Running Google Performance Max campaigns can feel like a black box. Automation is powerful, but limited control can waste budget on poor placements or low-performing products. In this article, I’ll explain everything you need to know about how to optimize Performance Max campaigns to maximize your ROI.
Quick summary:
- Feeding the algorithm with high-quality data, accurate conversion tracking, and sufficient budget is the absolute foundation of a successful campaign.
- Diversifying your creative assets ensures your ads can seamlessly adapt and appear across all Google networks including Search, YouTube, Discover, and Gmail.
- Leveraging advanced tools like Search Themes and first-party audience lists provides the AI with strict boundaries and strong conversion signals.
- Implementing strategic exclusions for specific products, keywords, and URLs prevents wasteful spending and improves your overall profitability.
1. Dedicate to your campaigns
Committing to your campaign is the first step to Performance Max campaign optimization. Since Performance Max campaigns are fully automated, they rely on data and machine learning to deliver results.
It’s important to allocate a budget of at least $50-100 per day for a minimum of one month. The following table presents Mega Digital’s suggested minimum budget for our clients:
| Campaign Duration | Minimum Daily Budget |
| 1 week | $350 – $700 |
| 2 weeks | $700 – $1,400 |
| 1 month | $1,500 – $3,000 |
| 2 months | $3,000 – $6,000 |
| 3 months | $4,500 – $9,000 |
In fact, Google suggests allowing at least six weeks to give the machine learning algorithm enough time to gather data and accurately assess performance. During this period, the algorithm learns and adapts to optimize targeting, bidding, and ad delivery based on user behavior and conversion patterns.
Tip: Avoid making frequent or major changes during the learning period. Adjusting budget, bidding strategy, targeting, or asset groups too often can reset or prolong learning, leading to unstable performance.
2. Create as many assets as possible
Let’s move on to the second Performance Max campaigns best practice. The more assets you have, the greater the likelihood of your ads being eligible for display across various inventory types. If you’re using a Google Merchant Center feed, there’s no need to upload product images separately. Instead, focus on adding lifestyle or brand creatives that complement the product feed images. Mastering Performance Max image best practices is vital.
However, if you’re specifically running Google Shopping campaigns, you can skip adding any additional assets and solely rely on your feed. In this case, your campaign will deliver Shopping ads along with Display and YouTube ads, but the latter two will still be in the Shopping format.
3. Add at least 1 video asset
According to our experience, one of the most challenging aspects to optimize a Performance Max campaign is not the bidding strategy or audience targeting, but rather the need to provide a sufficient number of assets for this highly creative format. Given that the campaign encompasses various inventory types, it is crucial to supply a variety of text, image, and video assets.
If you have experience with setting up Display campaigns, you may recall that including video assets was optional. However, in Performance Max, it is not. In other words, if you don’t provide any video assets, Google Ads will generate them for you. Although the auto-generated video assets are expected to improve over time, currently they may not meet your expectations.
Video is no longer optional in digital advertising. According to Wyzowl’s 2026 Video Marketing Statistics, 91% of businesses use video as a marketing tool. For Performance Max, Google also recommends uploading your own video assets instead of relying only on auto-generated videos.
For advertisers who lack video assets but still want to use Performance Max, a viable solution is to utilize free tools like Canva to transform your image assets into short animated videos.
4. Optimize asset groups
When creating a Performance Max campaign, you’ll gather all your assets and organize them into asset groups. An asset group consists of various creatives that will be utilized to generate ads tailored to specific channels. It is recommended to categorize asset groups based on a common theme, similar to organizing ad groups.
After constructing the campaign, you have the flexibility to include more asset groups. Arrange them in a manner that aligns with your business needs, such as grouping them by the products or services you provide.
5. Ensure data feed is up to scratch
Another vital way to optimize Performance Max campaign is making sure your feed is up to scratch. For advertisers using the Merchant Center to submit products through a data feed, it is vital to prioritize the inclusion of comprehensive and up-to-date information in the feed. Pay close attention to the following important product identifiers, as they play a significant role in conveying your offerings and optimizing your campaign:
- Brand name
- Manufacturer part number (MPN or SKU)
- UPC code (also known as GTIN)
- Descriptive titles
- Google taxonomy/categorization
- Product type
Your data feed serves as the cornerstone of your Performance Max (PMax) campaign and has the greatest impact on achieving desired outcomes. Ensure that your feed is optimized and contains accurate and relevant details for optimal campaign performance, this is one of the most important best practices for Performance Max.
