Last November, Google Ad Grants received a new feature passed down from Google Ads: Performance Max (PMax) campaigns. This was the first major update to Grants since Expanded Text Ads (ETAs) were sunsetted across the entire Google Ads platform and replaced by Responsive Search Ads (RSAs) in June 2022.
For those not familiar, Performance Max is Google’s goal-based campaign type that uses automation to deliver ads across all Google inventory — including Search, Maps, Display, and more. In the context of Google Ad Grants, only Search and Maps are available.
Now that the dust has settled, we have a clearer understanding of what this campaign offers – and what its limits are. In this blog, we’ll explore the benefits and drawbacks of PMax, and explain how to make the most of it.
What is a Performance Max Campaign, anyway?
The PMax campaign was launched across Google Ads in November 2021. It brings increased automation, and therefore convenience, at the cost of less control over your ad copy and bids.
It’s defined by Google as “a goal-based campaign type that allows performance advertisers to access all of their Google Ads inventory from a single campaign.”
‘Inventory’ here refers to Search, Maps, YouTube, Display, Shopping and Gmail – though for Ad Grants, that inventory only includes Search and Maps. A ‘goal-based campaign’, meanwhile, just means a campaign with a conversion-focused bidding strategy, such as Maximise Conversions or Maximise Conversion Values.
Similarly to Dynamic Search Campaigns (DSCs), PMax enables you to run ads to your entire website. It provides you the option to send users to either one specific URL, or to the page that Google deems most relevant to the search intent – with the ability to exclude URLs. As with DSCs, you don’t input keywords yourself; it is automated through Google AI. It’s worth noting that you still provide your initial ad copy for the AI to build variations around.
As for PMax’s effectiveness, we’ve tested it extensively across a variety of accounts, campaigns and contexts. Across Paid accounts, we’ve consistently found that the area PMax performs best at is ecommerce, where it regularly outperforms manual Shopping campaigns. Since Google Ad Grants doesn’t allow you to run Shopping ads, the benefit for Grants isn’t quite as pronounced.
We’ve also found that, compared to goal-based Ad Grants campaigns, the average clickthrough rate is lower for PMax than for non-PMax, but average conversion rate is slightly higher. This means that a well-deployed PMax in Grants can be an effective tool for driving conversions, such as donations.
Let’s break down the pros and cons…
Benefits of Performance Max for Ad Grants
Resource-efficient.
With the ability to create a single ad that directs to any (or every) page on your website, PMax is a great campaign for charities looking to bid competitively with limited time and resources. You do not need to research keywords and optimise your ad copy to these – you can let Google do the hard work for you. Google’s AI uses your landing pages to generate relevant ad copy. Though this convenience can come at the cost of message control and brand consistency, which we’ll come to later.
Can improve budget utilisation.
With PMax relying on Google AI rather than keywords, it’s able to bid on more varied search terms and gather a wider pool of traffic. As a result, we’ve seen that PMax campaigns are more reliably able to spend their allocated budget, whereas identical non-PMax search campaigns are limited by search volume. PMax is a great way of utilising the full potential of the Grants budget.
Ideal for advertising shops.
As discussed already, PMax is unique among Ad Grants campaign types in that it can target Google Maps as well as Search, making it a powerful tool for charities looking to promote physical locations, such as high street shops.
Provides more control than DSCs.
When it comes to ad copy, you have slightly more control with PMax than with DSCs, where you can add headlines and descriptions similar to an RSA. However, if you’re running your campaign to more than one landing page, text enhancements must be turned on, which changes your copy to fit the landing page. If you’re already running DSCs in your Ad Grants, it’s definitely worth experimenting with PMax.
Low CTR won’t penalise your account.
One rather unique benefit to Grants is that PMax campaigns are not included in the 5% CTR minimum threshold policy. With recent trends showing CTR falling dramatically, this gives charities the option to still run ads below a 5% CTR limit.
However, there are some drawbacks to all of this…
Downsides of Performance Max for Ad Grants
We’re already discussed how the limited range of ad channels compared to the Paid campaign is a large downside, but let’s focus on the drawbacks to actually using the campaign format itself.
