It’s been two years since Performance Max, and advertisers are still asking the same question, is Performance Max better than Standard Shopping and fear a lack of control using Performance Max. We took a deep dive into how the two have performed since the turn of the year across 982 accounts, and over 85,000 campaigns and 1766 merchant centers.

From January 1st 2023 to October 31st 2023 we compared the spend and performance of Performance Max and Standard Shopping campaigns.

Whilst overall investment in Performance Max campaigns have dropped from 89% back to 85.15%, it still has an overwhelming majority proving that it is highly accepted by both agencies and retailers alike.

Despite a lack of overall visibility, both agencies and retailers are putting aside those frustrations as Performance Max continues to outperform Standard Shopping across the board.

Of course, Performance Max isn’t just Shopping and by Google’s own admission, Dynamic Remarketing can play a very significant role in Performance Max results. Therefore we isolated the Shopping and Non-Shopping elements of the above analysis so we could compare Shopping like for like against both campaign types.

Whilst the CPC and CPA increase slightly, both the AOV and ROAS increase slightly when comparing shopping to shopping.

This again highlights Performance Max as the winner in terms of performance.

The overall traffic from Performance Max campaigns alone breaks down as follows.

Whilst feed only Performance Max campaigns can achieve a high amount of Shopping traffic, there is still a very small percentage of non-shopping traffic within them.

The highest amount of non-shopping traffic observed within our analysis was 64.34%.

If Performance Max performs better, why do agencies and retailers still prefer Standard Shopping?

We asked and the overwhelming answers always come back to visibility and control. It’s also worth noting that we have seen first-hand countless examples of Standard Shopping campaigns performing brilliantly because the management and strategy deployed by those managing them are very well done.

Based on the feedback, we wanted to understand how much Google Ads Management goes into Performance Max vs Standard Shopping campaigns. So, we took a look at this data over from the period 10th October to the 9th November 2023 and found some interesting results. We only looked at campaigns that had spent £100+ within the analysis period.

Performance Max

As you would expect, there is a strong correlation between CPC increases and Campaign Changes. We’ll reflect on that further and explain why that happens in greater detail in a follow up blog post.

With Performance Max, less is more. Google has created a campaign type that through its machine learning, AI and automation can deliver very strong results. Whilst we do not advocate a set and forget policy, constantly changing and optimising your Performance Max campaign is detrimental.

Your focus should be on a clear and robust campaign strategy, ensuring good data is being fed into your campaigns, creating assets and managing audiences. Above and beyond that, you should ensure that your product feed is optimised to the highest standards and contains performance and business signals. Finally, keeping your Merchant Center as clean as possible is essential.

It’s also worth noting that just because some campaigns have not received any changes in the past 30 days it doesn’t mean they are not being monitored or receiving no consideration. Clearly these campaigns are performing well and leaving them to run can be considered a reasonably good decision. We would stress that this also does not mean no work has taken place within the overall Google Ads account either.

Standard Shopping

Once again, we can see a strong correlation between CPC increases and Campaign Changes. But firstly, we have to address the ‘elephant in the table’. 28% of the campaigns analysed had no changes made in the past 30 days. 

Whilst managing Google Shopping covers more than just Campaign Management, it’s hard to justify this being the case when the biggest objection to Performance Max is control and transparency.

There is a clear sweetspot of campaign changes within this data between 11 to 50 changes per 30 days. This cohort is driving the best ROAS, even at an increased CPC. This is most likely due to the right changes and optimisations being made at the right time by experienced practitioners.

More worrying than the lack of work in row one is the overwork we can see in the last 3 rows. Google Ads and Google Shopping campaigns, whether they are P.Max or Standard are data-driven beasts that are constantly learning. There are enough factors changing in terms of stock, pricing and competitors alone without users and software making so many changes that campaigns and Quality Scores behave so erratically that they effectively increase the CPC with each change.

It’s worth noting that any changes made to any campaign in Google Ads will do this, but sensible changes and providing the time for things to settle and take effect will see the CPC return to the same level or an improved level. If you’re constantly making changes, you don’t allow for that to happen which we can see in the above data.

There will be many reasons for this, but we can largely group them into these two categories:

Death Spiral

If you have spent a period of time managing and working with Google Ads, you will have experienced this in one way or another, you may likely have a different name for it.

A Death Spiral is when an Google Ads account drops off in performance and you’re so driven and/or even desperate to get it working again that you start making so many well intended optimisations, without giving them the time to work. 

This leads to all of your efforts failing, hence the Death Spiral. This is usually the point in your career where you learn ‘less is more’ and patience can be a virtue (even if your client can’t afford to have that patience).

This is a right of passage that every PPC Professional will have to go through at some point in their career.

Change History Spamming

Firing this many changes into a campaign makes the Change History look very busy and can often be misinterpreted as ‘value for money’ or a success metric. Some softwares and practitioners will even boast about the amount of changes they make daily, weekly etc. But, if those changes are being made for that purpose only and as the data suggests, they are evidently hindering your performance whilst driving up CPCs to a level that makes your Target ROAS almost impossible to achieve.

Conclusion

The data doesn’t lie, whilst there are some fantastic Standard Shopping campaigns out there, by and large, Performance Max is winning across the board. 

Performance Max is now widely adopted and hopefully to a level where Google will continue to feel comfortable leaving Standard Shopping available for long term use.

If you’re still utilising Standard Shopping and results are not where you want them to be, considering a move to Performance Max may be prudent given its ability to generate a much stronger ROAS. Alternatively, seek the advice of those who are still producing great results with Standard Shopping campaigns.

If you’re getting the right results from Standard Shopping, then a move to Performance Max may not be warranted.

Ultimately, you have to choose what is best for you and your business. If you want more control, make sure you use it, but please don’t over use it.