6. Consider workarounds
Here are a few key points to keep in mind:
- Bidding: Your bidding options in Performance Max campaigns are limited to either maximizing conversions or maximizing conversion value, aligning with the campaign’s focus on driving conversions.
- Location settings: By default, Performance Max campaigns target both “Presence or interest.” If you prefer to exclusively target people in a specific location, switch to “Presence only” in the location settings.
- URL expansion: Performance Max campaigns enable URL expansion by default, resembling Dynamic Ads. This allows Google Ads to direct users to landing pages different from the final URL. If this contradicts your goals, disable this feature or utilize URL exclusions.
Understanding these considerations and employing appropriate workarounds will help you optimize your Performance Max campaign more effectively.
7. Pick the right bidding strategy
Choosing the right bidding strategy is critical when optimizing Performance Max campaigns. The two main options are:
- Maximize conversions: Helps you get as many conversions as possible within your budget.
- Maximize conversion value: Focuses on driving higher-value conversions, such as purchases with greater revenue.
Once your campaign has enough conversion data, you can consider adding guardrails like Target CPA or Target ROAS. Target CPA helps control how much you are willing to pay for each conversion, while Target ROAS helps optimize toward a specific return on ad spend.
According to Google Ads Help, advertisers that switch from a Target CPA to a Target ROAS bid strategy can see 14% more conversion value at a similar return on ad spend.
8. Use the customer acquisition feature
This exclusive feature enables you to decide whether you want to target both new and existing customers or solely focus on acquiring new users.
However, it is important to manage your performance expectations accordingly. A Performance Max campaign that is primarily focused on customer acquisition may not perform as strongly as a campaign that specifically targets bottom-of-the-funnel conversions. This is because it will take more time and possibly more ads to convert new users into customers.
9. Use campaign exclusions
Another way to optimize your Performance Max campaign is implementing campaign exclusions to avoid unnecessary spending and enhance campaign effectiveness.
- Product exclusions: Particularly focusing on items that are unavailable for purchase. According to Mega Digital’s Google Ads industry benchmarks with insider insights ebook, around 17% of products in advertising catalogs fall into this category. Therefore, it is recommended to start by excluding these items from your catalog to streamline your campaign.
It is also logical to exclude certain product variations that are relevant to the same search query, unprofitable or have low profit margins, and products with a low conversion rate. To accomplish this, you can utilize Listing Groups and exclude these products based on factors such as Brand, Product ID, Category, Custom Labels, and more.
Implementing these campaign exclusions not only enhances the effectiveness of your campaign but also reduces the number of products that Google needs to analyze during the learning phase, leading to a faster optimization process.
In addition to product exclusions, it is important to consider:
- Keyword exclusions: By adding negative keywords to Performance Max Campaigns, you can prevent wasteful spending on irrelevant search queries.
- Existing customers: If your goal is to focus solely on acquiring new customers, you have the option to exclude existing customers. During the campaign setup, you can select the checkbox labeled “Only bid for new customers” to ensure that your Performance Max campaign is specifically targeted toward new customer acquisition.
By applying these strategies, PMax campaign optimization is a lot easier.
10. Use assets to expand your ads
Google Ads extensions, are now referred to as assets. In Performance Max campaigns, assets can add extra information to your ads and help users take action more easily across eligible placements.
Focus on these key assets first:
- Sitelinks: Add links to important pages on your website, such as product categories, pricing pages, contact pages, or store information. Google recommends adding at least four sitelinks to make them more likely to show with your ads.
- Callouts: Use short phrases to highlight key selling points, such as “Free Shipping”, “24/7 Support”, “Free Consultation”, or “Fast Delivery”.
- Structured snippets: Use these to show specific product or service categories in a list format, such as “Services: SEO, Google Ads, TikTok Ads” or “Types: Handbags, Tote Bags, Backpacks”.
Depending on your campaign goal, you can also test location, affiliate location, call, lead form, and price assets to support store visits, phone calls, lead generation, or product/service comparison.
11. Optimize audience signals with search themes
If your Performance Max campaign is not reaching the right users, review your audience signals and search themes. In PMax, these are not strict targeting rules; they are inputs that help guide Google AI toward more relevant customers.
- Customer lists: Start with your first-party data, such as past purchasers, email subscribers, or qualified leads. These lists give Google a stronger signal of what your ideal customers look like.
