The majority of Smart Shopping campaigns were upgraded in 2022. Remaining Smart Shopping campaigns will continue to be upgraded to Performance Max in 2023. With Performance Max, you get the same foundational features of Smart Shopping campaigns, in addition to new inventory and insights powered by Google AI, all from a single campaign. This article covers important details about the upgrade, including benefits of Performance Max and answers to frequently asked questions (FAQs).
Benefits of Performance Max campaigns
- Goals-based campaign type maximizes your marketing objectives across all Google Ads inventory: Include your business goals as the primary target for Performance Max, and let Google AI find your customers wherever they are across Google properties.
- Serve on additional Google Ads inventory: Performance Max ads are eligible to serve on YouTube, Display, Search, Discover, Gmail, and Maps.
- Optimized for stronger performance: Performance Max is powered by Google AI to help deliver optimized performance based on your business expertise and goals.
- Unlock time to focus on strategic performance drivers: Simplified campaign management and optimized performance using Google AI will help save you time, so you can focus on more strategic and impactful optimizations for your business.
- More robust reporting: The Insights report provides the audience and other insights not currently available in Smart Shopping reports.
- Equivalent features as Smart Shopping campaigns: Performance Max has equivalent features as Smart Shopping campaigns, plus additional functionality and inventory.
Upgrade details
Upgrade timeline
You’ll be able to upgrade your Smart Shopping campaigns using our self-upgrade tool in Google Ads through June 2023. You’ll be notified in Google Ads once the upgrade tool becomes available to you.
If you choose not to upgrade early, your Smart Shopping campaigns will be automatically upgraded starting September 2023. After your campaigns are automatically upgraded, you’ll no longer be able to create new Smart Shopping campaigns.
Your campaign settings, such as goals, budget, bid strategy, creative assets, and product targeting, will automatically transfer to Performance Max. You’ll also be able to add audience signals to speed up the Google AI optimization process.
After the upgrade, we recommend adding additional creative assets, such as text, images, and videos, to your Performance Max campaign to enable serving on additional inventory.
What happens after the upgrade to Performance Max
After you upgrade to Performance Max, your Smart Shopping campaigns will be automatically changed to “Removed” status. You won’t be able to edit, reactivate, or copy your Smart Shopping campaigns, but you’ll still have access to the historical data for your Smart Shopping campaigns in your Google Ads account.
Self-upgrade
How to upgrade your Smart Shopping campaigns to Performance Max
Google Ads Tutorials: How to upgrade your Smart Shopping and Local campaigns to Performance Max
You can upgrade your Smart Shopping campaigns to Performance Max directly from the “Campaigns” page, from the “Recommendations” page, or in one click from a notification in your account.
Upgrade from the “Campaigns” pageTo upgrade a single campaign, multiple campaigns, or all campaigns in bulk, follow these steps.
- In your Google Ads account, click the Campaigns icon
.
- Click the Campaigns drop down in the section menu.
- Click Campaigns.
- Click the filter icon
, then select Attributes.
- Select Campaign type, then select Shopping + Campaign subtype: Smart.
- Click Apply.
- Click the checkbox
next to each campaign you want to upgrade, or select the checkbox above the “Campaigns” table to select all campaigns.
- Click Edit in the dropdown above the “Campaigns” table.
- Select Upgrade to Performance Max.
- Click Apply.
, then select Attributes.To upgrade a single campaign, follow these steps.
- In your Google Ads account, click the Campaigns icon
- Click the Campaigns drop down in the section menu.
- Click Campaigns.
- Click the filter icon
- Select Campaign type, then select Shopping + Campaign subtype: Smart.
- Click Apply.
- Under “Campaign type”, roll over “Upgrade available”.
- In the “Upgrade available” popup, click Apply.
- In the next “Upgrade available” popup, click Upgrade to Performance Max.
To upgrade a single campaign, multiple campaigns, or all campaigns in bulk, follow these steps.
- In your Google Ads account, click the Campaigns icon
- Click Recommendations.
- Click Apply all in the “Upgrade to Performance Max” recommendation to upgrade all campaigns in one click, or click View Recommendations and click the checkbox
- In the confirmation modal, click Apply all to confirm.
To upgrade all campaigns in one click, follow these steps.
- In your Google Ads account, click on the notifications icon
in the top-right corner.
- Click on the “Upgrade campaigns” notification.
- In the notification, click Apply.
- In the confirmation modal, click Apply all to confirm.
Make sure that your campaigns are eligible for an upgrade
Certain Smart Shopping campaigns may not be eligible for self-upgrade due to features or settings which aren't compatible with Performance Max campaigns. Below is a list of features and settings which may prevent a Smart Shopping campaign from being eligible for upgrade:
Failure to make these changes before September will cause your Smart Shopping campaigns to have their statuses automatically changed to “Removed”. You won't be able to edit, reactivate, or copy your Smart Shopping campaigns, but you will still have access to the historical data for your Smart Shopping campaigns in your Google Ads account.
FAQs
Smart Shopping campaigns will be upgraded to Performance Max campaigns in 2023. Because certain features available in Smart Shopping campaigns won't be compatible with Performance Max campaigns in 2023, some Smart Shopping campaigns may not be eligible for a self-upgrade or automatic upgrade. Advertisers are encouraged to take action and ensure that their campaigns don't have features or settings which prevent them from being eligible for an upgrade.
You’ll be able to upgrade your Smart Shopping campaigns to Performance Max through June 2023. Starting September 2023, your Smart Shopping campaigns will be automatically upgraded for you.
You’ll no longer be able to create new Smart Shopping campaigns after your existing campaigns are automatically upgraded. The features activated in your Smart Shopping campaign will determine your eligibility to upgrade. If you’re unable to upgrade, no action is needed, and you’ll be notified when upgrade options are available.
