How to Control Performance Max (Without Breaking It)
Use audience signals, asset group structure, and brand exclusions to guide PMax while letting the AI optimize within your constraints.
Why This Matters
Performance Max works best with guidance, not complete automation. Smart advertisers use the available controls to steer the algorithm toward profitable outcomes.
How To Implement
1. Use Audience Signals aggressively: Upload customer lists, add remarketing lists, and include In-Market audiences relevant to your buyers.
2. Create separate Asset Groups for different product categories or themes.
3. Exclude brand terms (request via Google rep) to protect brand search budget.
4. Add negative keywords at account level (scripts or API) to block irrelevant traffic.
5. Use URL expansion controls to prevent PMax from sending traffic to wrong pages.
6. Monitor Insights tab weekly - it shows which audiences and search themes are driving results.
Pro Tip
Create a 'Search Themes' exclusion asset group with no final URL expansion. This forces PMax to only use your specified landing pages for that product line.
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