What Each Campaign Type Is Good At
Search campaigns show text ads against the keywords you choose. You see the queries, set match types, add negatives and control bids. They are the most direct way to capture people who are already looking for what you sell.
Performance Max uses your assets, product feed and conversion data to find customers across all of Google's inventory. It can reach people earlier — on YouTube or in Discover — and it is strong for e-commerce with a good Merchant Center feed. In exchange, you give up some control: you steer it with assets, audience signals and exclusions rather than with individual keywords.
"Search tells Google exactly what to buy. Performance Max tells Google what a good customer looks like and lets it go shopping. Both work — if the conversion data underneath is clean."
Start With Search (Usually)
For new accounts and lead-generation businesses, we usually start with tightly structured Search campaigns: brand, core high-intent terms, and competitor or category terms in separate campaigns with their own budgets. This produces clean conversion data quickly and tells you which messages and offers actually convert.
Performance Max relies heavily on that conversion history. Launched into an account with no reliable tracking or very few conversions, it tends to spend on cheap, low-intent inventory. As a rule of thumb, wait until conversion tracking is verified and the account produces a steady volume of conversions (30+ a month is a sensible bar) before giving PMax meaningful budget.
When Performance Max Earns Its Budget
- E-commerce with a healthy product feed — accurate titles, GTINs, good images and competitive prices. For Shopping inventory, the feed is the targeting.
- Accounts that have hit the ceiling of Search — you are capturing most of the available search demand and need incremental reach.
- Brands with strong creative — PMax needs images, videos and headlines to compete on visual placements. Weak assets mean weak results on YouTube and Display.
Guardrails That Stop PMax Wasting Money
Brand exclusions
Left alone, Performance Max will happily bid on your own brand name — traffic you would mostly win through organic results or a cheap brand Search campaign — and report it as a great ROAS. Apply brand exclusions and run brand separately in Search.
Negatives and search-term visibility
Google has added more controls to PMax over time, including campaign-level negative keywords and more search-term reporting. Use them: review the search-term insights regularly and exclude irrelevant themes, just as you would in Search.
Clean conversion goals
If a newsletter signup and a purchase are both counted as primary conversions, PMax will chase the cheaper one. Make sure only the actions you genuinely value are set as primary goals, with sensible values attached.
Search + PMax Checklist
- Brand, high-intent non-brand and competitor terms in separate Search campaigns
- Conversion tracking verified, with enhanced conversions switched on
- Only revenue-relevant actions set as primary conversions
- Brand exclusions applied to Performance Max
- Merchant Center feed reviewed: titles, GTINs, images, disapprovals
- Search-term insights reviewed and negatives added on a weekly rhythm
Bidding: Let the Data Decide
Smart bidding (Target CPA, Target ROAS, Maximise Conversion Value) works well once there is enough conversion data. Before that, it is guessing. We typically start new campaigns on Maximise Conversions or Maximise Conversion Value without a target, let them gather a few weeks of data, then introduce targets set close to what the campaign is already achieving — tightening gradually rather than all at once.
The goal is not to pick a winner between Search and Performance Max. It is to give each a clear job: Search captures the demand you can see; PMax finds the demand you cannot — and neither gets paid twice for the same customer.