Performance Max is a Google Ads campaign type that runs your ads across Google's channels from one campaign. It's worth testing with a valuable outcome, accurate data, decent creative and money you can risk. It tends to suit online stores with a healthy feed, and businesses that know which enquiries become customers. In our judgement, a small service business needing tight control often does better proving focused Search first.
Bottom line Yes, once success, the review date and the loss limit are agreed
Bottom line No, not yet. Fix the named constraint, then test
What is Google Performance Max?
Performance Max, or PMax, is a goal based Google Ads campaign type. You supply conversion goals, a budget, creative assets and business data such as a product feed. Google then sets the bids, assembles the ads and chooses where they run. Google's Performance Max overview describes access to all Google Ads inventory from one campaign. That includes YouTube, Display, Search, Discover, Gmail and Maps.
Access to every channel isn't a budget split. No set share goes to YouTube. Some channels may barely serve. The campaign spends where it predicts your goal will be met.
That's why the goal is the most important thing you give it. If your form conversions are full of spam and job seekers, it'll efficiently find you more of both.
Search themes, audience signals and optional targets steer it further. But none of them fences it in.
Performance Max is not AI Max for Search
Google's page on how AI Max for Search campaigns works says AI Max isn't a new campaign type. It's a set of features inside a Search campaign. They can widen matching, customise ad text and send people to other pages on your site. Google's AI Max setup page says new Search campaigns have it on by default. The same page says search term matching can be turned off for each ad group.
Performance Max is a separate campaign with its own budget. It also spends on YouTube, Display, Gmail, Discover and Maps. Our guide to Google Ads settings that waste budget lists the AI Max settings worth reviewing.
PMax versus Search and the other options
Each alternative answers a different question. Our guide to Google Ads campaign types compares them all. Here's how they sit against Performance Max.
Option | How it compares with Performance Max |
|---|---|
Search | The tightest control over which searches you pay for. It's automated too, since AI Max can widen matching, rewrite text and choose landing pages. |
Standard Shopping | Feed based retail with product level control. Older doesn't mean worse, so compare both on the same products and goal. |
Demand Gen | Visual and audience led. Google's Demand Gen channel controls page lets you choose its channels for each ad group. Use it for a defined job, not cheap clicks. |
Remarketing | An audience strategy several campaign types carry. Performance Max reaching past visitors isn't a dedicated follow up campaign. |
Overlap with Search and Shopping campaigns
Google's page on ad group and asset group priority sets out the order. An eligible exact match keyword identical to the search comes first. Identical phrase or broad keywords and identical Performance Max search themes come next. Then relevance and Ad Rank decide.
Budgets, disapprovals, targeting and searches in AI Mode or Lens change the result. Google's Performance Max overview adds an exception. A Search campaign limited by budget can occasionally let Performance Max serve on exact match terms.
So neither campaign always wins. Our guides to Google Ads match types and Google Ads account structure cover the full order. They also cover routing traffic between the two campaigns.
Shopping follows other rules. Standard Shopping and Performance Max can advertise the same products. When they do, Google's onboarding guide for Shopping ads says Ad Rank decides which one serves. Run both on the same products only as a planned test.
Brand traffic is where overlap costs most
Brand searches convert well and cost little. So every campaign that can reach them wants them.
Our sample is 180 Google Ads account audits from August 2021 to September 2026. Performance Max can now take brand exclusions, like Search. In our audits from July 2023, we looked at accounts running both Performance Max and Search. About 4 in 5 had Performance Max showing for their own brand terms. Search also targeted those terms, with no brand exclusion or brand negative.
SourceElev8d Google Ads audits, July 2023 to September 2026
A brand exclusion and a new customer goal answer different questions. Neither proves the campaign created a sale. A brand search isn't always an existing customer. And an existing customer may never type your name. Judge overlap on whole account results from a proper test, not on which campaign took the credit.
Ecommerce and local inventory use cases
Retail gives Performance Max the most to work with, thanks to the feed. It supplies prices, stock and images for every product. Check these in Merchant Center before launch:
Identifiers, titles and prices that match the website
Availability that updates when stock changes
Clear images, plus delivery and returns information
Approval status, with disapprovals fixed or the products excluded
Custom labels for margin, season or priority
Listing groups decide which products each asset group advertises. So use them to keep unprofitable and out of stock lines out. Custom labels organise products. They don't tell Google your margin or give an asset group its own budget.
Our guide to Google Shopping ads and Merchant Center covers the feed build. Our ecommerce Google Ads service gives hands on help.
Judge ROAS against margin
ROAS, return on ad spend, is attributed revenue divided by ad cost. It ignores margin. Here contribution means revenue less product cost, delivery, payment fees and expected returns, before acquisition costs. Two example product sets show the gap.
