Performance Max Campaign Management

What Performance Max is

Performance Max is a Google Ads campaign type that uses one budget and one set of assets to show ads across Google's inventory: Search, Shopping, YouTube, Display, Discover, Gmail and Maps. You supply the goals, assets, audience signals and, for retailers, a product feed. Google decides where and when to show each combination.

That automation can work well when it has accurate conversion data and good material. It works badly when it is fed page-view conversions, one stock photo and no exclusions. Our job is to give it the right inputs and keep checking what it does with them. Performance Max usually runs alongside Search campaigns as part of wider Google Ads management.

Asset groups done properly

Each asset group is a bundle of text, images and video tied to a theme and a final URL. Google's Performance Max asset specifications currently allow:

Google notes that if you add no video, it may create one automatically from your other assets. We'd rather you approved what represents your brand, so we supply video in all three orientations. If you need new photography or short edits, our sister studio can help, or we work with what you have.

Controls that now exist

Performance Max used to be close to a black box. Google has added controls since, and we use them:

• Negative keywords. Google added campaign-level negatives to Performance Max in 2025. Industry coverage, including JumpFly's summary of the change, reports a limit of 10,000 per campaign. They apply to Search and Shopping inventory only, not to Display or YouTube placements.
• Search terms reporting. You can now see the searches that triggered Performance Max ads and act on them in the same way as Search campaigns.
• Brand exclusions. Stop the campaign claiming credit for people who were already searching for your name.
• Channel reporting. See roughly how spend splits between Search, Shopping, YouTube and Display, even though you still can't set budgets per channel.
• Final URL expansion and URL exclusions. Keep traffic away from careers, blog or login pages.

Feeds, values and goals

For online shops, Performance Max with a Merchant Center feed is the main way to run Shopping ads. Feed quality drives results: titles, product types, GTINs and custom labels all affect how products are grouped and bid. We often split listing groups by margin or bestseller status so the campaign doesn't spend evenly on products that earn very different amounts.

For lead generation, the risk is the opposite: Performance Max is good at finding cheap form fills that never become customers. We use only meaningful conversions as goals, pass values where we can, and use conversion tracking with enhanced conversions so the campaign learns from real leads.

What we review each month

Performance Max needs steady attention rather than constant tinkering. Each month we read the search term and channel reports, check which assets Google rates as low performing and replace them, look for new brand or irrelevant queries to exclude, and compare the conversions it reports against GA4 and your own sales or lead records. Big changes to budgets or targets are made in steps, because large swings send the campaign back into a learning period and make results harder to judge.

Price

Performance Max management is part of Google Ads management: from £150 a month + VAT, or 10 to 15% of ad spend, whichever is higher. Ad spend goes directly to Google. Monthly, cancel with notice. If Performance Max already runs in your account and you're not sure it is helping, start with a Google Ads audit.

What you get

• Conversion goals and values checked before the campaign learns from them
• Asset groups split by product line, service or audience
• Full asset sets: headlines, long headlines, descriptions, images, logos and video in three orientations
• Audience signals built from your customer lists, site visitors and search themes
• Brand exclusions, negative keywords and URL exclusions where needed
• Channel, asset and search term reporting reviewed monthly

How it works and what it costs

Google Ads management from £150 a month, social media management from £125 a month and email marketing from £95 a month, all + VAT. Ad spend is separate and paid to the platform. No long contracts.

1. Free review

   We look at your current ads, social, email and analytics, or your plans if you are starting out, and tell you plainly what we would change.

2. Plan and price

   You get a written plan with targets, budgets and a fixed monthly fee before anything starts.

3. Set up properly

   Tracking and consent first, then campaigns, audiences, content calendars or email flows, all in accounts you own.

4. Run and improve

   We manage it every week: search terms, bids, creative, posts and tests, cutting what does not pay and doing more of what does.

5. Report in plain English

   A monthly report on leads, sales and cost per result, not vanity numbers, with what we will do next.

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