In April 2022, Google began giving advertisers tools to upgrade Smart Shopping campaigns to Performance Max, with Local campaign upgrades following later. The move accelerated a major Google Ads shift: more inventory, more automation and fewer traditional campaign boundaries.

For ecommerce and local SMBs, the promise was reach across Search, Shopping, YouTube, Display, Discover, Gmail and Maps through one campaign type. The tradeoff was less granular control and a greater need for clean product feeds, conversion tracking and creative assets.

Automation rewarded better business inputs

Performance Max can only optimize toward the signals it receives. If a campaign tracks weak conversions or uses thin creative, automation may scale the wrong behavior. If the business provides strong product data, real conversion values and useful creative, the system has a better chance to find profitable demand.

Burns’ guidance was to treat Performance Max like a system that needs coaching. “Automation does not remove the need for strategy. It raises the value of clean feeds, strong offers, quality creative and conversion data that reflects real revenue.”

What SMBs should have prepared

• Product feeds: Titles, descriptions, images and pricing needed to be accurate.
• Conversion values: Ecommerce and lead goals should reflect business value.
• Creative assets: Give the campaign enough images, videos and messages to test.
• Reporting review: Watch performance by product category, location and lead quality.

Brand Fuel Digital’s View

The Performance Max upgrade path showed where paid media was heading. SMBs should use automation, but the businesses with better inputs and clearer goals will usually get more from it.

Sources: Google on Smart Shopping and Local upgrades and Google Ads help on Performance Max.