Google has announced a major update to Smart Shopping campaigns, transitioning over to an entirely new format, Performance Max, from July 2022.

As with anything digital marketing this will take time and below is a detailed explanation.

Okay Google, Let’s see what’s changing?

Performance Max is a new campaign type that aims to drive maximum performance from Google Ads.

This campaign type will serve on all existing Smart Shopping campaign placements with the addition of YouTube, Text Ads, and Discovery formats. New insights and reporting will be available, including “Audience Signals”, and we’ll also be able to utilise additional tools in order to steer automation.

Audience Signals allow advertisers to influence automation by directly indicating the most relevant audiences to their business with the highest likelihood of conversion. Providing these signals will help speed up the ramp-up period while also steering automation with your own insights.

Conversion Value Rulesallow advertisers to value conversions differently, depending on specific insights (audience, device, geo) in real-time using Smart Bidding.

Why is Smart Shopping becoming Performance Max?

Marketers have to constantly evolve to keep up with the speed of the shifting behaviours if they still want to drive results and captivate users. Performance Max combines multiple touch points within Google’s advertising landscape to ensure that attribution gaps across campaign types are covered.

For example…

A user searches for a product that you offer and clicks on a Shopping ad but doesn’t purchase right there. Later, they are retargeted with an ad on YouTube, and then later searches more specifically for your product to finally convert via a text ad – completing this purchase with multiple touch-points across campaigns. Machine learning via Performance Max will attribute all of these touch-points within the same campaign, leading to a much clearer picture of the customer journey, and using this data to serve your ads across the formats that matter to your business the most.

What are the similarities between Performance Max and Smart Shopping?

Like Smart Shopping, Performance Max is goal-based. Utilising machine learning and automation to achieve business goals is at the core of this new format.

Existing goals set on Smart Shopping will transfer across when Google rolls out its “one-click to convert” feature. Probably this is in place at the time of reading this.

Suppose you target product sets within Smart Shopping at a target return-on-ad-spend (ROAS), historical conversion data will be transferred across, along with targets and active products to serve within this campaign.

How can I prepare for Performance Max campaigns?

1. Maximise results with creative optimisation: ensure that assets are available on your account to include within Performance Max campaigns.
2. Solidify exact-match keyword strategy: Google will still serve ads via Search if a keyword matches a user’s query. Therefore, it’s crucial to map out any queries within your existing Search structure that you would like to continue running via Search specifically.
3. Video assets: Performance Max will ask for video assets to serve through YouTube placements for accounts not currently running YouTube Ads. We would therefore recommend uploading any recent videos to your YouTube channel.

What do the experts think of Performance Max (PMax)?

Not sure bout the name, but the results that Google have quoted for early adoption of their newest campaign type – an average 12% increase in revenue at the same or better return-on-ad-spend. We’re certainly keen to test out this new campaign type across our clients’ accounts as they become available. Remember Test everything.