With the increase in the number of PPC advertisers, search engine Google keeps rolling out new changes in the ad campaign. Some of the updates by Google include responsive ads becoming the default type for expanded text ads, broad match modifiers being incorporated in phrase match, and many others. One new update by Google is the introduction of a performance max campaign. With over 80% of the market share and 95% of mobile traffic, the largest search engine - Google, launched a performance max campaign to improve its advertising strategy using artificial intelligence. From September 2022, the Smart Shopping campaigns created in Google Merchant Center are now automatically upgraded to Performance Max campaigns. Let's focus on the intricacies and nuances of understanding a performance max campaign, how to get started, the benefits of performance max, and the drawbacks of these campaigns.
Why optimize PPC ad campaigns?
The world of digital marketing encompasses multiple online platforms to run ad campaigns like Google Ads, Microsoft Ads, Facebook Ads, LinkedIn Ads, YouTube Ads, etc. Google Ads provides the opportunity to run multiple ad campaigns like search ads, video ads, display ads, text ads, etc. With Google continuously updating its ranking features, PPC advertisers need to be in constant touch with the updates. This blog will discuss how performance max uses its artificial intelligence, smart bidding, etc., to reach the target audience with a high chance of taking the desired action.
What is a performance max campaign?
Google Ads performance max campaign is a new type of goal-based automated ad campaign that uses artificial intelligence to display ads across all Google channels like YouTube, Google Display Network (GDN), Google Discover, search, Gmail, and maps. Using the performance campaigns, the keywords or search terms help to find the users with high chances of getting converted to customers.
Using performance max campaigns helps you drive performance based on specified conversion goals. It helps in delivering more conversions by optimizing real-time performance across channels using smart bidding. With the Google Ads performance max campaign, the search engine(Google) combines its automation technologies across ad budget, budget optimization, audience targeting, attribution reports, bid adjustment, etc. They are all empowered by your specific advertising objectives and the creative assets, audience signals, and optional data feeds you provide. E.g., If you wish to know the return on ad spend (ROAS), cost per acquisition (CPA), etc., all can be known using the performance max campaign.
When running Google PPC ads, there is an advertising goal defined by PPC advertisers in their Google Ads campaign. You can assign more than one goal and different values to conversion to a single campaign to have the best advertising ROI. Performance max campaigns use automated bidding and audience targeting to help you invest your budget more efficiently and drive high-quality traffic to the landing page with high chances of taking the desired action.
How to get started with performance max campaigns?
To get started with Google Ads performance max campaigns, PPC advertising agencies need to define and structure their creatives and then activate them through Google smart bidding based on the objectives they wish to have from running a Google PPC ad campaign. With the launch of the performance max campaign by Google, local and smart shopping campaigns will be upgraded to performance max campaigns. From September 2022, all smart shopping and local campaigns will be upgraded to performance max. However, for advertisers working with third-party partners or running smart shopping campaigns and local campaigns, some features may not be present in Google Performance max campaigns. For these, the automatic upgrades will conclude by early 2023.
When to use performance max campaign?
The biggest question businesses using PPC ads have is - when performance max campaign should be used. The answer to the question is ‘not always’. Performance max is used as a supplement to the pre-existing advertising campaigns i.e. already running. It is a goal-based campaign and is best to be used by advertisers that are targeting specific goals like online sales, lead generation, etc. It is also beneficial for advertisers who do not have any limitations on running ads across Google Display Network. Businesses running ad campaigns with the goals mentioned below can use performance max.
a. Advertisers who do not have time to optimize the ad campaign.
b. Who find it difficult to optimize ad campaigns for specific locations.
c. Do not have much ad budget but want exposure to all Google Ads inventory.
d. Looking to explore new geo markets.
e. Advertisers willing to unlock new unexpected customer segments.
