Enhance a campaign

After creating your Performance Max campaign from information in an existing campaign, you may be interested in enhancing the campaign to take advantage of some features available to Performance Max. Here are a selection of enhancements you can choose to add to your campaign.

Add additional assets

Some campaigns, such as those targeting search, display or online sales, might not include all the asset types that Performance Max can utilize. Assets are units of shareable data, such as images, videos, headlines, and descriptions, that are used to construct different types of ads across multiple formats. Such assets are available to Performance Max and can be used to serve ads that existing campaigns might not have been able to reach.

Assets can include the following:

Text

• Headlines
• Final URLs
• Descriptions
• Business names
• Call to actions

Image

• Marketing images
• Logos

Videos

• YouTube videos

Note: It is important to understand which assets are required for Performance Max to operate and which can be optionally added to improve performance and reach. See the asset requirements guide.

To understand how assets are used for Performance Max, see assets and asset requirements.

Bidding

Performance Max uses Smart bidding. These bid strategies use Google AI to optimise for conversions or conversion value in each and every auction — a feature known as "auction-time bidding". These include the following:

• Maximize conversions (with an optional target CPA)
• Maximize conversion value (with an optional target ROAS)

When upgrading from an existing campaign, it is worth considering which of these best suits your business needs. It is also worth evaluating your goals to make sure the bidding strategy you choose can optimize towards that goal.

For more information on how these can be applied to Performance Max, see our guides on conversion goals and campaign creation.

Targeting

Performance Max automatically optimises targeting to improve performance in the ever-changing advertising landscape. Although restrictive targeting which you might be using in your existing campaigns is not supported in Performance Max campaigns, you can provide signals that help Google AI optimise for your selected goals. Here are examples of signals:

Audience signals

Audience signals let you share demographics, interests, and behaviors of your customers to help Google AI find the most relevant audience. In Performance Max they can be applied to an asset group to let you specify which audience is most likely to convert for your asset group.

Note: Performance Max campaigns can show ads to relevant audiences outside of the signals that you provide, based on what Google AI thinks will best meet your performance goals.

See our guide on integrating audience signals using the Google Ads API.

Search themes

Search themes in Performance Max let you provide Google AI with information about what your customers are searching for and which topics lead to conversions for your business.

Here are a few examples where search themes can be helpful if you have knowledge about your business or customers that AI can't easily or quickly learn:

• Your landing page doesn't have complete details or the latest updates about the products and services you offer.
• You've just expanded into a new market or launched a new product or service where your campaigns don't have extensive performance history.
• You are launching a new promotion or sale for the holiday season where you don't have extensive performance history.
• You want to expand your reach within Performance Max, including on Search inventory in Performance Max, and ensure you have comprehensive coverage on important business themes.
• You want to provide important information to help your campaign ramp up and optimize performance faster.

Note: You can add up to 25 search themes per asset group. They should be unique, so avoid providing similar themes such as 'car' and 'automobile' since these reach the same audience. For more information about using Search themes and the policies associated with them, see this help center guide.

You can find which new search terms you're reaching based on the themes you've added by looking at the search term insights report at a campaign or customer level.

See our guide on integrating search themes using the Google Ads API.