By KEY TAKEAWAYS
- Performance Max wastes budget mostly through four leaks: branded traffic you'd win anyway, weak or mixed-theme asset groups, audience signals treated as targeting, and bidding on low-quality conversions.
- Google now gives you the controls to plug those leaks: brand exclusions, campaign-level negative keywords, search terms reporting and channel-level reporting.
- The biggest lever is the signal you feed the algorithm: optimize toward conversion value and real business outcomes (qualified leads, profit), not form fills.
Performance Max has a reputation: you hand Google a budget, it hands you a report, and somewhere between the two a chunk of money quietly vanishes.
That reputation is partly deserved. Performance Max (PMax) optimizes exactly what you tell it to, across Search, Shopping, YouTube, Display and more. If you tell it a form fill is gold, it will find you a lot of cheap form fills. If it can bid on your own brand name, it will happily take credit for customers who were already coming.
The good news: Google has added real controls over the last couple of years. Here’s how we’d audit and tighten a PMax campaign, in the order that usually saves the most money.
How we wrote this: feature facts come from Google’s own announcements and help pages (linked below). The audit order and the “what we do” advice are our experience, labeled as such. We’ve kept to what’s documented and left out unverified claims. Features roll out in stages, so check your own account.
Where does Performance Max actually waste budget?
Four places, mostly: branded searches you’d win anyway, asset groups that mix unrelated themes, audience signals mistaken for targeting, and bidding toward low-quality conversions. Fix those before you touch bids or budgets. In our experience, this audit order finds more waste than any amount of bid fiddling.
| Leak | Symptom | Fix |
|---|---|---|
| Branded traffic | “Great ROAS” that falls apart when you look at new customers | Brand exclusions + a separate brand Search campaign |
| Mixed asset groups | One group, ten products, bland ads | One asset group per theme or audience |
| Signal confusion | Expecting PMax to stay inside your audience | Treat signals as hints; judge by search terms and channels |
| Low-value conversions | Lots of leads, few sales | Value-based bidding with real outcomes |
How do I stop PMax from eating my brand traffic?
Use brand exclusions. Google’s brand settings let you exclude brands (including variations and misspellings) so your campaign avoids those searches, and the exclusion covers placements beyond Search: Shopping ads won’t show for excluded brand searches, Display won’t appear on competitor sites and YouTube won’t run beside competitor content (Google Ads Help). For retailers with product feeds, Google has also described applying exclusions to just the Search text ads while keeping branded traffic for Shopping (Google).
Why it matters: branded clicks are cheap and convert well, so they flatter PMax’s headline numbers. Our approach is to exclude your own brand from PMax and run a dedicated brand Search campaign you control. Then compare blended results, not just the PMax line. Some branded demand will simply move to the Search campaign; that’s the point.
What do I do with the search terms report?
Read it weekly. Google added search terms reporting to Performance Max, matching the granularity you get in Search and Standard Shopping campaigns. Google’s suggested uses: write new text assets for your best search terms, and apply campaign-level negative keywords or brand exclusions to terms that aren’t a fit (Google).
A simple weekly routine:
- Sort search terms by spend, then by conversions.
- Flag terms with spend and no conversions that are clearly off-topic. Add them as negatives.
- Flag terms that convert well and don’t appear in your headlines. Write assets that use that language.
- Flag competitor and branded terms. Decide deliberately whether you want them.
How should I structure asset groups?
One theme per asset group. An asset group is a set of creative (headlines, descriptions, images, logos, video) built around a theme or audience. When a group tries to cover your whole catalog, the ads get generic and the system has little to learn from.
What we do with clients: split asset groups by product category, offer or buyer type, then write each group’s headlines in the customer’s own words (pulled from reviews, sales calls and the search terms report). Replace weak assets once Google’s asset-level reporting shows which ones aren’t pulling their weight. Google notes asset reporting now includes impressions, clicks and cost alongside conversions.
If you don’t have strong video, add it. Left to its own devices, the system may auto-generate video from your images, and that rarely beats something you made on purpose.
How should I use audience signals?
As a head start, not a fence. Audience signals tell PMax where to begin looking, such as your customer list, site visitors or segments that match your buyers. They don’t limit who can see your ads, and the system will serve outside them if it expects conversions.
Practical rules:
- Feed it your best customers (a Customer Match list of people who bought, ideally weighted toward high-value ones), not “everyone who ever visited.”
- Add search themes that describe what buyers actually search for. Google caps search themes at 25 per asset group.
- Don’t judge a signal by whether the audience shows up in reports. Judge it by whether new, qualified customers arrive.
