Performance Max Primer

Mariah Tang: Did I say that out loud? Welcome to “Did I Say that Out Loud?”, a podcast where Stu Eddins and Mariah Tang reflect on agency life and answer questions from our higher ed and healthcare clients about the latest in digital marketing, content and SEO.  

Stu Eddins: We’re going to talk about Performance Max. Excellent. This is a topic that’s concerning Google ads, Bing will, will, or has already followed suit by the time this gets published. It’s just a sure thing, but we’re gonna talk about it from the point of view of AI in advertising, and we’re talking about it from a point of view of how you can use it to your best advantage. So with that setup, let’s first off to find what the heck PMax, or Performance Max is. Performance Max is a largely AI driven ad product in Google. It does not necessarily replace other types of ads, but it’s a new type, and what it asks you to do is upload 15 different headlines like you would for a search ad. It asks for the body copy to be uploaded both long and short form, though not just a type of description, but two types, long and short. It wants you to upload images, 1520, images. If you have video, it loves video. Upload that too. The whole thing that we’re looking at here is a campaign that touches all the different properties. Google can serve an ad, so YouTube, Google, search, discovery, Gmail, all manner of places where Google is present. It has the ability to serve an ad.  

You’re going to manage that from inside one campaign. It sounds like a wonderful idea. It also sounds like something that the dry cleaner, who needs to advertise on the corner, who needs to advertise, is going to love it, because low effort, and yeah, it could be good for them, but we run into some issues with it, and we do want to talk about it a little bit. So from an AI point of view. What it does is it really relies strongly on the page you’re going to land the and click on. So Mariah, if you’ve written up this, this great big blog article for somebody, where you are filling a mid funnel position, and our job is to promote that, I don’t know that I’d use PMax, because it’s going to try to hit all parts of that conversion funnel. Its nature is between video and other display products like banner ads and so on. It’s going to try to reach from top to bottom, and your content may be very specific to a particular step in that decision process.  

But if what you want to do is get as many eyes on your content as possible, and you’re willing to not be too focused on conversions of some sort, yeah, maybe could help you. But I do want to hit a couple of things that you really need to pay attention to. I’ve described how you add all these assets as they’re called, into this ad campaign. The other thing is, you’re not going to add keywords to this thing. You’re going to add what are called Search themes, where, instead of saying target a specific pair or triad of words that somebody’s going to put in a search term. You’re describing what that person may be searching for. And searches is a convenient way, because it takes this concept of all the image ads, plus plus text, plus everything, and it puts it into something, into a context of words and word imagery. So Performance Max for its targeting is really going to focus on the landing page. That landing page is a vital part of it, just as vital as keywords were before, just as vital as as as the descriptions of geography and and any of the demographic data you may be used for targeting. The landing page is that important, if not more so. So take it back to the content example I just used. You have this wonderful blog article out there and you want to promote it, I may not pivot to Performance Max first, unless your blog article is itself a part of a known funnel where it’s going to lead people next step, next step, next step, in which case I will probably have campaigns set up for the other steps as well, but to be very tailored, very specific, very tightly grouped. That’s just a tactical idea. But Performance Max and AI, hand and glove, very much a joining at the hip of these two things. And you love mixing metaphors, which is just wonderful, but it is. You can’t have Performance Max without AI.  

That usually scares the pants off people. It’s black box. I can’t see what’s going on. If you’re a hardcore search marketer, you’re gonna look at Performance Max and give it the I’m spelling onions, look and walk away. It’s you go away. I don’t want this stuff. Yeah, we’re giving up control Performance Max. But not really, not entirely. This is the place where the human exercises control over AI Performance Max brings down into one, one focus, the concept we’ve talked about in the past about AI and how you can either embrace it, accept it, and let it guide the way, or you can realize that there are levers in AI that you can pull to guide where AI leads. In other words, much like a Okay, here we go, horse and buggy. The horse is leading the way, but going the direction the driver says to go. Think of AI in this instance, as that type of a visualization, the motor, the purpose, the drive behind things is that AI driven Performance Max, but you’re sitting there with reins. You have controls, and that’s a very important distinction. Performance Max is free and easy to use. It’s a radio button. When you’re setting up a campaign. Do you want to search campaign, display campaign? Performance Max? Click the button, simple as that. And quite frankly, most advertisers are going to click the button. They’re going to opt into Performance Max. They’re going to fill in the headlines that they’re requested to do. They’re going to fill in all the other assets of content, for text, of imagery, for display ads and so on. They’re gonna fill all that stuff in, and then they’re gonna stop because it’s AI. It’s just gonna go out and do its own thing.  

