Performance Max used to be a fair target for the “black box” complaint: one budget, every Google channel, and almost no view of where the money went. That changed through 2025. You can now see search terms, split results by channel, add thousands of negative keywords and exclude brands. The campaign is still automated, but you can see inside it, and the advertisers who do well with it use those controls on purpose.
What changed in 2025 and 2026
A view of Performance Max formed in 2023 is out of date. From Google’s own announcements:
- Google’s April 2025 announcement introduced a “Channel performance” page with a breakdown across Search, YouTube, Display, Discover, Gmail, Maps and Search Partners, plus a downloadable table and links to Display and YouTube placement reports. Google’s highlights of 2025 page says it now includes ROI columns, segmentation and bulk downloads.
- The same announcement said full search terms reporting was rolling out, giving Performance Max the same level of Search reporting as Search and Standard Shopping campaigns.
- Google’s August 2025 update added shared negative keyword lists for Performance Max. The highlights page puts the limit at 10,000 negative keywords per campaign, applying to Search and Shopping inventory.
- Asset reports now show impressions, clicks and cost alongside conversions, and can be segmented by device, time and network.
- The search theme limit rose from 25 to 50 per asset group.
- Google says device targeting and age-based targeting are fully available in Performance Max, with gender controls in beta at the time of the August 2025 update.
- Final URL expansion reporting shows the landing pages and text Google generated, and you can remove the ones you don’t want.
In 2026, Google’s Marketing Live material recommends Performance Max with text customisation and final URL expansion alongside AI Max for Search. Features roll out unevenly by account and country, so check what your account shows at the time of writing (October 2026) before building a plan around any one of them.
How Performance Max decides what to show
The system works from three inputs you supply. Knowing what each one does, and doesn’t do, saves a lot of wasted tinkering.
Asset groups
Google defines asset groups as collections of creative assets (images, text, logos, videos) that its system combines into ads for each placement, according to the Performance Max overview. For retailers, an asset group can also be tied to a set of products through listing groups.
Build one asset group per distinct audience or offer, with a landing page that matches it. A shop selling running shoes and yoga mats needs two asset groups with two sets of images, headlines and product filters. Google’s own guidance is to use product filters so the items in an asset group match the landing page, which is the landing page message match principle applied to a feed: what the ad promises, the page must deliver.
Audience signals
Audience signals are your hints about who converts: customer lists, website visitors, people who searched certain terms. Google’s Performance Max FAQ is explicit that they “are not a hard targeting criteria” and that ads “may serve to audiences outside the provided signal”.
Treat them as a starting point. Your customer list (Customer Match) plus custom segments built from the search terms your best customers use make a good signal. A vague in-market category picked because it sounded right makes a bad one.
Search themes
Search themes tell the campaign which queries you want to appear for. Google says they add to the queries Performance Max already predicts will work, and carry the same priority as phrase and broad match keywords. The search terms insights report has a “Source” column showing whether a query came from your themes or from Google’s own matching, so you can see whether your themes are adding anything.
Four controls worth switching on
Some controls only stop the campaign from learning. These four earn their place.
Brand exclusions
Left alone, Performance Max will serve on searches for your own brand name, where you would have won the click anyway, and then report a high ROAS. The campaign looks better than it is.
Apply a brand exclusion list to the campaign. Google’s help page on applying brand exclusions notes that, unlike negative keywords, brand exclusions also block clear misspellings and foreign-script versions of the brand. Retailers can tick an option to keep Shopping ads showing on searches for excluded brands, useful if you resell other brands. Then run your brand terms in a separate Search campaign, as our branded search ads tactic describes.
Negative keywords
Use them for queries you never want: “free”, “jobs”, “login”, competitor support queries, product types you don’t sell. Mind the scope. According to Google, Performance Max negatives apply to Search and Shopping inventory only, so they won’t stop your ads appearing on a YouTube video about a topic you dislike. For that you need the account-level content and placement exclusions in Google’s brand suitability guide.
A quick way to build the first list is to download the last 90 days of Performance Max search terms and pull out the irrelevant ones.
Conversion goals
Performance Max optimises for whatever conversions you count. Count newsletter sign-ups and purchases equally and it will find you cheap newsletter sign-ups. Set only the actions that represent value as primary goals, send purchase values, and for lead businesses import offline conversions from your CRM. Google’s FAQ points to enhanced conversions for leads as the way to connect offline outcomes back to clicks.
If acquiring new customers is the goal, use the new customer acquisition setting and supply a customer list so Google can tell new from returning.
Final URL expansion and text customisation
These let Google send traffic to other pages on your site and write its own headlines. They can find good pages you forgot to use. They can also send paid traffic to your careers page. If you leave them on, review the generated assets and URLs in reporting every week and exclude pages that should never get ad traffic.