How do I fix the conversions PMax optimizes for?
Give it value, not just volume. PMax uses Smart Bidding strategies such as Maximize conversions and Maximize conversion value. If every conversion counts the same, a newsletter signup trains the system the same way a $5,000 order does.
For e-commerce, pass real transaction values. For lead generation, the leverage is offline conversions: import what happens after the form fill (qualified lead, booked call, closed deal) with a value attached. In our experience this single change moves PMax from “cheap leads” to “leads that look like customers” faster than any creative test.
A checklist before you trust any PMax number:
- Conversion actions are deduplicated and only count what matters.
- Values reflect revenue or lead quality, not placeholders.
- You can separate new-customer from returning-customer results.
- Final URL expansion is a conscious choice (it is on by default and can send traffic to pages other than the one you specified). Use URL exclusions for pages you don’t want.
- Brand exclusions and negative keywords are set.
How do I read where the money actually went?
Use channel-level reporting. Google introduced reporting that shows how a PMax campaign delivers across its channels and inventory, with a visualization of which channels contribute to your conversion goals (Google). Pair it with the search terms report.
Our read: if most of your spend lands on one channel (say, Display or low-intent placements) while conversions come from Search, that’s your cue to tighten assets, signals and conversion quality before raising budget. Treat that as a diagnostic, not a verdict; channel mix varies by business.
A 30-day PMax cleanup plan
| Week | Focus | Output |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Measurement | Clean conversion list, values, offline imports planned |
| 2 | Brand and negatives | Brand exclusions on, brand Search campaign live, negatives added |
| 3 | Structure and assets | Asset groups split by theme, weak assets replaced |
| 4 | Review | Search terms + channel report review, decide scale or cut |
Want the full funnel view that sits around your ads (landing page, follow-up, reporting)? Our free Funnel Template maps it out, and our Meta Ads creative guide covers the creative-testing mindset that applies here too. If you’d like help auditing an account, see our Google Ads and paid media services or read the full-funnel marketing playbook.
What to do this week
- Audit your conversion actions. List every one PMax optimizes toward and remove or demote the ones that don’t resemble a sale.
- Turn on brand exclusions for your own brand and launch a separate brand Search campaign. Compare blended results for two weeks.
- Export the search terms report and add negatives for the clearly irrelevant spend.
- Split your biggest asset group into two themed groups, with headlines written in your customers’ language.
- If you generate leads, plan how to import one offline conversion (a qualified lead or booked call) with a value.
PMax isn’t broken. It’s just very literal. Give it better instructions and it stops being a black box and starts being a decent employee.
Frequently asked questions
Is Performance Max worth it in 2026?
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It can be, if your conversion tracking is accurate and you give it strong assets and clear value signals. It tends to disappoint when it is fed low-quality conversions or left to bid on your own brand name. Treat it as a machine that optimizes exactly what you measure, then audit what it actually delivers.
How do I stop Performance Max from spending on my brand name?
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Use brand exclusions at the campaign level so the campaign avoids searches for your own brand, then run a separate brand Search campaign you control. Check the search terms report afterwards to confirm branded queries have dropped. Compare blended results too, because some branded demand will simply move to your Search campaign.
Are audience signals the same as targeting?
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No. Audience signals are hints that tell Performance Max where to start looking, such as your customer lists or high-intent segments. They don't limit who can see your ads, so the system can and does serve outside them. Use them to speed up learning, not to restrict reach.
How many asset groups should I create?
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Create one asset group per distinct product category, offer or audience theme, so each group's text, images and video tell one coherent story. Avoid dumping everything into a single group. Start with two to four well-built groups and expand only when you can supply genuinely different creative for each.
What is value-based bidding in Performance Max?
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Value-based bidding means optimizing toward conversion value rather than conversion count, using a strategy like Maximize conversion value. You pass a value with each conversion, ideally tied to revenue or lead quality from your CRM, so the system learns which customers are worth more.
Sources
- Google, Channel performance and more reporting coming to Performance Max
- Google, New ways to multiply your results with Performance Max
- Google Ads Help, About brand settings for Search and Performance Max
- Google Ads Help, About the search terms report in Performance Max
- Google Ads Help, Multiply conversions with Performance Max
WRITTEN BY
Junaid Mubashar
Founder of an AI-native growth agency. Junaid plans and runs full-funnel marketing (SEO and AI search, paid social, Google Ads) and builds the AI workflows and agents that automate it. Everything on this blog is tested with real campaigns before we recommend it.
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