November 2021, most advertisers are once again surprised and somewhat startled by an announcement from Google. The Performance Max Campaign (PMC) was finally launched after a short beta period. After the many automations that Google has made in recent years - think Dynamic Search Ads (2011), Smart Bidding (2016), search answer types that started behaving differently (2017), Responsive Search Ads (2018), Smart Shopping (2018), the search term report that was cut by about half (2020) and the disappearance of our beloved Broad Match Modifiers (2021) - it is now time for the merging of the DSA and Smart Shopping.

Finally, the list is long and will only get longer.

''Give me your search, display, gmail, discovery, maps, and video network''
The latest showpiece from Google's quiver - the PMC - or the terminator among campaign types is now a reality. As the name suggests, the PMC is a performance-based campaign type that looks beyond 1 network in terms of placements, as long as it can achieve the desired performance (Target Cost Per Acquisition/Target Return On Ad Spend). So you build one sophisticated super campaign to serve them all: the search, display, Gmail, discovery, maps and the YouTube network. The future is here!

Adding the search network in particular is a big change from similar updates. So with the rollout of the PMC, after launching Dynamic Search Ads, Google is taking the next step towards automating search campaigns. However, Google promises that the PMC will generate more revenue and leads against lower costs.

The end of the SEA specialist?
Marketers have increasingly seen work being automated by Google in recent years. The PMC feels a bit like a stab in the dark, especially now that search campaigns are also being taken in hand. Once again, advertisers will have less control over their placements and bids. By the way, Google has already announced that the PMC will take over Smart Shopping ads completely, so rest in peace Smart Shopping....

How does it work?
What is good to know beforehand is the fact that Google often prioritises PMC in the auction over other campaigns. Should you build the PMC in your regular search account, in most cases Google will prioritise the PMC if multiple campaigns are eligible to serve an ad. In a few cases, Ad Rank still plays a role, but in the majority of cases, the PMC will be the laughing third party.

Only in the case of a search campaign with exact search answer types will Google prioritise your regular search ads. So it always overrules in the auction your broad search, regular shopping, Smart Shopping and your (remarketing) display ads. For search, this affects your branded terms, among other things. Should these be broadly included - with or without a modifier - you can assume that your impressions and clicks on these kinds of terms will go to your PMC from now on.

Objective
Choose a campaign-specific objective. Unlike Smart Shopping, with a PMC the product feed is not mandatory and you therefore have the freedom to optimise on various objectives (leads, sales, store visits, etc.) and can therefore build multiple Performance Max Campaigns. Next, choose your preferred bidding strategy.

Target area
Choose the desired target area, language and possibly exclude certain URLs, or instead choose automated expansion of URLs.

Make a difference with your assets
Since placements go across all possible Google networks, the key is to provide the right creatives, namely:

• Maximum 15 images
• Up to 5 logos
• Up to 5 YouTube videos
• Maximum of 5 short heads
• Up to 5 long heads
• 5 lines of description
• A (dynamic) CTA

Target signal
To give Google's algorithm a push in the right direction, you can create audience signals in the PMC. Here, you can choose remarketing lists, inmarket segments, custom segments and demographic segments, among others, which is somewhat similar to the observation target groups in your search campaigns.

Extensions
Support your ads with some more extensions and you are ready to go.

Happy selling! Or is it?

Optimisations
So you can't determine a lot yourself when creating the PMC. For instance, you cannot exclude keywords, you cannot manually set your bids and you cannot exclude certain audiences. So you have virtually no control over your CPC and audience segments that see your ads.

Fortunately, there is still some tweaking to do such as:

• Monitoring and improving your assets. Google gives your assets a score, improve them until they are ''excellent''
• Exclude URLs
• Providing the algorithm with insights from data such as inmarkets, remarketing lists, or combined segments
• Splitting PMCs by objective, but also, for example, by brand and/or category and product level
• Optimising your product feed
• Optimising landing pages through a/b testing

All well and good, but does it deliver?
For one of our clients, a retailer of cleaning supplies, we put the PMC live at the end of December. Charts below show data from January to 21 March.

For this retailer, the PMC outperformed the other campaigns in almost all areas. Only in terms of conversion rate was it slightly behind regular shopping and generic search. Because of the low CPC, it still scored significantly better in terms of ROAS.

For another client where the focus is on lead generation, we put the PMC live in mid-January. Here the comparison with generic search terms in another campaign.

Here we actually see a bit the same as with the previous client's results. A lower conversion rate, but because of the lower CPC, the cost per lead is ultimately lower in favour of the PMC. We are currently testing the PMC at several clients and as we have more data from them, we will come up with another update on the results.

Conclusion
As described earlier, this new campaign type from Google feels a bit like a bitter pill for marketers. Especially for advertisers who are still rigidly holding on to their SKAGs. The rollout of the PMC is yet another clear indication of the direction Google is heading and will also increasingly automate targeting. One wonders by now if Google is not slowly phasing out the marketer. Look at it from the positive side; for agencies, automating probably means that you will eventually be able to serve more customers and advertisers on the client side will keep more time for their other performance channels. On the other hand, it also means you can make a difference with your creatives and data analytics on your website.

Despite the fact that the results seem very good at first glance, we are still somewhat sceptical. Especially since we are not yet 100% sure how much of the traffic and conversions come from branded and remarketing traffic.

At the same time, we are also very appreciative of it. In the end, only the end result counts and, especially for clients, only the CPA or ROAS counts. If you look purely at those KPIs, in the above cases, the PMC is a success story! At Alona Marketing, we therefore keep PMCs running nicely alongside all our other campaign types, but will also keep testing.

For now, we say: To Performance Max!

Author: Jan Bouman