That’s not really the best thing to do, because if AI is available to everybody, and everybody uses it the same way, all that’s happened is we just created a new level playing field. Everybody’s going to get the same results. In fact, some people think, at least the people that I read, think that what may actually happen is because Google’s algorithm is designed to help each individual advertiser perform what we’re doing is we’re controlling our participation in the search. Excuse me, in advertising itself, over to the algorithm, and that algorithm, they just, by its nature, make sure that everybody has an opportunity to get the same level of success, which means, yeah, we don’t have winners, we don’t have losers, we just have a happy middle and sometimes that may be good enough. Again, let’s look at the dry cleaner on the corner. That may be what they want.  

None of the clients I work with really get turned on by that kind of concept that me too, concept that everybody has a fair share kumbaya types they just don’t get into that they’re looking for more than their fair share. May not be voiced that way, but they are, by nature, going to be slightly more competitive, because if they’re not the other the other advertisers eating their lunch. Yeah, they have to do this. They have to be competitive, if nothing else, but from a defensive point of view. 

Mariah Tang: So let me ask you this. Yeah, I’m always here to be the devil’s advocate. Sure, I like, I like this, if I was, if I was in charge of a campaign, this is not my wheelhouse, as we mentioned right before we jumped on here. It sounds very attractive. It sounds very easy and intuitive. Two questions for you. One, what do I do if I don’t have all of those assets that you listed off, the content to fill it out, the images, the video, and then two, if it’s, if it, you know, set it. You can let it run. You can tweak it as much as you want. Why would I want to? Why would I work with somebody else to do that, like, why wouldn’t I just set it and forget it?  

Stu Eddins: Yeah, and quite frankly, I’ll come to the Senate and forget it. As the second part in the order that you ask the questions, let’s go to the first part. It’s kind of interesting. Most clients we work with don’t have 610, 15 second videos. They may have long form videos that they originally purposed for their website or for television advertising, but they don’t have short format Google will take the images you create, you uploaded to it, the static images, and create a slideshow type ad that you add. And you know that used to be something that way, way back in maybe 2022, really sucked rocks. It was bad. It was, it was, it was a poor excuse. For a video ad. Well, they learned they got better. Google also turned on something for advertising that it’s had as a capability for a very long time. It can understand the image that it is looking at, if you will. The bot looks at it in because you’ve added descriptive information to it for years and years and years, it understands a little better the visual that’s in front of it, so it understands a little bit about the context of putting this slide after that slide, about the length of music to play as a background you’ve already told it with your short headlines, what the text is going to be that overlays the images, what the call to action is at the end of the of the video. So the construction of that video asset, which tends to be the most intimidating, can be taken care of for you. You should find a way to cut your own video. That’s the only way you’re going to make sure it’s your message the way you want it stated specifically in this order, A, B, C, D, may turn that around and they’re self-developed. Honestly, it makes a lot of it’s very important, from a brand point of view, to influence how the video is set up. From the consumer’s point of view, it’s information coming at them. They don’t know that it’s in the wrong order. The important thing is, they got the message. They know what to do because there’s a call to action and they do it. I don’t know necessarily that that brand order is terribly important at this point in their decision making can be. The other thing is that Google has turned this on for certain campaign types in Performance Max you can use AI to generate the still images. They’ve started experimenting with that. It’s in kind of beta for certain types of Performance Max campaigns right now. So you don’t even really have to have assets of happy students sitting in classes, or a patient having a serious conversation with their with their smiling doctor. You just ask for it. It will build it for you. I don’t know that that’s going to be a a terrific tool to use in the future, because what color lab coat is that doctor wearing? What does it say over their breast pocket? As far as the brand of the of the organization, details like that are not going to be part probably of an AI generated image. 