Benefits of using performance max campaign
A. Goal-oriented - In Google PPC advertising, running a Google Ads campaign helps businesses achieve their target audience. The essential benefit of the Google Ad performance max campaign is that it is goal-oriented. Having the benefit of enlisting the details of multiple campaigns like Google Ads search campaigns, video campaigns, display campaigns, etc., in a single campaign, the performance max campaigns are goal oriented.
Having a clearly defined business objective is essential, be it any form of online marketing like pay-per-click advertising, search engine optimization, social media marketing, email marketing, content marketing, etc. At times the goals of businesses change, like when running holiday ads, so a PPC report helps in redefining the goals. It helps to have a road map in deciding the essential PPC metrics, SEO metrics, etc., that need to be pivoted upon.
The performance max Google Ads campaign focuses on asset group that helps the search engine has a clear idea of what goals are essential for business. The performance max Google Ads campaign uses advertising objectives, conversion goals, and audience signals to concentrate on the business's desired goals. With multiple ad campaign details in a single campaign, the performance max artificial intelligence prioritizes the goals that the business defines to be most important.
B. Accelerated results - With the use of Google Ads performance max campaign, the search engine accelerates the process to target the relevant audience. Once the performance max ad campaign is launched, Google uses its smart bidding strategy to decide how much to spend on the ad campaign. It helps the ad campaign to focus on the target audience with a high chance of taking the desired action. So, when the performance campaign focuses on audience segmentation and targets the relevant users, it helps businesses have accelerated results. The artificial intelligence used by Google targets users based on their interests, buying activity, etc. It focuses on the buyer persona and then displays the ad, creating a sense of urgency among users to convert.
It cannot be said that Google ads search campaigns, video ads, display ads, text ads, etc., do not yield results in desired time. With proper ad optimization strategies and preparing a PPC report to determine the ad campaign performance, the PPC metrics and competitive metrics can be optimized to have results in the given time. But, with performance max campaigns, the essential point is that the bid adjustment is automated. Based on this, the results for businesses can be achieved quickly.
C. Audience signals - Another critical benefit of using the performance max ad campaign is audience signal. The audience signal feature in the performance max campaign determines the audience with a high chance of taking the desired action after reaching the landing page. The automated tool used by Google identifies consumers with similar behavior & interests and then displays the ad to them.
Audience segmentation is essential as when the ads are shown to the target audience with similar interests or to users that have a high chance of taking the intended action, the ad budget of the business is not wasted on irrelevant clicks. When running other PPC ad campaigns also, the essential point in PPC ads is the target audience that engages in taking the desired action, as advertisers have to pay for every click on the ad.
D. Simplifies ad campaign management - A performance max campaign combines multiple ad formats in a single ad campaign, like shopping ads, video ads, etc., so it can be identified which ad campaign is performing well. So, using this ad campaign can simplify which campaigns are to be combined.
Like in Google shopping ads, we connect the Google Ads account with Google Merchant Centre so that it is easier to add product details. We also connect Google Merchant Centre with the Google Analytics account to gain insights into these shopping ads. In the same way, using Google performance max simplifies ad campaign management in deciding which ad campaign needs to be selected by businesses in running the ad.
E. Reporting and insights - Just as the user insights in SEO campaigns help optimize the essential SEO metrics to improve the campaign performance, the reporting and insights from the Google Ads performance max campaign help optimize the ad campaign. After running the performance max campaign, the essential point is to gain insights from the campaign that helps enhance the campaign's performance. As we perform PPC audit and SEO audit to determine the success of the campaign, in the same way, we need to gain insight from the performance max campaign. Some of the essential insights that can be concentrated upon after a PPC report of the performance max campaign are enumerated below.
a. Performance trends - With different businesses having advertising goals, different ads may perform differently. So, it becomes essential to monitor the performance trend weekly or monthly. This helps to know the ad campaign's performance, week-over-week or month-over-month data. If you find working on a plan & strategy after analyzing the performance trend is a challenging task, you can outsource PPC ads services to a white label digital marketing agency. The PPC experts would help in campaign analysis, perform remarketing, etc., that works best for the business.
