Performance Max for Marketplaces campaigns can help you reach more customers and send more traffic directly to the products that you sell on a marketplace. The Performance Max for Marketplaces campaigns use product data from the marketplace so that your products are included. When customers click on your ads, they’ll be sent to your product page on the marketplace to purchase your products. You don’t need a separate website or Google Merchant Center account.
Performance Max is powered by Google AI to generate campaign settings that help you get more value from your advertising. As you create your campaign, you may receive notifications about issues that could affect performance. Use the campaign construction navigation menu to review and resolve these issues. Learn more about how to set up your campaign for success.
On this page
- Creating your campaign and choosing a goal
- Setting your budget, bidding and customer acquisition preferences
- Finalising your campaign settings
- Building your asset group (optional)
- Reviewing and publishing your campaign
Before you begin
Make sure that your Google Ads account is linked to the marketplace.
Instructions
Step 1 of 6: Creating your campaign and choosing a goal
- In your Google Ads account, click the plus button
and select New campaign.
- Select Sales as the advertising objective for your campaign. If none of the goals fit what you’re looking for, select Create a campaign without a goal’s guidance.
- When asked to choose where to send your traffic, select the marketplace.
- Note: This option is only available if your Google Ads account is linked to a marketplace.
- Review the conversion goals that the marketplace has configured on your behalf, and click continue.
- Note: If you set up account default conversion goals, these will also be visible when creating a Performance Max for Marketplaces campaign. We recommend manually removing these goals so that your campaign only optimises towards the goals configured by your marketplace.
- Select Performance Max as your campaign type.
- Enter a campaign name.
- Select Continue.
Step 2 of 6: Set your bidding preferences
Set your bid strategy
Based on your goals, Performance Max will help set the right bids for every auction to optimise your campaign.
- If you’re tracking values with your conversions, it’s recommended that you use the 'Maximise conversion values' bid strategy.
- If you aren’t tracking values and care about all of your conversions equally, consider the 'Maximise conversions' bid strategy.
Learn how to choose your bid and budget.
To set your ad scheduling, campaign start and end dates, and exclude brand traffic, use the 'More settings' area. Bear in mind that final URL expansion isn’t available for Performance Max for Marketplaces campaigns.
Step 3 of 6: Set your campaign settings
Your marketplace may already set your products to display only in specific countries. When you add location settings to your Performance Max for Marketplaces campaign, your ads will serve to countries shared by your marketplace but not to countries excluded by your marketplace. Follow the steps below to set up your location targeting.
- On the 'Campaign settings' page, select the location to target under 'Locations'.
- To target a location that isn’t listed, select Enter another location, enter the name of the place you want to target, then select Target or Exclude.
- If you want to target specific places within a location, select Nearby and again select Target or Exclude locations.
- Under the 'Languages' drop-down, select the languages your customers speak. You can select multiple languages to show your ads to specific sets of customers.
- Note: For more location targeting options, use 'Advanced search'. You can add location in bulk or enter a location and radius around that specific location that you'd like to target.
- Finalise any additional settings you’d like to set up under 'More settings'. Click Next.
To set your ad scheduling, campaign start and end dates, and exclude brand traffic, use the 'More settings' area. Bear in mind that Final URL expansion and automatically created assets aren't available for Performance Max for Marketplaces campaigns.
Step 4 of 6: Set up your asset groups and assets (optional)
The campaign will use the marketplace product feed to serve ads. Additional assets aren’t required, but you may provide it to help enhance the performance, reach or inventories of your ads.
Listing groups are required and will default to all products in the specified marketplace account.
- On the 'Asset group' page, enter a unique asset group name.
- Confirm listing groups for the campaign. Listing groups allow you to select which products will show in your Performance Max campaign's ads. The default will be all products in your attached marketplace account, but if you wish to only use a selection of products follow the steps below:
- Click the pencil icon
next to 'All products'.
- Select Use a selection of products in your ads.
- You can select products by Category, Brand, Item ID, Condition, Product type, Channel or Custom labels from the dropdown. You can also choose values in bulk by manually entering product types separated by line breaks.
- Check products that you want to include in your Performance Max ads and they'll appear in the column to the right. To remove products, click the
next to the product group.
- Click Save to finish setting up your Performance Max campaign.
next to 'All products'.
next to the product group.- Build your asset group using the guidelines below.
| Asset | Recommended asset guidelines |
|---|---|
| Image | Add up to 15 images |
| Logos | Add up to five logos |
| Headlines (maximum 30 characters) | Add up to five headlines |
| Long headlines (maximum 90 characters) | Add up to five long headlines |
| Descriptions |
Short description (maximum 60 characters)
|
|
Long description (maximum 90 characters)
*Long descriptions aren’t supported in local formats. |
|
| Call to action | Select a call to action that aligns with your goals such as 'sign up' or 'subscribe'. |
| Business name | Add the name of your business or brand, which appears in the text of your ad. |
Note: Video assets are unavailable for Performance Max for Marketplaces at this time.
You can create one asset group before launching your Performance Max campaign and additional asset groups after setup. Your assets will automatically be assembled into all applicable formats and show the most relevant ad creative.
Learn how to build an asset group
to learn more about the requirements.Audience signals
Audience signals allow you to add audience suggestions that help Google Ads automation optimise for your selected goals. Although adding audience signals is optional, using audience signals can help you accelerate and guide Google AI on the ideal way to optimise your campaign.
Remember that Performance Max campaigns may show ads to relevant audiences outside of your signals if they have a strong likelihood of converting to help you meet your performance goals.
- Learn more about how to Build audience signals.
- Learn more about how to use the Audience builder to reach the right audience for each campaign and ad group.
Ad strength
Ad strength is an indication of the relevance and range of your ad creative combinations. Having more relevant and unique content can help you get the right ad in front of your customers and improve your ad’s performance.
Step 5 of 6: Set your budget
Your budget establishes a monthly charging limit for an individual campaign. The charging limit is the average daily budget that you set, multiplied by the average number of days in a month. While your spend may vary each day, you won’t pay more than your monthly charging limit. Learn more about spending limits.
For Performance Max you should:
- Set an average daily budget of at least three times your CPA or cost/conv. for the conversion actions selected for your campaign. You have the flexibility to change your budget at any time.
- Check your account daily to know how your campaigns have performed so far.
- Remember that on days when your ads are likely to get you more traffic, you may spend up to two times your average daily budget. Those days are balanced by the days when your spend is below your average daily budget.
Step 6 of 6: Review and publish your campaign
Before you finish setting up your campaign, you'll be taken to a review summary with the details of your new campaign. Select Publish Campaign to complete the process.
