Performance Max campaigns that earn their budget
Performance Max is a Google campaign that shows your ads across Search, YouTube, Gmail and more, and makes most of the choices itself. We control what it learns from and check what it claims against your real orders or HubSpot deals.
Free, 30 minutes, and you'll leave with at least one clear next step.
What does a Performance Max agency actually do?
A Performance Max agency controls what the campaign learns from and checks what it adds. Google picks the placements, bids and audiences. Our job is everything around that. We set the goal it chases and the feed or pages it can use. We keep it away from your brand name and from junk searches. We also test whether it's growing the business.
If you run a Shopify store, our Performance Max guide for Shopify lays out the settings in detail. This page covers how we manage it for clients, including lead generation, which the guide doesn't cover.
The four ways Performance Max quietly wastes money
These are the patterns we look for first in any account. Each one makes the campaign look better in Google Ads than it is in your books.
It takes credit for your brand searches
People who already know you search your name and buy. Performance Max shows an ad, gets the click and claims the sale. Without a brand exclusion, a big share of its results can be sales you'd have made anyway.
It buys repeat customers
If every order counts the same, the campaign finds it easiest to reach people who already bought. We upload your customer list and use Google's new customer goal so first orders are worth more.
It fills lead forms with junk
On lead generation, Performance Max can find cheap form fills on display sites and apps. If a form fill is all it's told to count, it keeps finding more of the same.
It sends people to the wrong page
Google can swap in other pages from your site as landing pages. That can mean ad clicks landing on a careers page or an old blog post. We control which pages it's allowed to use.
How we set it up for each kind of business
Online stores
- A clean product feed, fixed the way our Google Shopping team does it
- Brand exclusion on, with brand search in its own campaign
- The new customer goal and an uploaded customer list
- Separate campaigns for low-margin or high-return products, with stricter targets
- Order IDs sent with every sale, so refunded orders can be adjusted in Google later
Lead-driven and service businesses
- Qualified leads and closed deals from HubSpot set as the goal, with plain form fills valued low or not at all
- Spam checks on the form, so bots never reach HubSpot or Google
- Landing pages limited to the pages we choose
- Negative keyword lists for jobs, DIY and free-download searches
- Search themes and audience signals from your best customer list in HubSpot
Should a lead-driven business use Performance Max at all?
Only once Google can learn from your sales results. Performance Max needs a steady flow of the result you ask for. A business that closes a few deals a month can't feed it enough closed deals. So we usually start it on sales-qualified leads synced from HubSpot. They come often enough to learn from, and they're much harder to fake than a form fill.
Until that sync is live, we keep lead budgets in standard Search campaigns, where you choose the keywords. For companies with thin search volume, Search alone stays the better choice for a long time, and we'll say so. See our Google Ads page for how we run Search for lead-driven businesses.
How we prove what Performance Max adds
- Week 1
Separate brand from everything else
Brand exclusion on, brand search in its own campaign. Now Performance Max has to win sales from people who weren't already looking for you.
- Weeks 1 to 3
Read the reports Google now gives
The search terms report, the channel report and results for each image, headline and video show where the money goes. We cut what doesn't earn.
- Monthly
Check against your own numbers
We compare what Google claims with orders after returns in Shopify, or with qualified leads and deals in HubSpot. If the two disagree, we go with your numbers. Our guide to measuring ads with returns shows how we take refunds out.
- Each quarter
Move the budget and watch the total
We raise or lower the budget for a set period and watch total sales or deals. If the total barely moves, Performance Max was mostly claiming sales that would have happened anyway.
When should you turn Performance Max off?
Don't start it, or turn it off, if your tracking is unreliable or your feed is full of errors. It's also a poor bet when your budget only buys a handful of sales a month. In each case it has too little good data to learn from. And pause it if a budget test shows total sales don't move when its spend changes.
Performance Max also works poorly as your only campaign. Most of our clients run it next to brand search and Meta ads, with email and SMS turning first sales into repeat ones. Veiled Collection, for example, grew on Meta, Google Shopping, search ads and YouTube together, with no single campaign type carrying the business.
Examples by industry
Performance Max needs a different setup in different businesses. These pages go deeper.
- Ecommerce: feeds, brand exclusions and new customer goals.
- Fashion: keeping high-return products on a short leash.
- Manufacturing: when Search alone is the better bet.
Performance Max agency questions
Why does Performance Max look great in Google Ads but not in our sales numbers?
Usually because it's claiming brand searches, repeat customers or orders that were later returned. Google Ads reports what the campaign touched. Your store or CRM shows what you kept. We line the two up and fix the settings that cause the gap.
Can Performance Max work for lead generation?
Yes, if it learns from qualified leads or deals instead of raw form fills. We sync results from HubSpot back to Google first, add spam protection to forms and limit which pages it can send people to.
Should we use a brand exclusion in Performance Max?
In most accounts, yes. It stops Performance Max from bidding on your own name, which is where it picks up easy credit. Run brand search as its own campaign so those sales stay visible.
Do you replace Performance Max with standard Shopping campaigns?
Sometimes, for top products where we want tight control over bids and search terms. Most stores do best with both running side by side, each with a clear job.
How long should a new Performance Max campaign run before we judge it?
Long enough to collect a meaningful number of sales, which depends on your budget and order volume. We agree on that point with you before launch, so no one pulls the plug too early or lets a weak campaign run for months.
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Find out how much of your Performance Max is brand sales
We'll open your campaign with you and look at the search terms and channel reports. We'll show you how much of its credit comes from people already searching for you.