Bath | 27.01.2025 | News

Google's Performance Max Updates: January 2025

Google's Performance Max Updates: January 2025

Love it or hate it, Performance Max (PMax) campaigns have taken the advertising world by storm following their launch in November 2021.

The black box nature of this campaign type meant that media buyers had initial reservations.

Before PMax, separate search, Shopping, Display & YouTube campaigns would be set up with their own budgets and targeting settings. PMax offered a new, machine learning-driven campaign type, targeting your audience across the complete Google Advertising network. This lack of control and insight on offer with PMax made marketers hesitant to fully adopt this new campaign type.

Fast forward to January 2025, and after a number of developments in 2024 (we’re looking at your placement & asset reporting, and brand exclusions), Google has just announced the biggest updates yet.

These include:

Enhanced Campaign Controls

  • Campaign-Level Negative Keywords: Rolling out to all advertisers, this feature lets you exclude specific queries to ensure brand suitability.
  • New Customer Acquisition Goal with High-Value Mode: Now available to all, this tool allows you to identify and prioritise high-value customers using Customer Match. Google's AI will then focus on acquiring new users who are likely to offer significant lifetime value.
  • Brand Exclusions for Retailers: Retail advertisers with product feeds can now apply brand exclusions specifically to Search text ads, while still capturing branded traffic through Shopping ads.
  • "URL Contains" Rules: Expanding to campaigns with product feeds, this feature enables targeting based on specific page categories within your website.
  • Demographic Exclusions and Device Targeting: New betas are on the horizon, offering the ability to exclude certain demographics and target specific devices, providing even more refined control over your campaigns.

Deeper Search Reporting

  • Search Themes Usefulness Indicator: This tool will help you understand which search themes are driving performance, allowing for more informed optimisation decisions.
  • Search Terms Insights Source Column: Gain clarity on where your search terms are originating, enhancing your ability to fine-tune your strategy.

Improved Asset Group Reporting

  • Segment and Download Performance Data: Easily break down and export asset group performance metrics, facilitating a more detailed analysis of your campaigns.

These new control levers, along with a greater level of transparency as to what is driving performance, will be welcomed by performance marketers far and wide. We’re looking forward to putting them to use immediately!

The announcement from Google can be found here.

Want to know more about any of these updates? Let us know and we can advise on what this means for your brand.

Google's Performance Max Updates: January 2025
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