Google adds 6 new features to enhance “Performance Max” campaigns

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Users of Google Performance Max campaigns will notice six new capabilities in their accounts.

What is new? The following are the six new Performance Max campaign features:

Seasonality Adjustments

Seasonality adjustments are intended to help marketers to modify their bid strategy in response to anticipated variations in conversion rates for events such as Christmas sale, New year sale . Because Smart Bidding exists for predictable seasonal occurrences, advertisers should only employ the adjustments for changes that are otherwise out of the ordinary. The changes should be applied to long weekend promotions or sales that normally last between 1 and 7 days. Seasonality adjustments are now available to assist you inform your Performance Max bid strategy of variations in conversion rates that you anticipate.

Seasonality adjustments are now available for:

• Search, Shopping ads and Display ads that use the Target ROAS and Target CPA bid strategies
• Smart Shopping and Performance Max campaigns that use all bid strategies.

The Way it Operates –

When you make a seasonality adjustment, you’re planning a conversion rate adjustment (an increase or a decrease) to account for expected changes due to an approaching event.

For example, if you expect conversion rates to climb by 150% during a five-day sale, you may design a seasonality adjustment that boosts conversion rates by up to 150% for those five days. Smart Bidding can instantaneously return to pre-sales behaviour at the end of the sale.

Data exclusions

Data exclusions tell Smart Bidding to omit statistics from dates where you may have had conversion tracking issues that impacted the accuracy of your data. Website outages, glitches, or tagging issues are examples of this.

Data exclusions are now available for: Search, Display, Shopping and Performance max campaigns

The Way it Operates 

Data exclusions is an advanced tool that instructs Smart Bidding to ignore all data from periods when your conversion tracking was problematic.

Conversion difficulties that may affect Smart Bidding include anything that produces improper conversions or conversion values in Google Ads. 

For example, if you mistakenly removed a tag from your website, Google Ads may not have recorded your conversions. You can omit the data affected by the missing tag so that Smart Bidding is not impacted by any conversion declines.

Optimisation Score

The optimization score estimates how well your Google Ads account is configured to function. Scores range from 0 to 100 percent, with 100 percent indicating that your account is fully functional. In addition to the score, you will see a list of tips to assist you optimise each campaign. Each tip indicates how much your optimization score will be affected (in percentages) if you follow it. Optimization score assists you in discovering new ways to improve performance and is now fully operational for Performance Max campaigns.

Optimization score is now available for: Search, Display, Discovery, Video Action, and Shopping and performance max campaigns.

The Way it Operates

The optimization score and available recommendations can change depending on a variety of factors, including your preferences and ad ecosystem trends. When these changes occur, you may notice a different score and a new set of recommendations. Applying or rejecting these recommendations affects your account’s total optimization score.

Explanations

Explanations will help advertisers discover performance changes and diagnose problems. The feature will also make suggestions to assist enhance performance. If you have a product feed, the explanations will examine the status of the product as well as the top moving products, groups, and types.

Explanations are now available for:

• Search campaigns using manual CPC, enhanced CPC, enhanced CPC for value, target CPA, maximize conversions, maximize clicks bidding, maximize conversion value, and target ROAS
• App campaigns using target CPA
• Performance max campaigns

The Way it Operates

When assessing your efforts, it’s critical to recognise performance shifts so you can respond swiftly. Explanations help discover performance swings and diagnose problems. They can even make suggestions to assist you improve your performance in the future.

Diagnostics Insights

Google has launched diagnostic insights to assist marketers in ensuring that their Performance Max campaigns are properly configured. The insights are intended to help ensure that there are no delays or problems that result in poor engagement or disapproved ads. 

Diagnostic insights are now available for Performance Max campaigns to start and will expand to other campaign types over the next few months.

The Way it Operates

Diagnostic insights are a quick method to see where you are in the campaign serving process when you submit a campaign. Furthermore, they can automatically detect issues such as ad policy, invoicing, budget, bids, and more. When you choose “Show all campaign diagnostics,” you’ll get a more complete overview of the following:

• Account status
• Billing status
• Policy review
• Conversion tracking
• Campaign budget
• Bid strategy target
• Campaign status
• Ad strength

To assist you in resolving any issues that may arise, you will also receive personalised recommendations under the progress bar that make it simple to take action.

Advanced location targeting controls

Advertisers will now be able to target based on physical “Presence” or “Presence or interest” in campaign settings under “Location options”. Google has added advanced location exclusions for “Presence” or “Presence or interest” similar to what is offered in Smart Shopping campaigns currently for Performance Max ads for online sales with a product feed. Advertisers who receive spam clicks or leads should now be able to remove certain geographic areas from their targeting.

Advanced location options are now available for ads on the Search and Display Networks.

The Way it Operates

In Google Advertising, the default advanced location option will consider both physical location (where a user is or is frequently situated) and / or place of interest to determine where ads can show.

Google makes the best efforts to deliver ads to users that match your location settings through location targeting, which is based on a number of factors, including user settings, device information, and platform usage. Because these signals differ, 100 percent accuracy cannot be guaranteed in all circumstances.

Always review your overall performance data to ensure your settings are reaching your advertising objectives and make any necessary changes.

Final thoughts

Google is making an effort to provide marketers with greater transparency and control over their Performance Max campaigns. The new features are intended to assist advertisers in understanding and diagnosing issues, as well as improving performance.  While many advertisers believe that this is a positive move toward greater control and performance, they should be aware that the explanations and optimization score recommendations are only guidelines, not mandated changes. Always check your overall performance data to ensure that your settings are meeting your advertising goals and make any necessary modifications.