out now or has been rolled out um and I think these updates are a really nice Google announced them at performance performance Max conference in Dublin which was a live event but I watched the live stream I think it was around two and a half
01:38hours and they just dumped all the most important upcoming updates which is which is great to see and it really feels like performance Max is becoming more of the product that we wanted it to be from the beginning and if I look back now then I definitely see that performance Max was or at least felt like an unfinished product but now with all of the recent changes that Google is launching it feels like it's becoming much more usable and we get a bit more control a bit more insights and yeah let's just let's just run through so you can definitely see that Google is doubling down on AI throughout all of their campaign types but especially performance Max bmax campaigns are totally heavily built on on AI so to me that doesn't really come to come as a surprise that they are talking more about AI but they're also embedding new prompt-based AI tools like which could work similarly to chatgpt they are going to embed that inside of Google Ads which I will be talking about in a second now in Google's propaganda language they say these are the benefits of using Ai and advertising so they started off their session with the yeah I think they kind of felt the need to Showcase why AI is actually a good thing not a bad thing so this is from their mouth not mine simplifying complexity for people businesses and marketers with AI or marketing is Multiplied and AI can help boost productivity and these three things is how they sort of bucketed the the updates so they want to make it easier simplifying complexity they want
03:16to make it easier for people to find the information that they're looking for so the people that are actually searching on Google or on YouTube Etc but they also want to simplify the setup for businesses and marketers and as you probably know launching performance Max campaigns is super easy but it's actually much harder to optimize if you don't know what you're doing with AI your marketing is Multiplied so that in what they mean with that it's just that it's constantly working for you and ai ai can help boost productivity which I will jump on in a second but to them that means that they want to make it easier to set up campaigns and and streamline the campaign setup process to make it easier with embedded AI inside of Google Ads so here are the 12 updates in three categories the first one is controls to guide AI the second one is ease of use and workflows and the third one is proving value and insights that's how Google has categorized these updates so the first one controls to guide AI new inputs to steer performance Max campaigns towards business outcomes first update is Page feeds and this is a the one that I'm most excited about and I'm actually testing this now in an account I have it has been rolled out to one of my accounts and with page feeds you can get a bit more control over the DSA Dynamic search as functionality of performance Max so if you if you use the final URL expansion feature then pmax can also take other landing pages to Target your your ads to when it comes to the search
04:55Network just like how it would work with DSA but the only problem with that that I always had is that pmax can take any landing page from your website and if you use page feeds then you can set up a feed with different URLs landing pages and then you can say I only want to Target these pages in my page feed the landing pages in my page feed if final URL expansion is still on then in Google can also still Target any other landing page so you need to turn that off and then it can only take page landing pages from your page feed which you can actually configure on the asset group level which is which is really neat so I think I think that page feeds are going to give us back a lot of control and it's going to be more fun to test yeah in in performance Max so the second one re-engagement goals and and actually that's a third one as well new customer life cycle goals these are similar to how new customer acquisition goals work the only difference is they may not or yeah they have specific pockets of customers that they go after so with re-engagement goals you let the algorithm optimize for disengaged customers so this is a particularly nice for brands that want to focus on retention and re-engage old customers you with re-engagement goals you use first party data so customer lists to predict and steer on labs to user so
06:32customers that were customers like let's say six months ago and therefore it is really crucial that you have solid high value first party data that's just that's just why what it runs on basically so re-engagement goals are really good for retention and and reactivating lapsed users or reactivating old customers now the next one is new customer lifecycle goals and with new customer lifecycle goals you can get you can let smart bidding optimize for high value customers instead of just any existing or new customer and we'll see how this plays out I'm not a particularly a fan of using new customer acquisition goals or this kind of new customer lifecycle goals you really need to set it up and configure it really well in order to let smart bidding optimize for these pockets of clients that you want and you need to always analyze this against overall data from a third-party attribution tool for example because from my experience what happens with for example new customer acquisition goals is that the data in Google Ads is just going to get inflated so I'm curious how to see how this plays out I like that Google is launching something like this like that that allows you to focus on more of the high value customers with potentially High lifetime value but we'll see all right the next one account level negatives I think this was already rolled out a while ago in a lot of accounts but seems like they wanted to
08:10emphasize this and it's getting rolled out so account level negatives to exclude Search terms across all of your campaigns but I already had it in some accounts so I don't really think this is too new next one campaign level brand exclusions with this feature you can exclude branded Search terms from pmax campaigns and this excludes them from search and shopping placements so I like this because if you've been following me for a while you know that I've had my issues with bmax because it loves to take credit for any convergence including branded conversions which heavily inflates the data and up until now I've always used the negative keyword list work around where you just create a negative keyword list then you ask support to add it to your campaign and then you can add your negative keywords whether it's branded or any other one so that negative keyword list that is connected to your pmax campaign now with with brand exclusions there's a sort of a predefined brand list and if you're a brand name if there's not a list with your brand name yet you can apply for Google to create it and then it excludes from certain shopping placements I've seen some people complain about that it doesn't exclude misspellings but in theory it should do that so keep an eye on it when you when you use it the next one and that's the last one in this first category of controls to guide AI is smart bidding optimized for in-store sales so I can keep this one short this is great if you want to focus on physical stores they want to stimulate football in your physical stores okay so the second category is ease of use and workflows the goal of these