It’s worth noting that these disadvantages aren’t specific to Ad Grants, but apply to PMax broadly.
Lack of control over ad copy.
The largest downside of PMax is the lack of creative control. We just said in the Benefits section that the ability to outsource your ad copy to AI is convenient if you’re low on time and resources. But as a charity, this tradeoff may not be worth it. With PMax, ad copy that you provide can be entirely ignored in favour of Google’s AI-generated headlines and descriptions. You may decide it’s more important to control the language and brand voice across all your messaging, and PMax limits your ability to do so. Particularly if you’re a charity dealing with sensitive subjects, you might decide the convenience of generative AI isn’t worth the tradeoff.
There is the option to turn off Text Customisation, but this prevents you from having URL Expansion on, which allows you to run ads to multiple landing pages. Also worth noting that PMax still offers more control than DSCs, since you’re able to determine your headlines.
Lack of control on bidding can waste budget.
That lack of control also extends to bidding. PMax doesn’t allow input keywords but instead focuses on a combination of machine learning and audience signals (groups of users that you provide, based on demographics, interests, search intent, etc.) allowing it to bid on broadly relevant searches. As a result, there’s the risk of wasting budget by bidding on irrelevant search terms.
In March, Google added the negative keyword feature to PMax. Using negative keywords to eliminate irrelevant bids as and when you notice them can go a long way to addressing the issue of wasted spend, so make sure to regularly monitor your search term report for unhelpful search terms to eliminate. Unfortunately, the search term report is always an incomplete picture (we’ll come to that in the next point), which means your ability to identify all instances of wasted spend is limited.
Lack of transparency around certain data.
Google doesn’t allow you to access some useful data:
- There’s no breakdown of channel performance (i.e. performance in Search vs performance in Maps). Google claims this feature will be added soon, but at present, there is no way to compare performance across the different channels and networks, which can make it difficult to identify whether a PMax campaign should be used instead of a search campaign.
- Your search term report is limited to only a small share of total search. Google automatically categorises your search terms under common themes, and you can only view a handful of search terms for each category – which results in an incomplete breakdown. Fortunately, the traditional search terms report from Google Ads is very likely coming soon to PMax.
Higher cost per click on average.
Our data comparisons show that, across our Grants accounts, the average CPC of our PMax campaigns is 21% higher than standard, non-PMax campaigns. This means less traffic for the same budget. This is true even when they’re using the same (goal-based) bid strategy. We discussed how one of the benefits of PMax is cost-efficiency, thanks to automation, but an overreliance on Performance Max campaigns can result in inefficient spending.
Your conversion tracking must be strong.
This isn’t so much a disadvantage as a major caveat. Conversion tracking is a critical factor in making PMax campaigns successful. If you’re not sending high-quality conversion signals, PMax has little to optimise around. So before attempting any PMax campaigns, make sure your conversion tracking is accurate and meaningful — whether it’s donations, signups, or volunteer interest.
If you’re unsure whether your current setup is giving Google the right signals, our team can audit your conversion tracking to ensure your campaigns are set up for success.
The Future of PMax in Ad Grants
Thankfully, the drawbacks of PMax are not all permanent. We’ve already mentioned that Google recently added negative keywords to PMax across Paid and Grants accounts. They’re also slowly rolling out new search term reports, which is a step towards addressing the missing data problem. And they’ve indicated that Ad Grants will be expanded with more channels in the future, but this is unlikely to be Display and YouTube due to their revenue-sharing models. It could, however, include Shopping and Gmail.
For the near future at least, our recommended use for PMax would be, first and foremost, setting up campaigns on weekends, where other campaign types typically struggle to spend. We’ve found PMax particularly effective at utilising budget when it would otherwise go to waste. Even a 5% increase in clicks for a 50% increase in budget is not a problem when that budget would be wasted by campaigns that can’t bid as broadly.
It’s possible that, sooner or later, Google will force automated solutions like PMax upon users as the only option for managing Grants – so at the very least, it’s worthwhile testing it now to gain familiarity and pinpoint what works for your charity and strategy.
Want tailored advice for your charity’s campaigns? Reach out to our team for a free strategy chat — or sign up to our newsletter for practical insights and updates.
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