As a digital marketing agency, we’re acutely aware of automated bidding. Google has been doing this for the same amount of time as Google Ads has been on the scene.
But with the arrival of Performance Max as part of the new wave of automation, we think it’s a great time to ascertain what you should do if Performance Max targets branded search terms.
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But first, let’s be clear about what Performance Max is and exactly what it does.
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Performance Max launched in 2021 and is a pioneering, goal-focused Google Ads campaign format, including automation at the very heart. It serves content across all of the Google ad properties from one sole campaign, including
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What To Do If Performance Max Targets Branded Search Terms
If you’re running a profitable Performance Max campaign but mostly on brand search terms, should you close it and run search campaigns on keywords or operate a brand search with negative keywords?
Doing so isn’t scalable unless you broaden it to competitors or similar brands like yours. But Performance Max will spend the money. It has enormous potential. Try increasing the daily budget and see if it keeps giving you the results.
Avoid closing a profitable campaign. After all, why stop it when it’s running cost-effectively? Sure, you can start running search ads on keywords and put in brand search negatives if you don’t want to run.
We also suggest executing a search campaign on brand and a non-branded search campaign together with a DSA campaign to feed Performance Max all the signals you’re generating from the other campaign types.
This is how you’ll get the most success out of Performance Max. Most people avoid doing this because they see the dashboard and Performance Max being attributed with all the conversion data, and none of the others gets any attribution. And they stop it – that’s when things start to go downhill.
Written by Uzair Kharawala
Partner at SF Digital Studios, a Google Premier Partner agency. Uzair has been helping businesses grow with Google Ads since 2002 and teaches it every week on YouTube.
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