Example output | Product set A | Product set B |
|---|---|---|
Attributed revenue | $20,000 | $12,000 |
Revenue ROAS | 6x | 4x |
Implied media cost | $3,333.33 | $3,000 |
Contribution margin before acquisition | 15% | 60% |
Contribution before acquisition | $3,000 | $7,200 |
Contribution after media | -$333.33 | $4,200 |
Set A has the better ROAS and still loses $333.33 after media. That's because a 15% margin needs about 6.7x just to break even. Set B's 60% margin breaks even at about 1.7x. So its 4x leaves $4,200. In the chart, Set A's loss is the coral bar under zero.
Neither number is profit. Management, tools and other acquisition costs still come out of that $4,200. And the revenue or lifetime values you give bidding aren't cash. Our break even ROAS calculator works out your own threshold. Our guide to Google Ads ROI covers the full return.
Add local inventory if you sell from a shop
Google's local inventory ads overview lists Australia among the countries where local inventory ads run. They tell shoppers a product is in stock nearby. Google's local inventory setup page lists the pieces:
local inventory enabled in Merchant Center
shops linked through Business Profile
matching store codes where used
current stock and price for each shop
an approved product page option
inventory verification where needed
a linked Google Ads account
Then a Performance Max campaign using the linked feed can show local inventory with no extra step.
A directions click isn't a sale. Store visit conversions are modelled from aggregated data. Google's store visit conversions page sets conditions for them. These include eligible countries, location assets, enough ad clicks or impressions and enough foot traffic. You can bid on store visits or store sales, not both.
Local inventory ads sell products from a shop. They aren't lead generation for a local service. Nor are they the pay per lead version of Performance Max. Google's pay per lead page limits that version to businesses located and operating in the United States.
Lead generation needs a reliable feedback loop
A service business has no product feed, only its record of which enquiries became customers. Performance Max can only be as good as that record. Take a commercial cleaning company. Its campaign reports 45 form conversions at $72 each, or $3,240 of media.
Then someone reads the forms. Only eight are qualified commercial leads. The $3,240 divided by eight is $405 per qualified lead, before fees. The cost per customer is unknown, because nobody recorded which of the eight signed.
SourceExample, not client data
The bid strategy saw 45 successes. So it'll hunt for more people like the 37 who were never going to buy. Our guide to a good cost per lead for Google Ads covers defining and pricing a qualified lead.
Close the loop with real outcomes
The fix is a loop that carries qualified outcomes back into Google Ads. It runs through a supported integration, such as an offline conversion import. If outcomes travel through GA4, our guide to linking GA4 and Google Ads covers that route.
Pick the bidding stage with care. A signed customer is the truest signal but can be too rare or too slow to steer bidding. So a qualified lead often works better, provided the volume is reliable. Enhanced conversions for leads improve matching. They can't fix a wrong qualification label or a sales team that never calls back.
Check the goal the campaign uses. Google's page on primary and secondary conversion actions gives the rule for custom goals. Actions in one are used for bidding whether they're primary or secondary.
Don't count an enquiry, a qualified lead and a signed customer as three wins for one person. Our guide to Google Ads conversion tracking covers goals and actions. Calls need a real outcome too. A tap on a phone number isn't one, as our guide to call tracking for Google Ads explains.
Google's answers to top Performance Max questions suggest qualified lead or converted lead goals. Those goals bring invalid traffic protections built for lead generation. Google also suggests reCAPTCHA or a double opt in on forms. Those protections stop invalid traffic, not poor commercial fit. Loose targeting, the wrong landing page and slow follow up spoil leads too.
Check permissions before customer data goes in
Customer lists can act as audience signals. They can also help Performance Max tell new customers from existing ones. Check every list against Google's Customer Match policy:
the data must be first party
your privacy policy must disclose that you share customer data with third parties such as Google
consent must be in place where the law or Google's policy requires it
the list can't be used to target people by a sensitive interest category
Never upload a bought list. Our guide to Google remarketing ads covers eligibility and consent in detail.
Then name who keeps the loop running. Record the last successful CRM import and the normal qualification delay. Note the duplicate checks, who updates the customer list and who gets the alert when something stops.
The PMax controls to check before launch
Performance Max has more controls than its reputation suggests, and fewer than Search. Start with search terms, where the usual complaint is out of date.
Performance Max has a search terms report, with data from March 2023. Campaigns can take up to 10,000 negative keywords as well as account level negatives. PMax is less transparent than Search. But "you can't see search terms" is out of date.
Google's About the search terms report in Performance Max page puts the report under Insights and reports. It's segmented by ad format and landing page, without store visit or store sales conversions. Google's April 2025 Performance Max update raised the cap to 10,000 negative keywords per campaign.
Every other control covers part of the campaign, never all of it. Here's what each one can and can't restrict.