b. Ad budget - It is essential to see where your ad budget is getting spent. If the return on investment for the ad campaign meets the advertising goals, then the ad performs well. However, to generate leads, build brand awareness, increase traffic, etc., if the ad budget is not as per the business goals, it needs to be optimized. Like in e-commerce PPC ads, there are times when the bid amount is high to gain leads, but once the brand becomes popular, users' trust in the brand increases. It increases the user's trust in the business, so they have second thoughts in clicking on the ad when it pops up for the product or services the user is looking for. To make the user get to stay in touch with the business in the long run, it is essential for businesses to work on customer acquisition strategy.
c. Device segmentation - When running shopping ads, video ads, etc., it becomes vital to determine which device brings better results. The ad's performance may be different on different devices like computers, mobile phones, and tablets. Like conversion rate on a mobile device may be higher than on a tablet, so it becomes vital to optimize page speed for mobile websites. Like it is vital to have mobile-first indexing of your website done, similarly optimizing ads for devices is essential so that the page loads in the defined time so that the user reaches the landing page to take the desired action.
d. Landing page performance - With the reports from the performance max ad campaign, you can know the landing page's performance. This helps to know what time users spend on the page, which sections they navigate on the webpage, the bounce rate of the page, etc. The necessary steps to optimize the page performance can then be taken.
Drawbacks of performance max campaign
a. Less control on bidding - One of the drawbacks of using the Google Ads performance max campaign is that you have less control over bidding. As bidding in the performance max campaign is automated, so it takes away control from advertisers in some respect. Not all advertisers like automated bidding and want to focus on manual bidding. It helps them have control over keyword bidding as they select the keywords on their own. After conducting keyword research, they decide whether to use long-tail keywords, write ad copy, organize ad groups, etc. The advertisers also have an eye to the point that if the ad campaign performance is well, they may spend a bit high on users if they have potential chances of taking the desired action. So, less bidding control may have many advertisers not choosing performance max.
b. Quality of ads - Another essential point to focus on in PPC ad campaigns is the quality of ads. With Google Ads automated feature, there is no guarantee that your ad campaign is fully optimized in relation to the competitor ads. This may lead to ad quality not being up to the mark as desired. It may impact the ad negatively with the point that all the bidding work by Google is done well, but due to inferior ad quality, the user did not click on the ad. However, when the ad creation work is done manually, there are many essential pointers considered, some of which are mentioned below:
● Conducting keyword research to determine the search terms necessary for the ad campaign.
● Focus on competiton analysis.
● Writing great content to be used in the ad copy.
● Using ad extensions that lure the users into making click on the ad. There is also a focus on the point that the ad is relevant to the content on landing, so visitors move down the marketing funnel.
Wrap up
With the launch of the Google Ads performance max campaign, multiple Google Ad formats can be combined into a single campaign. To maximize the results from this Google Ad campaign type, you need to provide high-quality and optimized data to Google to start with. This lets the search engine identify the core essentials that you want to focus on in your ad campaign. Once the details are added, Google performance max automatically (using its artificial intelligence) works on bid strategy, ad scheduling, etc., to display the ads to the target audience.
However, running this ad campaign may yield good results for some businesses, while others may seek the opportunity to set ad parameters on their own, depending on the business goals. To drive the best results with PPC advertising and maximize every cent spent on the ads, you can get in touch with a white label digital marketing agency and outsource PPC ads services. The PPC professionals at the outsourced PPC agency have years of experience in handling ad campaigns and would provide the best PPC management services. Outsource PPC ads service to have 24/7 professional assistance and skyrocket your business ROI.
References:
● Google Ads Performance Max: 10 Dos, Don’ts, Watchouts & Workarounds
● Everything We Know About Google’s Performance Max Campaigns