Campaign Types
Performance Max (PMax)
Performance Max is a Google Ads campaign type that serves across Search, Shopping, YouTube, Display, Discover, Gmail, and Maps from a single campaign using automated bidding and asset-based creative.
In practice
PMax replaced Smart Shopping and Local campaigns and is now the default recommendation inside Google Ads. You provide assets (headlines, descriptions, images, videos, and a product feed for retail), audience signals, and a conversion goal, and Google decides where and to whom the ads serve.
Run well, it is the highest-reach campaign type available. Run with defaults, it cannibalizes brand search, spends on Display inventory that produces view-through conversions, and expands to URLs on your site you never intended to advertise. The controls exist but are opt-in: brand exclusions, search themes, URL expansion limits, placement exclusions, and campaign-level negative keywords. The search term data is available through the campaign search term report, so PMax is not blind; it just requires looking.
We run PMax alongside standard Shopping and Search, never instead of them, and read its channel breakdown every business day.
Why it matters
It is Google's most powerful and most mismanaged campaign type; the difference between the two outcomes is configuration and daily oversight.
RELATED TERMS
Asset Group
An asset group is the unit inside a Performance Max campaign that holds a set of creative assets, audience signals, search themes, and (for retail) a listing group filter for a specific theme or product line.
Search Themes
Search themes are keyword-like phrases added to a Performance Max asset group that tell Google which search queries the campaign should reach, supplementing what it infers from assets and landing pages.
Brand Exclusions
Brand exclusions are a Performance Max and Search campaign setting that prevents ads from serving on queries containing specified brand names, most commonly your own brand.
Written by Ilya Bulychev, Founder, Live PPC Ads. Part of the PPC Glossary.
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