After you upgrade to Performance Max, your previous Smart Shopping campaigns will be set to “Removed” status and you won’t be able to edit or reactivate these campaigns. However, you can still access your campaigns’ historical data by hovering over the upgraded status of your upgraded Performance Max campaign, by filtering for "Removed" status in the campaigns page of Google Ads, or by clicking View Smart Shopping campaign from your upgraded Performance Max campaign's "Overview" page in the info bar at the top.
You can check the eligibility and progress of your upgrade from the “Campaign type” column on the “Campaigns” page. You’ll notice one of 4 different message types for each of your Smart Shopping campaigns:
- Upgrade available: The upgrade to Performance Max hasn’t yet started. This is informing you of the option to upgrade.
- Upgrading to Performance Max: Your campaign is being upgraded to Performance Max and will continue running until the upgrade is complete. Edits to your original campaign won't be reflected in your newly created Performance Max campaign. You’ll be notified when the upgrade is complete.
- Upgraded to Performance Max: Your campaign was upgraded to Performance Max. To edit or manage it, go to the Performance Max campaign.
- Upgrade failed: If the upgrade to Performance Max is initially unsuccessful, you’ll be shown a failed message. No action is required on your part, and you’ll be notified once the upgrade is successful.
After the upgrade is complete, you’ll notice a new Performance Max campaign in your account, which will have a status of “Upgraded”. If you hover over the status, you’ll have the option to be taken back to the original upgraded Smart Shopping campaign.
Yes, you can upgrade multiple campaigns at the same time. To do so, select the checkbox next to each eligible Smart Shopping campaign and click the Edit dropdown in the bar above the table. Select Upgrade to Performance Max and then Confirm.
Similar to other bulk edit functionality, if you select campaigns that aren't eligible for upgrade to Performance Max, only those that are eligible will be upgraded. A message might show saying "None of your selected campaigns are eligible for upgrade at this point."
|
Setting |
Smart Shopping campaigns | Performance Max |
| Conversion goals | ||
| Campaign type | Smart Shopping | Performance Max |
| Google Merchant Center | ||
| Google My Business | N/A | |
| Locations | N/A | |
| Feeds | N/A | |
| Country of sale | ||
| Campaign name |
|
|
| Local products (on/off) |
|
|
| Regional availability and pricing, Show products across multiple countries | ||
| Budget | ||
| Bid strategy |
|
|
| Geo targeting | ||
| Languages | N/A |
|
| Ad schedule | ||
| Start date, End date |
|
|
| Ad destination (final URL) | ||
| Final URL expansion | N/A |
|
| Campaign URL options | N/A | |
|
Asset group name |
N/A | |
| Product groups |
|
|
| Ad group | Ad group:
|
Asset group:*
*In order for Performance Max to serve maximally across channels, it’s recommended that Smart Shopping campaign advertisers add the assets listed above to their Smart Shopping campaigns before initiating the upgrade to Performance Max. Assets can also be added after the upgrade. |
| Audience signals | N/A |
|
| Assets | ||
| Seasonality adjustments and Data Exclusions |
|
Performance Max campaigns should perform similarly or better than your Smart Shopping campaigns. We recommend waiting 1-2 weeks to judge the performance of your new Performance Max campaign. Actual performance time will depend on many factors, such as whether you have other campaign history in your account, what your conversion goal action is, and how many conversions you can get with your daily budget.
- Asset groups
- Audience signals
- Expanded inventory for retail advertisers
- Expanded set of goals and new bidding features
- Final URL expansion
- Insights report
In the table below, you’ll find the additional reach and new features that Performance Max provides.
| Campaign type being upgraded | Additional reach with Performance Max | New features with Performance Max |
| Smart Shopping campaigns | YouTube In-Stream, Text (via DSA), Discover Feed |
Goals:
Bidding:
Reporting and insights:
|
- On Search, for campaigns eligible for the same auctions, Performance Max will be selected based on Ad Rank.
- A Search campaign with a keyword that exactly matches or is spell-corrected to the user query will be preferred over Performance Max. For example, if the search term is "plumbrs" and your account includes the exact match keyword [plumbers] and the broad match keyword plumbrs, then the exact match keyword is preferred. If there are no keywords that exactly match the user query across keyword match types, the campaign with the higher Ad Rank will serve. Learn more About similar keywords in a Google Ads account.
- Performance Max doesn’t cover Hotel campaign inventory (Hotel ads and property promotion ads).
- Performance Max doesn’t support App installs as a goal, so we recommend that you continue to run App campaigns for install.
- Performance Max will be prioritized over Smart Shopping campaigns, standard Shopping campaigns, and Display campaigns with a Merchant Center feed in your account if they’re targeting the same product inventory. Learn more about Performance Max.
No assets are required to launch a retail Performance Max campaign, as long as you add your Google Merchant Center account. However, additional creative assets will allow your campaign to serve on all available Performance Max inventory and improve your campaign’s performance. Therefore, we recommend adding creatives to your Performance Max asset groups once your Smart Shopping campaign upgrade is completed.
Some assets, such as video, may be generated automatically if you don’t provide them in your Performance Max campaign.
When creating a Performance Max campaign, you can specify or exclude locations based on country, city/state, and other geo settings like radius distance around a ZIP code. A new setting is coming to Performance Max settings (after a campaign is set up) to indicate whether you want to target users who are located in a specific geo ("Presence") or also those who have expressed interest in it ("Presence or Interest").
Customers with a Google Merchant Center attached to their campaign will also be able to exclude targeting users based on "Presence" or "Presence or Interest" to achieve parity with what was available for Smart Shopping campaigns.
