What Google Ads Performance Max Campaigns Are, and Why We’re Switching to Them
Digital marketing changes fast, and staying ahead of those changes is necessary if you want to keep reaching the right people at the right time. Over the past year, Google has implemented some major changes to its campaign types, and one of the biggest changes has been the rise of Performance Max campaigns.
After a long period of evaluation and testing, we’ve begun to transition many of our clients’ campaigns to Performance Max, and recommend it more to our clients. This isn’t because it’s the newest option, but because it’s consistently delivering better results for our clients than traditional search campaigns.
In this post, we’ll explain what Performance Max campaigns are, how they work, and why they’re quickly becoming our go-to.
What Is A Performance Max Campaign?
Performance Max campaigns, also called “Pmax” campaigns, are Google’s newest ad campaign type. Fundamentally, Pmax campaigns help advertisers by reaching a larger audience across Google’s entire advertising network. Performance Max campaigns are also more outbound than other Google Ads campaign types. Rather than wait for potential viewers to search specific keywords, in Performance Max campaigns you give Google data about your ideal prospect, and Google’s algorithm actively goes out to serve ads to that audience.
At their core, Performance Max campaigns rely on the advertiser setting specific goals and giving Google specific audience data so that Google’s AI can find the right audience. Whether the campaign’s goal is leads, sales, or specific actions, the campaign automatically adjusts bids, targeting, and placements in order to improve performance. While you still control the strategy of the campaign, the nitty-gritty technical optimization is handled by Google’s machine learning.
One of the biggest selling points of Performance Max campaigns is that they serve ads across every major Google channel. That includes:
Google Search
YouTube (both banner and video ads)
Gmail
Discover
Google Maps
By advertising on all of these channels, Performance Max campaigns can constantly serve ads to a relevant audience no matter where they are in Google’s ecosystem, meaning you won't stop advertising to them, for example, when they click off of Google search.
How Do Performance Max Campaigns Work?
While Performance Max campaigns use complicated machine learning algorithms to serve ads to the best audience, the way the work is actually rather simple. You provide the campaign’s goals, data about your ideal audience, and creative assets, and Google’s AI takes over the heavy lifting.
Unlike traditional search campaigns, you do not target specific keywords in a Performance Max campaign. Instead, you create “asset groups.” These are groups of “assets” (headlines, videos, images, descriptions, etc) combined with audience signals. Google automatically creates combinations of these assets and adapts them for different placements. Someone searching on Google would see a text ad variation, while someone on YouTube could see a video ad from the same asset group.
Audience signals in Performance Max are best understood as suggestions rather than strict targeting rules. You give Google data on who your ideal customers are, including things such as:
Browsing history
Detailed demographic data
Interests
Hobbies
Search intent
Google uses that information as a ground to build on. From there, Google’s AI goes outwards, finding new audiences who are likely to convert even if they don’t exactly fit the original criteria.
Because Performance Max campaigns rely heavily on the data you give to Google, having strong conversion tracking is necessary in addition to strong audience signals. Performance Max campaigns automatically optimize for high-converting traffic, and so the more complete your conversion action is, the better. “Hard” conversion actions, like form submissions, appointment bookings, and phone calls, are necessary so that the campaign can deliver the strongest results possible.
Why We Like Performance Max Campaigns
After months of testing and running Performance Max campaigns alongside traditional Google Ads search campaigns, we’ve seen consistent improvements in effectiveness, lead volume, and ROI from Pmax.
Particularly for lead-generation campaigns, Performance Max works very well at identifying high-converting users, even if they haven’t directly searched for the service you’re advertising. By analyzing behavioral patterns and using the audience signals given to it, Google’s AI can actively go out and advertise to high-converting audiences that manual search campaigns usually can’t. When paired with strong audience signals and good conversion tracking, this can lead to an increase in both lead volume and quality.
Early versions of Performance Max campaigns lacked transparency. It used to be the case that setting up one of these campaigns felt like throwing things into a pit and seeing what happens. Luckily, this is no longer the case. In the past year, Google has introduced new insights that give us much clearer visibility into how Performance Max campaigns operate and what they’re achieving. These updates now allow us to:
See which search terms our ads are appearing for
Add negative keywords directly to a Performance Max campaign
View which platforms and placements our ads are running on
Identify which creative assets are performing best
Understand how our budget is being allocated across Google’s channels
The Future of Performance Max Campaigns
Performance Max has become a much stronger and more transparent campaign type than it was when it first launched. Our experience shows that it consistently delivers better results and gives advertisers more useful insights than many people expect. As Google continues to improve the campaign type with clearer reporting and better controls, Performance Max is proving to be an important part of a modern Google Ads strategy, especially for businesses that depend on lead generation.
Because of these improvements, we feel confident recommending Performance Max as a component of our clients’ marketing efforts.
If you would like to explore how Performance Max could strengthen your advertising or if you want us to review your current setup, feel free to reach out and schedule a free strategy review with us!
About the Author
Sam D’Andrea, Google Ads Account Manager
Sam D’Andrea is a digital marketing strategist at RevKey, specializing in Google Ads, paid media optimization, and data-driven growth strategies. With hands-on experience managing and testing evolving campaign types—like Performance Max—Sam focuses on helping businesses generate higher-quality leads through smart automation, strong audience signals, and accurate conversion tracking. At RevKey, Sam works closely with clients to translate Google’s constant platform changes into clear, effective advertising strategies that drive real results.
