On May 24, 2022, Google held its annual Google Marketing Live for the first time in person in three years. Jerry Dischler spoke about the updates to Performance Max in his segment and some exciting new changes that are coming.
If you did not see Tuesday’s blog post titled What is Performance Max? be sure to go read that article before this one. That article will go more in-depth on what Performance Max looked like before these new changes and its core function.
Reason for change
Before we begin with the changes, the discussion of why Google made these changes in the first place offers insights to the modern marketer that should not be overlooked. Here at marketANDgrow, we know that the reasons behind the changes are just as important, if not more important, than the changes themselves. We believe that the way to stay in front of the curve is by analyzing why something changed, in order to better understand the direction of our current marketing environment.
There are three reasons why Google decided to reimagine Performance Max. The first is because of rapidly changing privacy laws all around the globe. Google estimates that 65% of the world’s population is protected by modern privacy laws, up from 10% in just 2020. This has a huge impact on what our digital future will look like, and will force a lot of marketers to rethink the ways we’ve interacted with the internet.
Secondly, consumers are engaging in new ways every day. Just as lowrise jeans aren’t always in fashion, so do customers on all scales ebb and flow. If you don’t change with the times, you’ll appear outdated and unreliable.
Finally, marketing is expanding to new channels every day. Google’s main focus is to build resilience through privacy-safe tools that will last through those ebbs and flows. As Dischler says, “It’s our responsibility to deliver automation that you can trust. We take that responsibility super seriously.”
#1: New transparency in automation with insights
We put this at the top of our list because we believe that it is the most beneficial to our consumers to know. As written in last week’s blog, one of our biggest complaints about Performace Max was the lack of transparency.
Google added three new insights and explanations to campaigns, “so you can understand what’s working and why.” The three different ways you can take more control of your campaigns are through new attribution insights, budget insights, and audience insights (for first-party data).
- Attribution Insights: This tool shows you how your ads are working together to drive conversions across Google’s network. This included Search, Display, and Youtube.
- Budget Insights: This tool allows you to optimize your spending and shows you how your actual spending is working for your budget goals.
- Audience Insights: This tool shows how your customer segments, like those created with Customer Match, are driving your campaign performance.
With these new changes, Google’s “black box” of interworkings becomes a little clearer to those of us wanting to make a change with our marketing campaigns.
#2: Performance Max experiment tools
Secondly, Google created a feature that will allow you to run A/B tests. They specifically created this in order to measure the incremental uplift that each A/B test drives for the campaign.
There are other experimental tools too. As Dischler describes in the live, they are incorporating new geographic experiments: “For example, with our new geo-experiments functionality, you’ll be able to compare regions where your ads are shown versus regions where they aren’t. We’re now making it easier than ever to run geo-experiments – along with conversion lift and search lift tests – in a secure, safe way.”
#3 Optimization score for Performance Max
Just as you will find an optimization score in other Google Ads campaigns, you can finally have one in Performace Max as well.
Remember that optimization scores show your room for improvement, so adding this feature means you will have actual numbers to back your performance. Not only numbers, but also Google will provide you with specific strategies to maximize your performance. Now, doesn’t that sound more like Performance Max to you?
#4 In-store goals
Later this year, in-store goals will be able to optimize store visits and local actions. This is a huge step forward for those who own shops that want more people coming in. Promoting local inventory and allowing addresses to be widely advertised allows for these goals to be met. This also goes hand in hand with the next update.
#5 Burst campaigns
Later this year, in-store goals will be able to optimize store visits and local actions. This is a huge step forward for those who own shops that want more people coming in. Promoting local inventory and allowing addresses to be widely advertised allows for these goals to be met. This also goes hand in hand with the next update.
Now, you don’t have to worry about creating a new campaign that will only run seasonally through the confines of Performance Max. Instead, this campaign now has a preset that will ease your way through the process.
#6 Expanded campaign management support
Finally, the last update they created was the ability to manage your campaigns from anywhere. This new update brings Performance Max to Search Ads 360 and the Google Ads mobile app. Their goal was to allow for more flexibility by being a better fit for more business owners.
Notes from Our Founder
As you read the last blog, we didn’t give Performance Max a shining endorsement. Before these updates, it seemed to lack a lot of features we deemed crucial. On the surface, it appears to be a step in the right direction. However, even though most of the features haven’t been rolled out yet, we still stand by our “$10k/day” rule. Because of the nature of how artificial language learns, you need a large number of data points for it to know what it is doing and what it is looking for and you can only earn those data points by spending large amounts of ad spend in a short burst so that your future campaigns are profitable. For now, it is nice to see Google’s commitment to making Performance Max a tool every business can use eventually.
Also, we advise using a critical eye when looking at the optimization score. Be wary that the optimization score is sometimes really working better for Google’s bottom line, and not your own business’s. Seeing that number be less than 100 may feel like you’re missing opportunities, but trust us when we say, Google is benefiting more than you are at that point. Make sure to stick to the goals you created for your business, and don’t always blindly eat what Google is serving you.
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