Performance Max Campaigns

Performance Max campaigns allow you to access all available publisher inventory from a single campaign. This campaign type is designed to complement keyword-based Search campaigns to help you find more converting customers across all publisher channels. 

Benefits Of Performance Max 

Performance Max campaigns are designed to be the ultimate automated campaign type, allowing you to input your goals and let the publishers do all the hard work through automation. Additionally, you can:

  • Choose which goals each campaign should optimize toward.
  • Access all publisher channels from a single campaign type.
  • Use publisher automation capabilities across bidding, budget optimization, audiences, creatives, attribution, and more. 
  • Use advertising objectives, conversion goals, and audience signals to ensure your ads reach the right audiences a the right time.

How To

Currently, Performance Max campaigns cannot be built in Marin; they will need to be built in the publishers. Marin supports syncing, reporting and basic editing of Google and Microsoft Performance Max campaigns.

To build a Performance Max campaign, you'll need to follow the high-level steps below. 

  1. Create a new campaign and choose your goal. 
  2. Set your budget and bidding.
  3. Add your location and languages.
  4. Build your asset group.
  5. Add audience signals.
  6. Add ad extensions.
  7. Publish your campaign.

Asset Groups 

An asset group is a set of creatives that can be used to create an ad that is specific to the channel it's being served on. Your asset groups might include images, videos, headlines, descriptions, logos, and audience signals, all of which the publishers can mix and match in various combinations and use across its network, selecting the best assets for each channel. 

Performance Max campaigns are built using asset groups, which the publishers will then assemble into all applicable ad formats to reach your goal. The more assets you provide, the more ad formats publishers can create and the more often your ad can appear. 

Listing Groups

Listing groups are essentially the product groups of Performance Max campaigns, allowing you to organize your listings by the attributes assigned to them in the Merchant Center. Listing groups are part of a campaign's asset group. 

You can differentiate Listing Groups from traditional, non-Performance Max Product Groups using the Product Group Type column. This will say LISTING_GROUP for Performance Max Listing Groups.

Audience Signals 

Audience signals allow you to guide the publisher's automated targeting to ensure your ads are being shown to the audiences with the strongest likelihood of converting. Using audience signals is optional, but it can help guide machine-learning models on the best way to optimize your campaign. 

For example, if you're selling shoes online, you might add shoe deliveryshoe online, and shoe fanatics as signals to help guide publisher's automation. Performance Max campaigns may also show ads to relevant audiences outside your signals if they have a strong likelihood to convert. 

Automation 

Once you've built your asset group and added audience signals, Performance Max campaigns will use automation to help you grow your business across channels. Automation is used across your bidding, budget optimization, audiences, creatives, attribution, and more, in order to find more customers and serve the most relevant ad. 

Marin Support 

  • At the campaign level, Marin offers support for:
    • Syncing (nightly) cost and conversion data
    • Reporting
    • Third-party revenue attribution, including Marin Tracker, using campaignid
    • Editing of status, budget, and Smart Bidding Targets
  • At the Asset Group level, Marin offers support for:
    • Syncing, via the Groups tab
    • Note: Performance metrics cannot yet be retrieved from the publisher APIs (publisher limitation)
  • At the Listing Group level, Marin offers support for:
    • Syncing, via the Groups tab
    • Reporting of cost data, visible from the Groups & Targets tab
    • Reporting of publisher revenue data
  • At the SKU level, Marin offers support for: 
    • Syncing, via the Product tab
    • Third-party revenue attribution, including Marin Tracker, using campaignid
  • Additional support: 
    • Editing of budget, status, final URL suffix, tracking template, custom parameters, and Smart Bidding ROAS/CPA target
    • Products for Performance Max Shopping campaigns.

In a future update, we will introduce support for Audience Signals. Further updates will include support for sitelinks, callout extensions, and call extensions.

Given the way Performance Max campaigns are designed for use with automation, Smart Bidding is obligatory; Performance Max campaigns are therefore incompatible with Marin Bidding by design.

Note: If you are not seeing cost data or publisher conversion data associated with your Performance Max campaigns, please reach out to a platform representative.

Written by Rosanna Chea

Last published at: October 24th, 2024