- Search themes: Add words or phrases your customers use when searching for your products or services. According to Google Ads Help, you can add up to 50 search themes per asset group to help Performance Max reach more relevant audiences across Google channels, including Search.
- Website visitors: Build audience signals from high-intent visitors, such as cart abandoners, product page viewers, or users who spent meaningful time on your site.
12. Implement comprehensive conversion tracking
Performance Max heavily relies on automation for both bidding and targeting, similar to previous campaign types like App campaigns, Smart Display, and Local campaigns. Conversion tracking plays a vital role in a Google Ads account, and it becomes even more vital in Performance Max. While e-commerce businesses typically have an easier time with conversion tracking, lead generation businesses often face challenges with lead quality.
From Mega Digita’s point of view, this doesn’t indicate a flaw in the format itself but rather emphasizes the significance of using tools such as enhanced conversions, offline conversion tracking, and CRM integration. These tools can help address the issue and ensure accurate measurement of lead quality in Performance Max campaigns.
13. Create a GA4 exploration segment
Performance Max reporting inside Google Ads can feel limited, but GA4 can help you analyze user behavior more deeply.
Create a custom segment in GA4 Explorations for traffic from the Cross-network channel, which includes Performance Max traffic. Then, review landing pages, engagement, and conversions to see which pages are receiving PMax-attributed sessions.
This helps you spot irrelevant landing pages, weak-performing URLs, or pages that may need to be excluded from Final URL expansion.
14. Keep an eye on URL expansion
Performance Max campaigns combine various Google Ads formats into one comprehensive campaign, encompassing Search, Display, Discovery, Video, Shopping, and Local, with the exception of App campaigns (at least for now). As a result, there are several Performance Max features that draw inspiration from other campaign nuances.
One such feature, which may go unnoticed, is URL expansion, resembling Dynamic Search Ads in Performance Max. By default, URL expansion is enabled in Performance Max campaigns. This means that unless you disable it, the campaign has the ability to direct users to landing pages different from your final URL, similar to a dynamic ad group.
However, there is a notable distinction. In a dynamic ad group, you have the ability to define your ad targets, specifying the specific landing pages where you want the campaign to direct traffic. This can be achieved by listing individual web pages or creating rules like “URL contains product.”
In Performance Max, on the other hand, you can only set exclusions, determining the landing pages that you want to exclude from the campaign’s traffic. Exclusion rules function similarly but require a slight logical shift to set them correctly.
15. Never duplicate GMC feed imagery as separate image assets
When connecting your Google Merchant Center feed to Performance Max, the campaign will automatically use the information from your feed, such as titles, pricing, images, and availability, to create ads, similar to a Shopping campaign.
For this reason, I strongly advise against adding your “e-commerce images” as individual image assets in your Performance Max asset group. These images are already included in the campaign through your feed, so adding them separately would be redundant.
Instead, focus on including lifestyle images that showcase your products or services being used by real people. Google provides helpful recommendations for Discovery assets, such as:
- Minimize or avoid overlaying text on the images.
- Present the images in a realistic context rather than using plain or stock backgrounds.
- Emphasize a single focal point that is centrally framed and occupies about 30% to 40% of the image.
- Incorporate images featuring real people, as they tend to outperform those without human presence.
Mega Digital has presented how to optimize Performance Max campaign in 15 different ways. We hope these Google Performance Max best practices strategies will help you make the best out of your PMax campaigns.
FAQs About Optimizing Performance Max Campaigns
A new Performance Max campaign usually needs 1 – 2 weeks to learn, but it can take up to 6 weeks depending on conversion volume and cycle length. During this period, avoid major changes to your budget, bidding targets, or asset groups to keep performance more stable.
Yes. While product feeds are common for eCommerce campaigns, lead-generation and service-based businesses can also run Performance Max using text, image, video, and audience signals across Google’s channels.
Use brand exclusions at the campaign level. This helps prevent your Performance Max campaign from showing on selected branded searches, reducing overlap with your branded Search campaigns.
No. Audience Signals are suggestions for Google AI, not strict targeting limits. They help PMax understand your ideal customers, but the campaign can still expand beyond those signals if Google predicts a user is likely to convert.
Final words
In conclusion, PMax campaign optimization using the top 15 strategies can unlock their true potential and deliver exceptional results. If you’re looking for professional assistance and expertise in managing your Google Ads account, consider Mega Digital’s Google Advertising service.
With our comprehensive support, you can harness the full power of Performance Max and achieve remarkable success in your advertising efforts.
