The Performance Max playbook: Best practices and emerging tactics for 2024

Performance Max is a campaign type offered by ad networks like Google and Microsoft, designed to access a greater visual inventory and serve alongside traditional campaigns. It is known for its ability to promote visual content across various channels, such as YouTube and display networks, and represents transactional intent. Performance Max campaigns can be set up to target different parts of the marketing funnel, depending on the campaign setup and strategies employed.

When structuring Performance Max campaigns, advertisers have to choose between one campaign with multiple asset groups or multiple campaigns with single or multiple asset groups. Each structure has its pros and cons:

• One campaign/multiple asset groups: Suitable for brands with a single major market or offering, allowing for different engagement methods while sharing one budget.

• Multiple campaigns/one asset group: Ideal for dedicating budgets based on ROI potential of different products/services/personas, but requires meeting conversion thresholds.

• Multiple campaigns/multiple asset groups: Best for brands with a large budget and diverse inventory/service areas, allowing for campaign-level settings and grouping of business parts.

AI can be a valuable tool in Performance Max campaigns, especially for generating visual content quickly or when creative resources are limited. Advertisers should consider the following when deciding to use AI:

• Permission: Ensure AI-driven creative is allowed by the brand's legal and stakeholder guidelines.

• Time/Talent Constraints: AI can help overcome these challenges by generating creative faster than human resources.

• Asset Correction: AI can also be used to adjust existing assets from your feed, potentially improving their performance.

However, it's crucial to ensure that any AI-generated or adjusted creative aligns with the brand's messaging and has the necessary approvals.

URL expansion and automated assets are features within Performance Max campaigns that can impact ad creation and targeting:

• URL Expansion: This feature allows Google/Microsoft to create ads based on other relevant pages on your site, similar to Dynamic Search Ads (DSA). It's generally not recommended unless you have a well-prepared exclusion list to prevent unwanted pages from being included in campaigns.

• Automatically Created Assets: These are generated from existing content to fill in missing assets within an asset group. While they can be useful, manually created assets may perform better. If you're not satisfied with auto-created assets, you can turn off this function and review your site's content for improvements.

Deciding whether to borrow spend from existing campaigns or invest more in Performance Max campaigns depends on several factors:

• Borrow Spend: This may be appropriate if existing campaigns are reaching their limits on impression share/market share, or if you want to test shifting budget from broad match keywords to Performance Max for access to visual inventory and multi-funnel content.

• Invest More: Investing additional budget is advisable if borrowing from successful campaigns could harm their performance. Performance Max campaigns require a significant budget to succeed, and additional investment can help test new strategies without affecting existing campaigns' results.