Mariah Tang: Consumers already know when things are AI and they call you out for it, so probably just get your own. 

Stu Eddins: Quite frankly, I let’s go back to that name and logo over the breast pocket of the lab coat. They’ve been smudged out and doesn’t make sense, they know immediately that it’s an AI generated image. Yeah, yeah. So whose leg you’re pulling here, but again, you can use stock photography, and that’s probably the best way to do it. So as far as those assets you don’t currently have, there are workarounds for them. Take a small amount of effort, but you’re going to wind up with something in Performance Max that is a more robust campaign. Now, your second point, why would I hire somebody else to do this for me? This is, this is where it gets interesting. How much time during the day does a client who is who manages a stakeholder’s service line or program or whatever. How much time during the day do they have dedicate to optimizing campaigns? Well, it would seem the Performance Max reduces the load of optimization. It would seem the Performance Max also makes the campaign set up in the beginning easier.  

And the answer to both those suppositions is, yes, it does, it can, but that’s that level playing field. You are not going to stick out on a search on a search results page, if all you do is rely on Google, Bing or whoever to come up with your ad content, just doing the bare minimum differently, right? Yeah, and that’s what’s going on now in regular display and regular search. There’s no imagination going into it at all. The successful advertiser today, it’s their own creativity in the successful advertiser today uses the controls that they have, and that will not change going forward with Performance Max, you have a tremendous amount of control. A lot of that control comes in negative form. Here, here are the negative keywords. Here are the negative placements. You shape the campaign, no, you shape the targeting that the AI is going to is going to go out and and explore. You have a lot of controls about how AI is going to perform and where it’s going to look, and if you don’t exercise it, you’re going to have the broad top to bottom ad experience. That is the norm, the new normal. There’s also the issue of. Okay, is Performance Max? All you need? And what we have found is the answer to that question is very much No. We have found, particularly when we are in a direct-action type of campaign.  

Direct action means there’s an outcome we need to have X. It can be a lead form generation. It can be an appointment made, meaning there’s something that happens that says this ad click was successful. When we have that objective, you have found that the best thing is the combination of Performance Max in the search campaign and what you do the way you set it up. There’s a little bit of secret sauce, a little bit of English that everybody puts on the ball. You know, there’s something that goes on here that makes it unique to the advertising party, whether it’s in house or a vendor. One thing that we have found is really, really beneficial is you take the search ad in the beginning and you use it with some broad match keyword terms and so on to discover how people actually search for the stuff that you’re offering. Use the search campaign as your bird dog to find out where the mind of the consumer is, and take that information and feed it into the AI that is Performance Max. And then eventually what you will do, and eventually means you’re averaging a conversion a day, 30 conversions a month, type stuff when you’ve done that for a couple of months in a row, you kind of morph that search campaign more into the exact match on brand. This is your defensive position. This is what’s saying that if somebody searches for your name plus your service, they get you and your competitors may be advertising on the exact same thing, your brand name, your service.  

But several things are in play here. First off, you can put really, really high bid on that. And for a while your competitors can go, well, shoot, they put a $20 bid on that. I got to bid $21 and after a couple, after maybe a couple of weeks, or you go, Oh, heck no, I can’t afford that. And without doing anything, you now own it. Yeah, okay, that’s a fast way to go about it, and can be expensive upfront. But more importantly, Google realizes that your brand name is yours. You don’t have to bid highly for it. The other guy has to bid a lot to participate in that search because they’re not relevant. They are not your brand. So that search campaign is taking care of your branding message, which is strange thing to think about for search if you have been doing it for a while, but because you’re using brand name either as exact match with your service names, or you’re still including some broad match terms in there that are very specific to the description of your product.  