Control | What it can restrict | What it can't |
|---|---|---|
Campaign negatives | Search and Shopping inventory, up to 10,000 per campaign | Display, YouTube, Gmail or Discover, or close variants |
Account negatives | Every eligible campaign, up to 1,000 per account | One campaign alone, so a brand negative also blocks your brand campaign |
Brand exclusions | Search, Shopping and YouTube search inventory | Existing customers on other channels |
Search themes | Nothing. Up to 50 per asset group, as guidance | Fence the campaign in |
Audience signals | Nothing. They suggest who to start with | Stop ads reaching other people |
Placement exclusions | Specific Display and YouTube content | Search or Shopping |
Customer acquisition | How bidding treats people detected as new | Guarantee new customers |
Search terms, negatives and brand
Read the search terms report before adding negatives. Google's Performance Max negative keywords page says negatives apply to Search and Shopping inventory only. They can be added to one campaign, from a list or across the account. Google's account level negative keywords page allows 1,000 per account.
For brand traffic, use brand exclusions. Google's brand exclusions page says they cover Search, Shopping and YouTube search inventory in Performance Max. A checkbox lets you keep Shopping ads on searches that mention an excluded brand.
Don't fill slots because the limits allow it. Every exclusion removes demand. So record why each one exists and watch what changes. Our guide to Google Ads negative keywords covers match types, lists and brand exclusions in full.
Search themes and audience signals guide the campaign
Google's search themes page allows up to 50 per asset group. They're optional and additive, with the same priority as phrase and broad keywords. Exclusions and negatives still apply. Near synonyms add little.
Google's audience signals page calls signals optional. It says Performance Max may show ads to relevant audiences outside them. Customer lists, site visitors and custom segments are starting points, not targeting. If only past visitors should see an ad, that's a job for a remarketing campaign.
Customer acquisition rests on detection
Google's customer lifecycle goals page describes three modes for valuing people the campaign detects as new.
Detection is imperfect. Google's page on measuring lifecycle goals defines a new customer. That's someone who hasn't bought in 540 days or isn't on your customer list. The page also warns that new customer only ads might reach returning customers for privacy and technical reasons.
Google's new and returning reporting covers purchases only. Because of that, a lead generation business checks new customers in its CRM. A stale customer list makes last year's clients look new.
Locations and placement suitability
Set locations to the area you serve and check the location option. Our guide to Google Ads location targeting covers that option.
Negative keywords don't reach Display or YouTube. So set placement exclusions. Google's top questions page says they stop ads showing on specific YouTube and Display content. Also review your content suitability settings.
Final URL expansion and URL exclusions
Google's final URL expansion page says the feature is on by default for Performance Max. It lets Google send people to other pages on your domain and build ads from them. Across the full audit sample, about 3 in 5 Performance Max campaigns reviewed left the default alone. Final URL expansion was on, with no URL exclusions set.
A page feed doesn't restrict destinations while expansion is on. With it off, Google says the campaign sends people only to your page feed and asset group URLs. Retail adds routes. Google's text customisation page says Shopping ads use Merchant Center product URLs. Video clicks can also reach product pages from your listing groups, even with expansion off.
Google's URL exclusions page lets you exclude pages by URL, rule or page feed label. You'll find these options in the asset optimisation settings. Two exceptions apply. The final URL you set can't be excluded. And a Merchant Center store's homepage may still serve in formats such as Shopping ads on Gmail.
If a page must never get a click, check every route before launch.
Our guide to Google Ads landing page vs homepage covers choosing the destination itself.
Asset groups and automated creative
Build asset groups around commercial themes, such as a service line or a product category. Don't go finer, because asset groups don't get their own budgets. Supply strong text, images in every shape, logos and video to Google's current specifications. Withholding assets to steer spend away from a channel isn't a control. Our guide to Google Ads assets covers asset types in Search campaigns.
Each automated creative feature has its own switch. Turning one off leaves the rest on. The same text customisation page says text customisation is on by default and can be unticked. Google's April 2025 update, linked above, also covers landing page images and image enhancements.
According to Google's video automation page, Performance Max can generate videos when no uploaded video is active. It builds them from your images and text. Video enhancements have a separate opt out. Where the beta is available, generated text gets its own controls. Google's text guidelines page allows 25 term exclusions and 40 messaging restrictions per campaign.
Final URL expansion and URL exclusions
Decides which pages a click can land on
Text customisation
Writes extra headlines and descriptions from your site
Image enhancements and landing page images
Edits your images and pulls more from your pages
Video enhancements
Makes videos when no uploaded video is running
Name one person to review what the automation produces after every site or feed change. That includes claims, prices, finished offers and whether the landing page matches.
The ACCC has guidance on false or misleading claims. It says a business must be able to prove any claim it advertises. Generated copy is no exception. Our guide to how to write Google Ads covers accurate copy.
