Performance Max
Also called PMax.
Google's goal-based campaign type, which runs one campaign across Search, Display, YouTube, Discover, Gmail and Maps from a set of assets and an audience signal, with Google deciding placement, targeting and creative.
Why it matters
It is the campaign type where a value feed matters most and is checked least. With targeting, placement and creative all automated, the conversion signal is close to the only steering left, and a flat one steers nowhere.
What goes wrong
Lead generation is where Performance Max earns its worst reputation, and usually deservedly: pointed at an unqualified form-fill goal it is extremely good at finding people who fill in forms and indifferent to whether any of them buy. The volume arrives, the cost per lead falls, and sales quietly stops answering. Feeding it real lead values is the difference between that and the same automation working for you, because it is optimising toward whatever you told it to count.
How to check it on your own account
Look at cost per lead and close rate side by side for the same period. Performance Max improving the first while the second falls is the signature, and it is invisible if you only report the first.
Next to this
- AI MaxGoogle AdsNewAn opt-in setting for Search campaigns, announced by Google in 2025, that bundles its AI matching and creative features together: broader query matching beyond your keywords, automated text and asset generation, and landing page selection.
- Maximize conversion valueGoogle AdsThe bid strategy that spends the budget to bring back the highest total conversion value rather than the highest count.
- Value spreadHow much the values you send differ from one another, usually read as the ratio between the top and the bottom of the range.
- Advantage+MetaMeta's family of automated campaign products, which hand targeting, placement and creative selection decisions to Meta's models.
The rest of this step
Measure this on your own data
The diagnostic reads a CRM export in your browser and reports your volume, your match rate and the spread between your leads against the thresholds in this glossary. Nothing is uploaded and no account is needed.