09:49updates according to Google improving the campaign construction workflow to support optimal setup okay that's a that's Google's words but in other words Google wants to make it even easier to create campaigns by embedding Ai and recommendations in the setup process recommendations in the setup process we'll see how that goes okay update seven create assets with generative AI tools yeah this is really this has gone really nice so inside of Google Ads inside the interface it's going to be easier to create and edit assets images videos Etc based on AI so I'm curious to see how this goes the example that Google showed looked really solid but what we'll have to see but it is promising and I think this is going to make it a lot easier for Brands and advertisers to create images and also alter images in in something like product Studio so number eight integrated recommendations during campaign setup yeah again Google wants to make it easier for you to launch and set up your campaigns especially for smaller advertisers smaller companies now here's the thing you just enter your URL and some basic information about your products or brand and Google then creates a complete campaign outline so I haven't seen this yet in Google Ads I think they are rolling it out in Q4 but I already see a ton of red flags like recommendations and I I this is what we've been speculating on for years and and when even when I was still working at an agency four years ago I remember
12:01outline for your Campaign which is good to potentially to good to start with but you still need to do solid keyword research add good assets make sure that the campaign structure is good landing pages are good Etc so I think smaller businesses that are going to set up their own Google Ads are going to be surprised by how easy it is to set it up but then they will find out like okay I have no idea if this is any good I have no idea what to do now how to optimize and that's when we Google ad Specialists still have have a time and place to to come in Okay the third one the third category is proving value and insights so the goal of these insights are these updates according to google provide tools to quantify the value of pmax and offer insights on what's driving performance in other words Google wants to help you prove the value of pmax with new features so you can allocate more spend to it most likely update number nine performance Max experiments so I love this because we can finally a B test pmax campaigns and I I I have experiments in my in my accounts but only the older ones where you can test standard shopping versus pmax or test the uplift of performance Max but soon we will be able to a B test two different pmax campaigns against each other and that allows us to test different bit strategies placements different assets use finding URL expense and yes or no use page feeds yes or no it's going to be really nice to to a B test these um yeah pmax campaigns and I'm super super excited for this
13:40okay the next one number 10 better search term insights I think this is rolled out now by now to all accounts and I love this or at least all not all accounts actually one of my accounts doesn't have it yet another the rest does with these new insights you can add custom date ranges you can export more data before it was only the last seven and last 28 days but now you can do entire date ranges and Search terms have been able to access through the API and people have built scripts to yeah export those into spreadsheets Etc and yeah I love this I love this update it feels like something basic like Search terms and we're really happy with this now but yeah let's let's just say let's not be greedy I'm happy with this update but I still again I have a question like why wasn't this rolled out earlier but anyway we have it now more search term insights which I'm happy about for sure okay so the last two number eleven conversion lift studies with conversion lift studies Google helps you understand how many conversions of your pmax campaigns were incremental so this is something that they have available for for example demand gen YouTube campaigns and now with conversion live studies Google also wants to prove what the uplift is of using performance Max so let's see how this goes I haven't seen it yet I haven't tested it yet but I have used conversion live studies in YouTube and that works pretty well but you should always compare your data against your third-party attribution just saying okay and the last one number 12 update
15:18number 12 improve merchant center integration inside of Google Ads so with this I think this is nice Google is making a a bridge between Google merchant center and Google Ads and now it's it's easier to see product issues like for example if a product is disapproved you will see that in Google Ads if it's not in a campaign different Diagnostics stock issues all that stuff that you generally see in merchant center will now also be embedded inside of Google Ads which is which is great so those are the 12 updates let me just name them from the top once again page feeds re-engagement goals new customer lifecycle goals account level negative keywords campaign level brand exclusion smart bidding Force in-store sales create assets with generative AI integrated recommendations during campaign setup BMX experiments better search some insights conversion if studies improved integration of GMC in Google Ads so that's it guys my final word don't test everything all at once just check what's available in your account and then get curious definitely start testing the first thing that I already tested as soon as it was was available in my accounts was page feeds but I'm also excited for the rest brand exclusions I've also tested that let me just go through the list and see what I've already done account level negative keywords I'm not too excited about campaign level branding Solutions yes page feeds yes I'm excited for the new generative AI tools to see how that works could go a lot of ways could be really bad really trashy but it could also be be really good and promising I'm excited for Google product Studio which
16:56hopefully I will get access to soon as well yeah that's it guys so hopefully this update helps you and and gets you a bit more excited for what's to come with pmax and if you have a question for me to answer during this podcast then please go to bbcmastery.com podcast and I will see if I can answer some of your questions in upcoming episodes so thank you for listening watching if you're on YouTube don't forget to like And subscribe and share and all that good stuff and I'll see you in the next one peace
