Need help with your transition to Performance Max with pay-per-lead goals? You can contact dedicated support for migrating Local Services Ads advertisers using the following phone number:
- Phone Support: +1-844-205-0011
- Hours of Operation: Monday – Friday, 9:00 AM – 8:00 PM EST
Performance Max campaigns with pay-per-lead goals empower local businesses to reach customers. With this setup, your marketing spend is focused on direct customer connections. You’re charged only when a potential customer contacts your business directly through your ad, rather than when they click on your ad. Learn how to set up pay-per-lead goals for Performance Max campaigns.
On this page
- Benefits of campaigns with pay-per-lead goals
- How it works
- Eligibility and requirements
- About ad content and assets
- Keep in mind
Benefits of campaigns with pay-per-lead goals
Performance Max campaigns with pay-per-lead goals offer a simplified setup that reduces campaign complexity and helps you quickly activate your ads. Key benefits include the following:
- Pay only for results: Focus your marketing budget strictly on actual customer connections instead of standard ad clicks.
- Feature prominently on local results: Stand out in Google Search and Google Maps results when customers are actively searching for your services in your service area.
- Showcase your verifications: Some business categories will display the Google Verified badge on your ads and profile page to build trust with local customers.
- Simplified campaign management: Benefit from automated ad asset creation and streamlined conversion tracking without managing complex keyword lists.
How it works
Understanding leads and conversions
With this campaign type, a lead is a conversion generated when a customer contacts your business directly through your ad. These customer interactions are tracked as conversions in your Google Ads account under these categories:
- Direct phone calls (Required): A customer calls your business. This mandatory goal tracks answered calls, voicemails, and return calls to missed connections. To protect your budget, you are only charged for valid, qualified phone leads that meet minimum call duration requirements.
- Text messages or emails (Optional): A customer sends a text or email message directly through your ad.
- Bookings (Optional, available starting in October 2026): A customer schedules an appointment directly through your ad.
To learn more about what qualifies as a lead and how lead charging works, refer to How leads work.
How Google reaches local customers
Campaigns with pay-per-lead goals use data from your Google Business Profile to set up campaigns optimized for generating local leads. Performance Max campaigns with pay-per-lead goals are built on the same models as Local Services Ads, sharing the same framework for showing ads to local customers and sourcing valid leads.
You can edit your campaign settings during onboarding or post-onboarding to refine the types of searches you target, including the following:
- Locations: Define your service area by entering targeted cities, counties, or ZIP codes.
- Business categories: Select a specific subset of eligible categories (minimum 1, maximum 10) to focus your ads.
- Service types: Turn specific service type chips on or off to influence the types of queries that trigger your ads.
- Ad schedule: Specify the days and hours your ads will be eligible to run.
Keywordless targeting
Unlike traditional Search campaigns, keyword targeting is not offered for campaigns with pay-per-lead goals. Instead, your campaign settings (your service areas and ad schedules, for example) allow you to refine your campaign setup through a simplified and automated approach based on your Google Business Profile data.
Eligibility and requirements
To qualify for a Performance Max campaign with pay-per-lead goals, your business must meet the below criteria. Note: During the migration, if your business operates in a category requiring advanced verification (such as locksmiths or garage door services) or is outside currently supported regions, you will be directed to manage your campaigns on the legacy Local Services Ads portal at g.co/localservices.
- Geography: Your business must be located and operate in the United States. Learn more about how to check your eligibility.
- Business Profile: You must have at least one verified Google Business Profile.
- Supported Verticals: Your business must operate in an eligible storefront or home services category. Because the list of eligible verticals is continually evolving, please refer to the Local Services Ads supported categories list for the most up-to-date directory of supported business types. Other Local Services Ads categories, including those requiring advanced verification (such as locksmiths and garage door services) and professional services (available starting in late 2026), will become available for pay-per-lead goals in Performance Max in 2027. View the full list of supported verticals.
- Screening and verification: Additional verification and background checks may apply depending on your business category and location to help ensure a safe experience for users. Learn more about the screening and verification process.
When to use campaigns with pay-per-lead goals
Use this campaign type when you want to connect directly with high-intent local customers who are actively searching for your services. To maximize the value of Google Ads AI, we recommend running Performance Max for pay-per-lead goal campaigns alongside Search, Performance Max and Demand Gen campaigns to maximize your local visibility across different ad placements on Google Search and Maps.
About ad content and assets
Performance Max campaigns with pay-per-lead goals use a simplified asset structure designed for ease of use. For simplicity, core ad content (including your business name, address, business hours, and review ratings) is sourced directly from your Google Business Profile and cannot be edited in Google Ads. You do not need to manually provide headlines, descriptions, videos, or sitelinks.
While your core profile details provide a simple baseline, you can use additional features in Google Ads to further customize, enrich, and tailor your ad content:
- Founding year: Sourced from business profile details, and fully editable in Google Ads.
- Business image: You can add additional images to supplement images automatically sourced from your Google Business Profile.
- Callouts: Select up to 6 callouts per category (such as "free estimates") to highlight business specialties.
- Asset optimization: This setting allows Google Ads to automatically scan your linked business website to generate relevant and high-performing ad assets, such as automated callouts, to improve your ad's performance. You can edit or update your business's website URL here. If you do not want Google to generate these assets, you can opt out of this feature at any time by turning off Asset optimization in your campaign settings or by removing your website URL.
Keep in mind
Google Business Profile selection
- If you have multiple eligible, verified Google Business Profile listings, you’ll select the specific profile you want to advertise during campaign creation.
- Selecting a profile establishes an account-level link between your Google Ads account and your Google Business Profile. This link is required for campaigns pay-per-lead-goals and can enable showing location information from Business Profile in other eligible campaigns through location assets. Learn more About location assets.
Conversion selection
- You must select the conversions that qualify as a lead for your business.
- Phone calls are a required conversion action. Calls are mandatory for this campaign type because they are highly effective at driving immediate local customer connections and optimizing campaign performance. Your business phone number is automatically pre-filled from your Google Business Profile but can be edited in your campaign settings.
