Understanding Performance Max and Google Search Advertising

Performance Max—or P Max—is a new automation tool that Google uses. It’s billed as a way to leverage artificial intelligence to further improve the performance of your search advertising campaigns and keywords. Many marketers report dramatically improved results using P Max.

However, there are many considerations you should understand before turning it on.

First, it’s a black box. Google shares very little about how P Max works specifically. As a result, the opportunity to learn from its successes and failures is practically non-existent.

Second, it can be unreliable. P Max was recently reported to have increased all quarterly CPCs (cost per clicks) for a customer in an industry with no seasonality and no new competitors. When asked for an explanation, Google offered none.

Third, P Max can take liberties with your spending. Don’t normally target your competitors’ brand keywords for strategic or practical reasons? P Max might spend there anyway. It can also extrapolate the meaning of keywords that a more manual bidding strategy would avoid.

For example, a keyword with many definitions—and therefore many search intents—might be misinterpreted. P Max doesn’t necessarily weigh the different meanings accurately. It may default to the one it believes is relevant to your industry, resulting in inflated and overly competitive bidding.

So, why use P Max?

It does appear to work at a blended level. But the how and why it works remain opaque. That means there’s little to no learning you can transfer to your other marketing programs or publishers.

It’s hard to conclude that P Max isn’t ultimately a step away from digital marketing’s original promise: to create true transparency for marketers.