Anyone who has ever tried to untangle marketing attribution data will know customer journeys are drawn out, convoluted affairs.

According to Google, this past holiday season, 54% of shoppers used five or more channels, like video and social media, to shop over a two-day period. To help address this, at the end of last year, Google introduced Performance Max campaigns for all advertisers.

Eduardo Indacochea, Sr. Director, Product Management Google, Nov 2021

“Last year, we introduced Performance Max campaigns as a new way to buy Google ads across YouTube, Display, Search, Discover, Gmail and Maps from a single campaign. They complement your keyword-based Search campaigns to help you grow performance across Google’s full range of advertising channels and inventory.”

Further building on this, Google has gone hard at Performance Max and will put all of its eggs in one basket by the end of September.

Smart Shopping and Local campaigns will transition to Performance Max by the third quarter of this year, although Google will let advertisers transition before the deadline.

Big changes to Google Ads

Once the changeover happens, advertisers will not be able to create new Smart Shopping or Local campaigns. Google thinks the transition will be done by September 2022, although you might find it’s done in August.

Those impatient advertisers who want to play with Google’s shiny new toy will be able to do so from April, while those who’d prefer to wait and see will be moved across automatically by August or September.

Smart Shopping campaign users will be able to jump across to Performance Max in April and Local campaigns in June. The tool can be used to transition specific campaigns, or all at once.

What are Performance Max campaigns?

Google says that Performance Max campaigns are pretty much the same as Smart Shopping or Local ones but will allow for greater returns thanks to powerful AI.

Eduardo Indacochea, Sr. Director, Product Management

“Performance Max uses Google’s automation to help advertisers reach shoppers as they browse for things they love — online and in stores. It builds on Smart Shopping and Local campaigns to deliver the same foundational features, while adding brand new inventory and automation insights.”

Performance Max allows brands to grow online, offline and omnichannel sales because it unlocks the whole Google ad inventory from a single campaign. For example, a brand that runs a lot of video ads could now highlight top products on YouTube, increasing exposure to people likely to be interested in your product and a greater return on investment.

A supercharged Google Ad

You can view Performance Max campaigns as a way to complement traditional Google ads. One difference is that Performance Max campaigns allow advertisers to target customers across all Google Ads inventory – instead of just selecting one and running with that.

That means your adverts will be shown to more customers and drive more conversions based on your goals. Performance Max campaigns can also unlock ad inventory that isn’t available anywhere else.

According to Google, Performance Max has sweet as benefits. With a name like that, it would have to be some superstar software otherwise, things could get a little awkward…

Eduardo Indacochea, Sr. Director, Product Management

“Based on early testing, advertisers who upgrade Smart Shopping campaigns to Performance Max see an average increase of 12% in conversion value at the same or better return on ad spend (ROAS).”

Furthermore, advertisers can also:

• Find new customers by unlocking new audience segments.
• Gain richer insights that will feed better decision making.
• Work with automation to optimise segments and target audiences that are more likely to convert.

Upgrade today

There are a couple of options available for advertisers looking to upgrade to Performance Max. They can use the one-click tool to upgrade from April or wait to be upgraded automatically.

If you decide to wait until later in the year, it’s important to take note of the following: for any new campaigns you create, do so in Performance Max. It’s favourable to do so because it’ll give you access to ad inventory already available in Smart Shopping and Local campaigns, plus all the other good stuff such as YouTube, Search text ads and Discover.

An important factor to consider is that Google will use the data you’ve already collected to inform its Performance Max, so you don’t need to worry about insights.

Google is running several learning sessions about Performance Max, so if the above sounds good, but you’re still not sure how it works, get involved.