Search is no longer about exploration. It’s no longer about going out and conquesting, if you will, or market development. It’s focused on purpose, and you’ve turned over that, that conquesting, that exploration, that finding the unknown prospect, Performance Max, which is able to do that much better because its entire job is instant iteration. I made this combination. I fired it at this person. It didn’t work. I won’t do that to that type person again. I’ll come up with something else, and it will mix and match your assets, your headlines, your images, your all this stuff until it finds the very best combination of stuff that makes somebody like Mariah take action, not you specifically, but somebody like you, and you might have in the back your mind that Google really knows a lot about anybody who uses their services for more than a day and a half, so understanding that maybe You are Mariah, but there’s a there’s a segment of the population.  

It’s very much like you. Gives that look alike audience that was taken away from us a year ago. It gives us the ability to remarket because you’ve come to the website, if you’ve done it on Chrome, and you’re signed in, Google kind of knows that too. It’s taking all the stuff that it could no longer give us because it’s third party information, but first party to Google and using it for your benefit. Behind AI, Google giveth and Google taketh away. 

Mariah Tang: Yeah. 

Stu Eddins: Or somebody said, yes, I’ve changed the rules. Pray, I don’t do it again. That’s, that’s kind of what the it feels like sometimes the marketing gods do, but yeah, it it is. If you put an AI company in the corner, they’re going to, excuse me, a tech company in the corner. They’re going to feel figure a tech way out of the corner. And this is that they can use AI on our behalf. They can use their information on our behalf, but we can tell it what we want it to do. We can be very specific about, no, don’t ever do that again. And yes, sometimes the action is corrective. And if you have to take corrective action, how much time do you want that action to go on before you correct it? That’s what the vendor’s job is. That’s why you may not set up that campaign on your own. You. You don’t have the time, you don’t have the tools to go out and constantly monitor this stuff and send up a red flag when something is spending the wrong direction. So there’s reasons to do it in house, but it’s going to take no less effort than just doing a regular search campaign compared to the display campaign. The effort is going to be much the same if you don’t want run of the mill performance. 

Mariah Tang: So at the very least, work with somebody who knows PMax, who understands its foibles and all the nuances, at least while you’re setting up your initial campaigns, getting that going, working through the optimization process more than once to get your get your bearings. Yeah. 

Stu Eddins: And I would also point out that every new campaign initiative needs to have that same level of setup, because each one is different. In our higher education clients, a business degree has different requirements, or is a different audience yet than somebody who’s in the Health Sciences section, they’re going to have different points of interest. They’re going to have different words that motivate them. It comparatively easy to get into an MBA program right now, but if you want to get into a nursing program, better sign up now for next year’s registration period. It’s just that that much of a market swing back and forth, and three years from now, maybe MBAs are impossible to get into. So yeah, it’s not just managing the technology. It’s bringing the knowledge of what’s going on in to manage the technology. And that isn’t something that’s static. It will change, and then Performance Max itself will change. It is just past beta. It was opened up as a non-beta product in recent memory, like a year, little over a year ago.  

So it’s still got a lot of change in heaven. Anyway. That’s just some of our thinking on Performance Max. I think we’re going to find that it is going to be the, probably the campaign of choice over the next year or two, and may become the only campaign we can choose soon after that. I think it’s going to have to go that way. Simply, as more AI comes into search itself, as more AI comes into how we access content. I think we have to this is going to be the foundation of whatever advertising tool we’re going to have to address those future needs of connecting with people in the correct moment. And what we think of a search results page may not look the same at all in 2027 but we still probably want to reach out to those people who are searching for the stuff that that’s relevant to our service that can help.   

Mariah Tang: Content, semantics, intention, it always comes around, isn’t it? 

Stu Eddins:  It does because the technology changes, but the people don’t. It’s what they need. 

Mariah Tang: Thanks for listening to “Did I Say That Out Loud?” with Stu Eddins and Mariah Tang. Check out the show notes for more information about today’s episode. And if you have any questions, concerns or comments, hit us up anytime at stamats.com.