Performance Max uses Google AI to help you grow conversions and value through bidding, targeting, creatives, and attribution. It's designed to perform across a variety of marketing objectives and media channels.
This article explains best practices for all business types. For additional best practices, review:
- Best practices for online sales (non-shopping)
- Best practices for lead generation
- Best practices for store goals
- Best practices for retail advertisers with online sales goals using a Merchant Center feed
Best practices for all business types
- Campaign duration: Allow the campaign to run for at least 6 weeks to give the machine learning algorithm sufficient time to ramp up and gather enough data for performance comparison and optimization. During this time, it's important to avoid making frequent changes as this may prolong the initial learning phase and impact initial performance.
- Audience signal and Search Themes: Use relevant audience lists (like remarketing lists, custom intent, Customer Match, and similar segments) as signals to guide Google's AI, accelerate ramp-up, and help enhance your campaign’s results. Additionally, add relevant Search Themes to expand your reach and help target the right audience more effectively. This can improve overall campaign performance and help in achieving desired outcomes like conversions.
- Assets and Ad Strength: Providing a diverse range of high-quality assets is important for Performance Max success and achieving good Ad Strength. Aim for ”Excellent” Ad Strength by uploading multiple distinct assets. Our minimum recommendations are a starting point, but strive to provide more:
- Text Assets: At least 15 headlines (including a mix of short and long), 5 descriptions.
- Image Assets: Up to 20 images with varied content and aspect ratios (for example landscape, square, portrait).
- Logo Assets: At least one logo, but more if you have variations.
- Video Assets: Multiple video assets, but at least one per aspect ratio (horizontal, vertical, square), are recommended If you don't have your own, consider creating high quality video assets by using the video creation tool. Campaigns perform better with video assets.
Note: If no videos are added, our system may automatically create them using your assets in your asset group.
- Asset Group Review: If your assets are under review for an extended period, first ensure that your conversion goals are correctly set up and applied to the campaign, as this is a common cause. If you experience issues adding or removing assets (for example greyed-out buttons, errors), try standard browser troubleshooting: clear cache/cookies, use a different browser or incognito mode, and check your network connection. Allow 24-48 hours for system updates after making changes or troubleshooting.
Learn more about how to Build an asset group.
