With Performance Max, you can create a single campaign that gives you all the basic features that you already have with DSA. Performance Max also allows you to promote your products or services across all of Google's ad channels and inventory.

This article covers important details about how to self-upgrade your DSAs to Performance Max, and answers to frequently asked questions (FAQs).

Benefits of upgrading DSA campaigns to Performance Max campaigns

• Performance: Advertisers who upgrade DSA campaigns to Performance Max see an average increase of over 21% in conversions or conversion value at a similar cost per action (CPA) or return on ad spend (ROAS)(Source: Google Data, Global, Ads, September 2023 - November 2023) .
• Additional coverage across Google Ads channels and inventory: In addition to Search, which DSA already runs on, Performance Max campaigns also run on YouTube, Display, Discover, Gmail, and Maps to help you drive more conversions. See how you can drive better performance by switching from single-channel campaign optimization to cross-channel optimization.
• Google AI technology: Search keywordless AI technology, plus Google AI innovations for bidding and creative automation help you optimize your budget across channels in real time and quickly adapt to fast-changing consumer trends.
• Robust insights: Performance Max provides insights that show where your campaign is helping you find new and valuable search categories and terms. Learn more about Understanding Performance Max results with the Insights page.
• New features: Performance Max includes new features, such as inventory-aware serving, which improves performance by excluding landing pages from your website while a product is out of stock, taking the work out of managing those URL exclusions manually. Performance Max also uses automatically created assets to help you create more relevant text ads that better match a user’s intent, and offers more control by allowing you to soon view and remove any headlines and descriptions you don't want to serve.

How the self-upgrade works

Eligible advertisers will get a notification in their Google Ads accounts when they have the option to self-upgrade from the Recommendations page. You’ll need to set up a new Performance Max campaign for each DSA campaign that you want to upgrade.

The original DSA campaign remains and historical data can be accessed in the “Campaigns” table and by finding your original DSA campaign. A new Performance Max campaign takes up to one week to fully ramp up.

To ensure a more complete picture of performance, also consider conversion lags or delays when you’re assessing results. Where possible, Google learns from your original DSA campaign to help maximize performance from the first day your new Performance Max campaign is active.

The following criteria determine whether a DSA campaign is eligible to upgrade and the features that will and will not be carried over to the new Performance Max campaign:

• In order to be eligible for the upgrade, a campaign must have:
  • Up to 100 enabled ad groups
  • Campaigns with Smart Bidding enabled
  • DSA ad groups in a Search campaign that does not contain keywords
  • Enabled DSA creative
  • Campaign without a running trial

• You’ll also find that some settings that were a part of your DSA campaign will look identical in your Performance Max campaign, including:
  • Budget
  • Bid target
  • Geo-targeting settings
  • Language settings
  • Page feed exclusions
  • Account-level negative keywords

• Some features and settings from your DSA campaign will be carried over in a slightly different way to your new Performance Max campaign, such as:
  • Audience signals
  • URL rules (page feeds will automatically be created)
  • Bid strategy (may be slightly different depending on multiple factors outlined below)
  • The Insights page, in place of the Search Term Report, offers reporting for Performance Max including Search term insights and more.
• You’ll find new functions in your upgraded Performance Max campaign:
  • More assets
  • Brand exclusions (optional)
  • Inventory-aware Serving
• Some features from your DSA campaign will not be supported in your upgraded Performance Max campaign:
  • Campaign-level negative keywords (Learn How to use brand suitability features in Performance Max)
  • Some DSA negative targeting (for example, page title contains, page content contains)
  • Asset group tracking templates (Performance Max supports campaign level tracking)

Instructions to self-upgrade DSA to Performance Max campaign

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You can self-upgrade your DSA to Performance Max campaign directly in 2 ways.

• From a notification in your Google Ads account
• From the Recommendations page