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Performance Max experts

Structure your Performance Max campaigns and take back control of their signals.

We set up the asset groups, the audience signals and the exclusions, and we read what the reports actually say.

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EdgeAngel Performance Max expertise

Structuring assets, steering signals, reading the reports

01

Structure and asset groups

An asset group is the unit of control in Performance Max. How you split them decides what you will be able to arbitrate.

  • Splitting by offer or by margin: one hundred asset groups per campaign at most, and one hundred Performance Max campaigns per account
  • Listing groups: up to one thousand per asset group, to isolate a range, a margin tier or a set of best-sellers
  • Search themes: fifty per campaign, to steer coverage without restricting it
  • Brand guidelines: name, logos, colours and a font among eight families, so generated assets stay on brand
  • What cannot be undone: once brand guidelines are enabled on a campaign, Google documents no way to disable them
02

Creative assets and product feed

The campaign serves what you give it. The specifications are precise, and format coverage can be checked.

  • Text: up to fifteen 30-character headlines, five 90-character long headlines, five descriptions, a 25-character business name
  • Images: landscape, square and portrait, up to twenty of each, plus square and landscape logos. A missing format is a lost surface
  • Video: up to fifteen YouTube videos, ten seconds minimum. With no video supplied, Google generates one
  • Asset production: briefs, cuts and iterations with our studio, at the pace of the tests
  • Product feed: the catalogue attached from Merchant Center, with the listing group split that serves the strategy
03

Signals, exclusions and guardrails

An audience signal steers, it does not restrict. Confusing the two is expensive.

  • Audience signals: Google states they are not hard targeting criteria and do not confine delivery to people within the segment
  • First-party audiences: Customer Match and value segments as signal inputs, rather than generic interest segments
  • Brand exclusions: the list that stops the campaign cannibalising your brand queries, with up to ten thousand negative keywords per campaign
  • What exclusions do not do: Google notes that negative keywords do not match close variants
  • URL and content exclusions: the pages the campaign must not send to, knowing the asset group's final URL cannot be excluded
04

Measurement and reading the reports

Performance Max does not return the same objects as other campaigns. Knowing what is missing avoids wrong conclusions.

  • Channel performance report: the split across Search, Shopping, YouTube, Display, Discover, Gmail and Maps, with data from early June 2025
  • Search terms report: available at campaign level, with the same privacy thresholds as on Search
  • Ad strength and asset coverage: what is supplied, what is missing, and what Google generated on your behalf
  • What only exists in the API: asset group level reporting, which the web interface does not render
  • What the reports do not say: we handle that elsewhere, through incrementality measurement

The tool

Performance Max, our reading

Performance Max is the Google Ads campaign type that covers every surface from a single campaign: Search, Shopping, YouTube, Display, Discover, Gmail and Maps. Launched on 2 November 2021, it absorbed Smart Shopping and Local campaigns between July and September 2022. Its structure differs from other campaigns: no ad group, no ad, but asset groups, one hundred per campaign at most.

What the campaign expects as input is precise: up to fifteen 30-character headlines, five descriptions, images in landscape, square and portrait, logos, up to fifteen videos of at least ten seconds. What it returns as output is less so, and that is the subject.

Updated September 2026

What the campaign does very well

Performance Max continuously arbitrates between surfaces that would otherwise be run separately and step on each other. On an e-commerce catalogue fed by a good feed, with conversions valued correctly, it finds combinations a manual structure would not reach. And since 2025, Google has reopened several doors it had closed: campaign-level search terms report, channel performance report, brand exclusions, demographic targeting. The box is not closed, it has handles, and they are more precise than the reputation suggests.

An audience signal is not targeting

This is the most widespread mistake, and Google states it plainly: audience signals are not hard targeting criteria and do not confine delivery to people within the segment. They indicate where to start, and the campaign expands from there. The practical consequence matters: a signal built on your actual customers steers better than a generic interest segment, and exclusions do the work the signal does not. Another surprising nuance: negative keywords in a Performance Max campaign do not match close variants.

What the reports will not give you, and what takes over

Three limits are documented by Google. Individual ad performance cannot be viewed, since ads are generated on the fly for each asset group. Budget allocation per channel cannot be controlled, Google writes it explicitly. And querying the usual API objects, ad group or ad, returns nothing: they do not exist here. Google also recommends running at least six weeks before judging. To know what the campaign genuinely creates rather than what it credits itself with, you need a separate measurement setup.

Advanced Media Measurement, our advertising effectiveness offering

Sources : Performance Max asset requirements, developer documentation · About audience signals in Performance Max

Frequently asked questions about Performance Max

Is Performance Max a black box?

Less so than in 2022. Google has opened the campaign-level search terms report, the channel performance report, brand exclusions and demographic targeting. What remains closed is documented: individual ad performance, and budget allocation per channel. Knowing what is missing prevents drawing wrong conclusions from it.

Do audience signals restrict delivery?

No, and that is the most common misreading. Google states they are not hard targeting criteria and do not confine delivery to people within the segment: they indicate where to start. To restrict, exclusions do the work: brand, keywords, URLs and placements.

How many asset groups should you create?

As many as the trade-offs you want to be able to make, up to one hundred per campaign. One group per range, margin tier or market lets you allocate and exclude precisely. A single group across the whole catalogue keeps the campaign simple and leaves you no lever.

How long before judging a Performance Max campaign?

Google recommends at least six weeks, and warns that its metrics do not compare directly with those of your existing campaigns. In the meantime, what is worth watching is asset coverage, feed quality and the presence of exclusions, rather than cost per conversion day to day.

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Paul Schmitt

Paul Schmitt

Consulting Director

"Our goal is to make your data actionable to generate concrete value, quickly."

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