Dashboard
đź“š View Syllabus
đź’¬ Ask Copilot
Google Ads – Performance Max
2/4 lessons completed
Introduction: Performance Max
Performance Max Account Structure
How to Create Quality "Display" Ads
How to Create Great Video Ads
Project: Build your PMax campaign
Project: Optimize & scale your PMax campaign
Next Module →
My Learning
→
Google Ads – Performance Max
→
Project: Optimize & scale your PMax campaign
Playbook
⌛
minute read
Completed [date]

Project: Optimize & scale your PMax campaign

Learning Objectives

Overview

Now that you’ve launched your Performance Max (PMax) campaign, it’s time to optimize performance and scale for growth.

This project guides you through the rather simple process of evaluating PMax’s cross-channel performance, refining assets, targeting, and budgets, and scaling strategically to maximize ROI on your startup’s limited budget.

Just be warned, by giving up a lot of power to Google, that also means there's not nearly as much to optimize for PMax as most of it is done by the algorithm itself.

Let's dive in

What you’ll do

  • Evaluate PMax performance using key metrics and reports across channels (Search, Display, YouTube)
  • Optimize assets, targeting signals, and budgets to improve CPA, ROAS, and conversions.
  • Scale your PMax campaign incrementally, increasing budgets and expanding reach while maintaining profitability.

Phase 1: Evaluate PMax performance (30–60 days after launch)

After launching your PMax campaign, wait 30–60 days (or until you achieve 50+ conversions) for Google’s machine learning to stabilize. Then, assess performance using data-driven insights:

1. Configure your columns for insights

  • In Google Ads, go to your campaigns and click Columnsto include:
    • Impressions: How often ads appear across channels.
    • Clicks: User interactions with ads.
    • CTR (Click-Through Rate): Engagement rate (clicks/impressions)—higher is better, especially for Display and YouTube.
    • Conversions: Number of completed actions (e.g., sign-ups, purchases).
    • Cost: Total spend across channels.
    • Cost/Conv. (CPA): Cost per conversion—aim for ≤$50 if targeting non-revenue conversions (e.g., leads).
    • Conv. Value/Cost (ROAS): Return on ad spend—aim for ≥300% if targeting revenue-based conversions (e.g., purchases).
    • Conversion Rate: Percentage of clicks leading to conversions.
  • Analyze the performance of the PMax campaign relative to your Search to see if it's meeting your expectations or not.
    • If it's performing very poorly compared to your Search campaigns, keep a close eye on it and be prepared to pause it if you're burning money. You can always try again when you have more conversion history in the account.
    • If it's close or already profitable, amazing, let's optimize

2. Use the Asset Groups breakdown

  • Navigate to your PMax campaign > Asset Groups to see all your Asset Groups at a high level
  • Then click View details on one of the asset groups to see the performance of the assets
  • Unfortunately the metrics you can see are more limited. Namely, you can't see the Cost associated to each asset, you can only see the the Conversions, Conversion Value, and "Performance" metrics.
  • How to analyze:
    • Sort by Asset Type so you see them grouped together
    • Identify the top assets: High conversions and conversion value, marked as Best or Good in Performance metric
      • Create variations of these winners
    • Identify the worst assets: Little to no conversions, marked as Low.
      • Remove these asset types ideally

3. Explore the Insights tab

This tab isn't super helpful tbh but it's the only place you get any insight into your targeting for PMax, so let's dive in:

  • Go to your PMax campaign > Insights and reports > Insights tab
  • Check out the Audience Insight to see which audience types are getting the majority of clicks
    • Note you can't see conversion performance but you can likely infer that by which ones are getting more of the clicks
    • Use this information to decide which audience segments to put more focus on
  • Use Asset Insights to see the overlap of your assets and audiences to see if you can create specific Asset Groups for those segments using similar messaging

Use Insights to understand overall campaign health, but rely on Asset Groups for granular optimization, as channel-specific breakdowns aren’t directly segmentable.

4. Explore Devices and Locations

We generally believe in letting Google do its thing, especially with Performance Max, but if there's emerging winners and losers for Devices and Location we should probably listen when your budget is limited.

  • Go to your PMax campaign > Insights and reports > When and where ads showed tab
  • Analyze Devices:
    • Are there devices that are significantly under or overperforming? If underperforming, check your funnel on that device to see why that might be the case.
    • If there's no technical or usability issues, you might want to reduce bids or exclude (-100% bid adjustment) that device, or prioritize other ones
    • For example this account shows very expensive Tablet conversions (hence why the impressions are likely low), and that Mobile devices are ~50% more expensive than Computers. So it would be worth checking the usability of their site/funnel/app on Mobile and Tablet.
  • Analyze Matched Locations:
    • Are there locations that significantly under or overperform?
    • If so, can we either remove or give priority to ones?
    • For example, this same account appears to get a lot of conversions from India and Pakistan, but at CPAs that are 50-100% higher than other countries. It might be worth excluding India and Pakistan if that CPA exceeds their target

Phase 3: Scale your PMax campaign

After optimizing and confirming profitability (e.g., 60+ days, CPA ≤$50, ROAS ≥300%), scale PMax strategically to drive growth:

1. Increase budget incrementally

  • Rule: Increase your daily budget by 20–50% every 14–30 days, depending on performance, using Asset Groups and Insights to monitor.
    • Example: If your initial PMax budget is $1,000/month ($33/day), scale to $1,200–$1,500/month ($40–$50/day) after 30 days of profitability, checking Asset Groups and Insights for CPA and ROAS.
  • Cap at sustainable levels: Limit total monthly spend to 2–3x your initial budget ($2,000–$4,500/month from $1,500) until you confirm long-term profitability (90+ days of consistent ROAS ≥300%, CPA ≤$50), verified by Asset Groups and Insights.
  • Pause if unprofitable: If CPA exceeds your target by >20% (e.g., >$60 for $50) or ROAS drops >20% (e.g., <240% for 300%) after scaling, pause the increase, optimize (e.g., refine asset groups, add negative keywords), and reassess after 30 days using Asset Groups and Insights.

2. Expand targeting

  • Locations: Add new high-potential markets (e.g., Texas, UK) after proving profitability in key areas (e.g., California, US).
  • Audiences: Expand to similar or affinity audiences (e.g., “Home Improvement Enthusiasts” for landscaping) after proving success with in-market or remarketing lists. Use “Observation” mode, then switch to “Targeting” if performance holds, verified by Asset Groups and Insights.
  • Devices: Scale mobile if Insights show it outperforms desktops (common for local searches)—let Smart Bidding optimize, but increase focus if one device drives conversions at lower CPA.

3. Expand assets

  • Add more assets to existing groups based on winners: Upload additional images (e.g., 5–10 total), new headlines/descriptions, or longer videos (e.g., 30-second tutorials) to test engagement on Display and YouTube, monitoring changes in Asset Groups.
  • Add more asset groups with specific focuses.
  • Tweak and create new landing pages to see if you can increase performance off Google.

That's it really

Performance Max is mostly feeding assets into Google and letting the machine figure it out.

The more conversion data your account has, the better the machine will do.

Open search
đź’¬