In this episode of the Ecwid Ecommerce Show, the podcast hosts Jesse and Rich look into Google’s Performance Max ad campaigns. Tune in to learn more about this ad campaign type and find out how it can benefit your business.

What Is Google’s Performance Max?

Performance Max is an ad campaign type that allows you to create a single campaign to promote your products across all of Google’s advertising channels. That means your ads are displayed across Google pages like search results, Maps, and Shopping.

But that’s not all! Your ads are also shown on Google sites like YouTube, Blogger, Gmail, plus thousands of partnering websites.

The primary difference between Performance Max and other ad campaigns is that Google automates the campaign targeting and delivery based on the information you provide. You can include:

• your product feed (a file with your product data),
• audience signals (potential customers’ interests, what they’re researching, or how they’ve interacted with your business),
• high-quality text, images, and video.

On the pod, Jesse discusses how Performance Max campaigns are good for all types of business owners. People who do their own Google advertising benefit greatly from this campaign, as do those who want to get ahead of the competition by trying the latest and greatest tools.

As Performance Max is a new feature, Jesse and Rich suggest getting in on it sooner rather than later. When a platform rolls out a new tool, they want to maximize its reach. That way, they can collect a lot of data to determine whether it’s working for people or not.

Performance Max marks Google’s new era of ad campaigns. Using their advanced AI, Google gives advertisers a break from making all the decisions. You just give all your data and content to Google and let it find customers for you.

Some people are used to having more control over the process. But at the end of the day, you will likely get more sales by using Performance Max. And if you get more sales for less money, you’re going to be happy.

How to Make the Most of Performance Max?

Performance Max campaigns are similar to Smart Shopping campaigns in that they both require a product feed. So to use either, you will need to set up a product feed in a Google Merchant Center. That way, your products will be displayed across all Google properties: YouTube, Gmail, Google search engine, Google Shopping, local maps—basically anywhere Google is.

Another important thing for setting up a successful Performance Max campaign is content. We talk about creating content all the time, whether it’s blog posts, podcasts, or videos. You can create content about all sorts of subjects, like making your products, how to use your product, user-generated content, packaging your product, etc.

With Performance Max, you’ll have to give it content to use in ads. Then, it will create custom ads across channels using your content. There’s yet another reason to create more content about your product!

Google might have data points, but they don’t necessarily know your product and your company like you do. So you need to provide Performance Max videos, descriptions, headlines, and any data you have to give the AI a well-rounded view of your business. With all that information, it can create more personalized and accurate ads about your products and company.

Most importantly, make videos! Performance Max relies heavily on videos.

If you don’t give Performance Max videos, it will automatically make them from your product photos. Maybe they will turn out okay… But they won’t be nearly as good as actual videos you record.

Uploading them is easy too—you can just publish videos on YouTube and then give Performance Max the links. Remember that Performance Max campaigns are all AI-generated. So the more videos you give it, the better.

Another way to take Performance Max campaigns to the next level is using customer lists or remarketing audiences. Those audiences will act as “signals,” helping inform the Google algorithm about what demographics to target.

That’s your short and sweet overview of Performance Max campaigns. If you’d like to set up a Performance Max campaign, these instructions might be helpful.

And don’t forget to research other types of automated Google Ads available in Ecwid!