Performance Max: how the campaign works in 2026

How Performance Max works

In a Search campaign you choose keywords, bids and ads yourself. In Performance Max you supply building blocks, and Google assembles them for each auction. Google Ads Help lists the inputs:

For a store, the feed carries the most weight. Titles, categories and attributes decide which searches your products show for. If you have not set it up yet, start with what is Google Shopping.

What changed in 2025 and 2026

For years Performance Max had a reputation as a black box. Google added a long list of controls in 2025, summarized in Google Ads Help on August 7, 2025 and in Google's 2025 highlights:

• Campaign-level negative keywords and negative keyword lists, up to 10,000 negative keywords per Performance Max campaign.
• Search terms reports for all Performance Max campaigns, including in the API.
• Search themes raised from 25 to 50 per asset group.
• Device and age targeting fully available, gender targeting in beta.
• New customer reporting with fewer conversions labeled Unknown, plus a column for new customer acquisition cost.
• Retention goals that let you bid for lapsed customers.
• Asset reporting with impressions, clicks, cost and conversions per asset.
• Channel performance report across Search, YouTube, Display, Discover, Gmail, Maps and search partners.

The search terms report gives you the most. Open it once a week, sort by cost and check the most expensive queries without a conversion. Queries without purchase intent, such as how-to, jobs or free, go on a negative keyword list that you apply to every Performance Max campaign.

August 17, 2026: targets now hold

On August 17, 2026 Google changed how target-based bid strategies behave when a campaign is limited by budget. In Google's words, these campaigns now perform more consistently toward your bid target, including when you change the budget. Performance Max is included. Google's example: a campaign with a $10 Target CPA that achieved $5 will now trend toward $10.

The same applies to a Target ROAS. A budget-limited campaign that beat its ROAS target will drift toward the target you set. A target set at break-even now steers the campaign to break-even. Google recommends reviewing targets with the Bid Target Adjustment Tool, and keeping a daily budget comfortably above average daily spend.

Which control affects which inventory

The new controls do not reach every channel. A negative keyword keeps your ad off Search and Shopping inventory but has no effect on YouTube placements. This is what Google Ads Help says about each lever:

To keep your own brand out of Performance Max, use a brand exclusion with a brand list for your store name. Then run brand searches in a separate Search campaign, where you see and control them.

Performance Max next to Search and Shopping campaigns

When Performance Max runs in the same account as other campaigns, Google follows fixed rules to decide which one serves:

• A Search campaign with a keyword that exactly matches the query, or its spell-corrected version, is preferred over Performance Max.
• If no keyword matches exactly, the campaign with the higher Ad Rank serves.
• Against Standard Shopping, Display and Demand Gen campaigns, Ad Rank decides as well.

That leads to a simple rule: book the searches you want to control as exact match keywords in a Search campaign. Performance Max covers the rest.

How brand searches inflate your ROAS

Performance Max also serves on searches for your store name unless you exclude them. Those shoppers already know you and often buy without an ad. Their revenue still lands in the campaign's ROAS.

An example: a campaign reports $60,000 in revenue from $10,000 in spend, a ROAS of 6. The search terms report shows that $24,000 of it came from brand searches that cost $1,000.

At a 30% contribution margin and a 15% return rate, the store's break-even ROAS is 1 ÷ (0.30 × 0.85) = 3.92. You can check your own with the break-even ROAS calculator. With ROAS 6 the campaign looks strong. The part that finds new buyers runs at ROAS 4.0 and earns $180 on $9,000 in spend.

Split brand from non-brand: a brand exclusion in Performance Max, a separate Search campaign for brand, and reporting by new customers. Then you see what the campaign adds. The same applies when you compare your account with Google Ads benchmarks: a blended ROAS flatters you.

How to read the channel performance report

You find the report under Campaigns, then Insights and reports, then channel performance. It shows results for Google Search, Display, YouTube, Discover, Maps, Gmail and search partners, for any date range after June 6, 2025. You can split it by format, such as ads using product data and ads using video. A status column flags channels as eligible, limited, not eligible or missing required assets.

Three questions to ask of it:

1. What share of cost goes to Search and ads using product data, and what share to Display and video?
2. Where does cost come without conversions, and is that on purpose, for example for reach?
3. Does the status column flag a problem, such as missing assets for a channel?

The report counts conversions with Google's attribution. Whether that revenue reaches your store, and stays after returns, you check in your shop backend.

When Performance Max fits, and three common mistakes

Google recommends Performance Max when you have clear conversion goals, want to reach all Google channels from one campaign and want more reach than keyword-based Search campaigns give you. For a store, three conditions come on top:

• Conversion tracking with order value. Without correct values, Google optimizes on the wrong numbers.
• A maintained feed. Weak product data costs you visibility in Shopping.
• A ROAS target above break-even. Otherwise the campaign buys revenue at a loss, and since August 2026 it will aim right at that target.

Three mistakes we see in accounts

1. One campaign for the whole catalog. Products with 20% and 60% contribution margin share one ROAS target. Google moves budget to the products with the most revenue, whatever they leave you.
2. Brand inside the prospecting campaign. The ROAS looks great while the new-customer part barely breaks even.
3. No look at the channel report. If much of the budget goes to Display and video while sales come from Search and Shopping, you only see it there.

Performance Max does not replace account structure. Brand, new customers and products with different margins need their own campaigns or asset groups. If you would rather not build that yourself, a Google Ads agency takes it over. We measure our own results in the shop backend, minus returns: see the conditions.