Feed quality decides retail results
For e-commerce, the Merchant Center product feed is the biggest lever you control. Shopping ads on Search, YouTube and Maps all draw from it.
| Feed field | What good looks like | What it affects |
|---|---|---|
| Title | Brand + product type + key attribute (size, colour, material) | Titles do much of the work keywords used to do |
| Images | Clean main image, plus lifestyle images where allowed | Google’s FAQ suggests improving feed imagery when product-data ads decline |
| Product type and Google category | Specific, consistent | Drives listing groups and query matching |
| Price and availability | Matches the landing page exactly | Mismatches cause disapprovals |
| Custom labels | Margin band, bestseller, seasonal | Lets you split asset groups by profitability |
Once a month, export the search terms report, find the queries that convert, and check whether their words appear in your product titles. If they don’t, add them. The 20 titles with the most impressions are the place to start.
When to run Search alongside Performance Max
Performance Max includes Search inventory, so you could run it alone. For most accounts that is a mistake for three kinds of query.
- Your brand. Keep it in a Search campaign, with brand excluded from Performance Max, so you can see what branded demand really costs and measure non-brand performance without brand inflating it.
- Your highest-value non-brand terms. Google’s overview states that “Search campaigns containing an exact match keyword are prioritized to serve over Performance Max” when the query matches that exact keyword. Exact match Search on your top 20 to 50 terms gives you control of copy, landing page and bids where the money is.
- Terms that need precise copy. Regulated categories, competitor comparisons and offers with specific wording are safer in Search, where you write every headline.
Let Performance Max handle the long tail, Shopping and the non-search channels.
The monthly report review
Go through these in order each month:
- Open the channel performance report. If most conversions come from Search and Shopping, ask whether the YouTube and Display spend is doing anything. If most spend goes to Display with few conversions, check placements and asset quality. Write the shares down the first time so you have a baseline.
- In search terms, sum the conversions on brand queries. With brand exclusions set correctly, this should be close to zero.
- With customer lists uploaded, compare new customer conversions against the total. A campaign that mostly reaches past buyers is a retention tool with an acquisition budget.
- Compare cost and conversion value by asset group, now that cost is reported. Pause or rebuild groups that spend without results.
- Compare conversions in Google Ads with orders in your shop or CRM, week by week. Clean tracking parameters on every final URL make that join possible, and a consistent UTM naming convention keeps them clean. Our tracking audit tactic covers what to check.
Google’s FAQ also notes that Performance Max optimises for marginal return across channels, so it advises judging the campaign on overall goals instead of each channel’s average. That is fair. It does not excuse a campaign whose overall results only look good because of brand and returning customers.
What a brand split does to reported ROAS
Illustrative figures: one Performance Max campaign spends £30,000 a month at a reported ROAS of 5.0. A brand exclusion goes on, and brand terms move into their own Search campaign.
| Campaign after the split | Monthly spend | ROAS |
|---|---|---|
| Search, brand terms | £3,000 | 14.0 (branded searchers buy readily) |
| Performance Max, now non-brand | £27,000 | 3.2 |
Nothing got worse. What changed is that you can now see non-brand acquisition returns 3.2, where the blended report said 5.0, and you can decide whether 3.2 is profitable at your margins. That is the number that should drive your budget.
Questions people ask
Can you add negative keywords to Performance Max?
Yes. Google now supports campaign-level negative keywords and shared negative keyword lists in Performance Max, up to 10,000 negative keywords per campaign. They apply to Search and Shopping inventory, not to YouTube, Display or Gmail.
Do audience signals restrict who sees Performance Max ads?
No. Google's documentation says audience signals are not hard targeting criteria and ads may serve to people outside the signal. They speed up learning; they do not fence the campaign in.
Should I run a Search campaign alongside Performance Max?
Usually yes, for your most valuable queries. Google says a Search campaign with an exact match keyword that matches the query is prioritised over Performance Max, so exact match Search gives you control of the terms you care about most, including your brand.
How do I stop Performance Max taking credit for branded searches?
Apply a brand exclusion list to the Performance Max campaign and run brand terms in a separate Search campaign. Google says brand exclusions also catch misspellings and foreign-script versions of the brand, which negative keywords miss.
Sources
- Google Ads Help: About Performance Max campaigns
- Google Ads Help: Answering your top questions about Performance Max
- Google: Channel performance and more reporting coming to Performance Max
- Google Ads Help: More visibility and control in Performance Max (August 2025)
- Google Ads Help: Google Ads highlights of 2025
- Google Ads Help: Apply brand exclusions to Performance Max or Search campaigns
- Google Ads Help: How to use brand suitability features in Performance Max
- Google Ads Help: About your Google Ads account limits
- Google: Google Marketing Live 2026 highlights
