As Google’s Performance Max (PMax) campaign functionality continues to evolve over time with new features and enhanced capabilities, it is increasingly important to stay in tune with how to best leverage this powerful tool in the current environment.
PMax mastery involves feeding the AI high-quality creative assets, precise audience signals, and robust search themes while utilizing performance insights to continue optimizing over time.
2026 PMax Strategy Guide (6 Key Elements)
1. Prioritize Structure
One mistake that advertisers often make is including all products in a single asset group. Creating your structure around themed asset groups allows the algorithms to optimize more effectively with a much higher level of relevance.
2. High-Quality Creative Assets
Performance Max (PMax) campaigns serve across Search, Shopping, YouTube, Display, and Gmail. In order to maximize success across these platforms, you should provide a full range of high-quality creatives, including both images and video, covering all available sizes and dimensions. PMax thrives on diverse, high-value assets to create higher levels of ad relevance across the channels. The “Ad Strength” indicator can be used to help ensure you have enough asset variety (text, images, and video) in every asset group. The ability to use Nano Banana and other AI products, and VEO 3.1 to create videos means no one should be lacking in asset creation. And adding your own videos is preferable to allowing Google to auto-create them, so take the time to create and add videos. Check out our recent in-house workshop on using VEO 3.1 to create videos.
3. Effective Audience Signals
Use Customer Match lists and custom segments based on search intent to help guide the AI toward high-value potential customers more quickly. Google has now rolled out an additional feature to also allow audience list exclusions, which can help further refine targeting.
4. Guide AI With “Search Themes”
As of 2026, search themes are more critical than ever. Google recently expanded this feature to allow up to 50 search themes per asset group, significantly increasing from the previous 25 limit. These serve as signals to better inform the algorithms of user intent and fill gaps that may be missed by your landing page or feed data.
5. Smart Bidding Tactics
Start with Maximize Conversions or Maximize Conversion Value without a strict Target ROAS or CPA initially. Allow campaigns to gather data for approximately two to three weeks. Once you’ve achieved steady performance with Smart Bidding, you can begin layering in targets to better control costs, but being too restrictive early on can limit the campaign’s learning phase.
6. Optimization & Control
There are several key elements that can be utilized to help support ongoing optimization and control.
- Search Query Review / Negative Keywords: Google has now added transparency with access to search query data. This allows for the opportunity to add search query reviews as a routine part of your ongoing maintenance. Incorporating negative keywords to prevent spend on irrelevant traffic and eliminating specific searches that are performing poorly will help further optimize your PMax results.
- Asset Management: Monitor individual asset performance and strength scores, systematically replacing weaker assets based on their results relative to the other competing assets by introducing new alternatives for testing over time.
- Display Placements: Review and exclude ineffective placements to limit undesired exposure and protect brand safety. We have found that this information may not always be available in every account, but when it is provided, the individual placements are shown along with performance metrics in “Where ads showed” under the “Insights and Reports” section.
- Channel Breakdown: This reporting feature provides performance data across all of the PMax channels, including Search, Shopping, YouTube, Display, and Gmail. These channel-level insights can help guide strategy decisions around modifications to structure, which may include either full assets (product feed, text, image, video), text and creative assets only, or product feed only, depending on their relative performance.
Other New Performance Max Features
Google is rolling out a new “Ads Using Video” segment in Performance Max reporting, letting advertisers compare performance specifically from ads that included video and those that didn’t. This adds a new level of visibility that PMax previously did not offer, making it easier to evaluate how video contributes to performance without changing campaign setup.
With this update, advertisers can more easily compare video vs. static performance and make more informed decisions. If the video is outperforming, it’s a signal to invest more in production. If not, it may indicate consideration for a shift in how brands allocate budget and creative resources.
There’s also a new Budget Reporting feature where you can see how a PMax campaign is pacing against budget and what it’s forecasted to spend for the month. To access this feature, go to the “Campaigns” tab, hover over a campaign’s daily budget, and click View budget report.
Experience-Based Use Case Applications
Here are three of the ways that I’ve successfully used PMax campaigns with my clients.
- PMax Feed Only: I believe there’s merit in testing Performance Max product feed only scenarios rather than just utilizing standard Google Shopping, where you have an interest in promoting only product listing ads. PMax offers the advantage of a richer data environment, broader matching plus intent modeling, and the option to utilize a Maximize Conversion Value bid strategy, which is not offered through conventional Google Shopping campaigns.
- URL Expansion: In my opinion, PMax URL expansion can be worth testing, especially if you’re struggling to generate volume. This will help boost traffic and conversion volume by finding more relevant landing pages based on user search intent. One caution here would be to ensure you’re routinely reviewing the expanded landing pages for potential exclusion with diligent frequency in your search query reviews to ensure the exposure is not attracting undesirable search traffic.
- Competitor Conquesting: I’ve found that Performance Max campaigns can be an extremely effective tool for generating new customers through a competitor conquesting approach. By utilizing carefully structured custom audiences and search themes tailored toward shoppers who have been searching for competitors with a similar product offering, you can create awareness of your Brand with a qualified audience who are already in the market for your products. Performance Max allows you to gain exposure to these valuable audiences across multiple channels, which helps reinforce your messaging. This type of campaign has frequently shown very positive outcomes in my experience.
Unlocking the Full Power of Performance Max
Mastering Performance Max in 2026 requires balancing AI efficiency with human strategy. PMax is no longer just about automation; it’s now a matter of guiding that automation with high-quality data and creatives. Maintain clean data, keep your creative fresh, and your audience signals accurate. By mastering these key elements, you will be best positioned to turn Performance Max from what was once a risky “black-box” experiment into a core growth and profit engine within your digital advertising program.
