Compare performance with an existing campaign

Once your Performance Max campaign has been serving you may want to compare the performance with your existing campaigns to understand where it is bringing value and where you might want to make improvements.

Before you compare performance of campaigns, it is recommended you run campaigns for at least 6 weeks to allow Google AI time to ramp up and curate sufficient data to compare performance.

Compare reports

Our guide on Performance Max reporting is the first place to start to understand which attributes and metrics are compatible with Performance Max and how to retrieve them using GoogleAdsService.SearchStream.

This section will cover which resources are comparable between Performance Max and other campaign types.

Note: Since Performance Max lets you unlock new audiences across Google's channels and networks, you might find that there may not be a direct comparison available between metrics you use in existing campaigns and those in Performance Max. Make sure to compare the performance of all existing campaigns with exposure to the audiences Performance Max can reach. This will ensure you see the whole picture. This guide will explain new reporting views to access performance data and the best mapping you can make between similar sources.

Asset groups instead of ad groups

Performance Max campaigns use the concept of asset groups which are a set of creatives that will be used to create an ad depending on the channel it's being served on. Similar to ad groups in other campaigns, you should use them to group assets, such as text, images and video, by a common theme. Google AI will assemble the assets in an asset group into all applicable ad formats for your goal and show the most relevant creative for your campaign.

Although the specific resources (asset group assets and ad group ads) in both types of group are different it is a good place to start investigating comparable performance especially if you used the data from an existing ad group to create an equivalent asset group.

Here are a few examples of resources and reporting views that are similar in Performance Max:

Your current resource or view	Performance Max similar resource or view	Notes
ad_group	asset_group	As both group by theme, metrics such as conversions can be compared for the theme.
ad_group_ad	asset_group	As a collection of assets are used to generate ads, some structural data can be found at this level, such as final_urls.
ad_group_criterion.listing_group	asset_group_listing_group_filter	Only for campaigns with product or listing groups.
product_group_view	asset_group_product_group_view	Only for campaigns with product feeds.

Search Terms Insights instead of Search Terms

If your existing campaign serves on the search network you are probably used to measuring the performance of search terms using the search_term_view. In Performance Max, search is only one of the possible networks your ads can serve, so instead, we have search term insights, to help you understand how your customers are searching and engaging with your business on Google. They analyze the search terms where your ads have appeared in the selected time period, grouping them into search categories and subcategories to provide you with key performance metrics for each.

The existing search_term_view used by other non-Performance Max campaigns, aggregates metrics the at ad group level. For search term insights metrics can be segmented to aggregate at appropriate level using either customer_search_term_insight (aggregate at the campaign level) or campaign_search_term_insight (aggregate at the ad group or asset group level).

Note: We recommend that you request the customer_search_term_insight data first and then refine your request using the campaign_search_term_insight. This is due to the volume of data required to be processed when segmenting at lower granularity. You may get a RESOURCE_EXHAUSTED error if you use campaign_search_term_insight too often on an account.

Your current resource or view	Performance Max similar resource or view	Notes
search_term_view	customer_search_term_insight	Segment by campaign to understand search term insights data across all campaigns
search_term_view	campaign_search_term_insight	Segment by asset group to understand search term insights data across at the equivalent level to ad groups provided by search term view in other non-Performance Max campaigns

Optimization & Troubleshooting

For more best practices for optimizing and troubleshooting Performance Max campaigns, see our Performance Max optimization and troubleshooting guide.