What is Performance Max (PMax) in Google Ads?

It’s been over 3 years since I even updated my last post about Google Ads, How to Audit a Google Search Ads Account. Google Ads has seen significant changes over the past few years, such as privacy-focused updates, additional options for ad customization, demand gen and performance max campaigns. In this post, I will deep-dive into the state of performance max campaigns on Google Ads in 2025.

What are Performance Max (PMax) Campaigns?

Performance Max, or “PMax” campaigns take the historical conversion data in your Google Ads account, then uses smart bidding to optimize ad performance. Google's algorithm shows your ads to similar audiences across all of Google’s advertising networks (YouTube, Display, Search, Discover, Gmail, etc.) to get you new conversions. 

PMax can be highly effective if you have enough historical conversion data, but if your Google Ads account is brand new, don’t go for PMax in the beginning. With PMax, you only have the option for smart bidding, so you’ll have to pick either maximize conversions or maximize conversion value right away. On top of that, you can specify the target ROAS or target CPA.

Performance Max Settings

Once your account is ready to add PMax on top of your existing campaigns such as Search or Shopping, make sure to have these two settings in place: exclude your own brand, and target new customers only. Otherwise, the PMax campaign will just target branded traffic and high intent search traffic, which would have converted anyway through your existing campaigns.

Another final warning about PMax is that you can’t target specific audiences. You can and should feed in as much audience signals as possible -- remarketing lists, customer match, competitor websites, keywords they search for, brands they're interested in, every little detail you can think of for your buyer personals. But at the end of the day, those are mere “signals”, not limitations. Google will surpass your signals and target audiences outside of your signals as its algorithm sees fit. 

Performance Max vs Demand Gen Campaigns

Demand gen campaigns, first launched in mid-2023, are intended for increasing awareness of your brand. Contrary to PMax, demand gen gives you full control over audiences and ad placement within the YouTube and Display networks. I highly recommend setting up custom audiences and exclusions for demand gen campaigns, instead of relying on Google’s optimized targeting. In 2024, Google lowered the required minimum list size for lookalike segments from 1,000 to 100, so smaller businesses can also take advantage of this feature.

Recent Updates to Performance Max

PMax didn’t provide much data or insights when it was first launched, but Google has come up with frequent updates over the past 1-2 years to improve this. Now, the insights section provides data on which assets are performing best, how your budget is pacing, which audience segments are performing well, and whether you’re losing impression share to competitors on search and shopping.

In 2025, Google has continued rolling out major updates to PMax in 2025. To kick off this year, Google announced campaign-level negative keywords rolling out to all advertisers. Most recently, on April 30, Google announced channel performance and additional reporting coming to PMax. More to come at Google Marketing Live next week, after which I heard that everybody will get access.