Goal and included conversion actions: [the goal, each action in it and why]
Brand and negative keyword scope: [campaign, account or brand exclusion, and the reason]
Audience signals and customer acquisition: [the signals suggested, and the mode chosen]
Destinations: [expansion setting, exclusions, page feeds and product URLs tested]
Generated text, images and video: [each setting, and who reviews the output]
Locations and placements: [the area served, location option and exclusions]
Owner and review trigger: [who checks, how often, and what prompts a change]
Keep the record with the account and update it whenever a setting changes.
We'll check its search terms, brand settings, URL controls and generated assets against your goals.
Budget and bidding for an affordable test
No universal conversion count or dollar figure decides whether Performance Max can start. The question is whether the test can produce evidence you trust. That evidence has to arrive before the money you can afford to lose runs out. Take a $1,500 monthly budget at $250 per qualified lead. That buys about six qualified leads a month.
Six leads is thin evidence when sales take months to close. It doesn't mean six equal channel shares, or that a small test can never conclude. It means planning the review around slow evidence.
Elev8d recommends at least $3,000 a month for a managed account. A self managed test in a low CPC niche can start nearer $1,000 to $1,500. Our guide to how much Google Ads costs explains both. Our guide to how much to spend on Google Ads covers setting the figure. So does our guide to the Google Ads minimum budget.
Bid on what you can measure reliably: conversions or honest conversion values, each with an optional target. A cost per acquisition or ROAS target can be right from day one when results support it. Our rule of thumb is 15 to 30 conversions a month before trusting a target. Our guide to Smart Bidding strategies explains this. Google itself sets no minimum for Target CPA.
Google's note on changes to target based bid strategies covers the 17 August 2026 change. Budget limited campaigns on a target strategy, Performance Max included, now deliver closer to their target. Google won't adjust your targets for you.
Prepare and launch a controlled campaign
Readiness is a set of gates, not a score. Great images can't make up for broken tracking. So every gate below has to pass before money goes in:
A useful outcome you can measure, deduplicated and tested
A working destination that matches the ads
Relevant, approved products or assets
Targeting that matches the area and customers you serve
The capacity to handle the demand
Data permissions in place for anything uploaded
A loss limit the business can afford
A named reviewer with time booked
Everything else improves a test without blocking it. A proven Search campaign, customer lists and every creative format help. But none of them is a universal requirement for Performance Max.
Then work through the setup in order. Our guide to setting up Google Ads for a small business covers account access, billing and other foundations.
Setup step | What to settle |
|---|---|
Choose the job and goal | Online sales, leads or store visits, with the exact conversion actions, deduplication and what a value means |
Set affordable economics | Budget, bid strategy, a target only where results justify one, and the loss you can accept |
Check geography and policy | The area you serve, languages, Google's policies for the service and content suitability |
Build useful asset groups | Commercial themes or product sets, approved creative and the Merchant Center link where relevant |
Add optional guidance | Relevant search themes and audience signals, recorded as guidance rather than targeting |
Review exclusion scope | Campaign and account negatives, brand exclusions and placement exclusions |
Control destinations and automation | Final URL expansion, page feeds, product URLs and each generated text, image and video setting |
Review, launch and verify | A test conversion, data permissions, billing and a named reviewer, then serving and real leads after launch |
The usual mistake is treating launch day as the finish. The last step is checking where the ads actually served and what the first leads actually looked like.
Review results and decide what to do next
Start with the channel report. Read it for what it is. Google's channel performance report page lists these channels:
Google Search
Search partners
Google Display Network
YouTube
Discover
Maps
Gmail
Shopping is an ad format inside those channels, not a channel. The "Ads using product data" segment covers most feed based ads but not all of them.
Clicks differ from interactions. Conversions covers the goals the campaign optimises for. Results counts primary actions across all goals. Check the ad event type before treating a view as a click that produced a lead.
Status labels such as Eligible (Limited) flag problems. A channel with no spend and no flagged issue usually just lost out to channels Google rated higher. The same page says you can't directly control budget by channel. And the report doesn't prove what any channel caused.
Period and outcome maturity: [dates read, and how many outcomes are still pending]
Channel, ad format and event type: [what was filtered, including ads using product data]
Cost and conversion actions: [cost, Conversions or Results, and which actions count]
Brand and new customer evidence: [brand share of search terms, and new customers in the CRM]
Qualified outcomes or contribution: [qualified leads, customers or contribution after media]
Diagnostic issues: [channel status labels and what they mean]
What this report cannot establish: [incrementality, channel budgets, user level paths]
Review in order. First check spend, approvals, destinations, tracking and the feed. Then read the search terms, the channel and format mix, the generated assets and real lead quality. Customer economics come last, once conversion and sales delays have passed. Our guide to the first 30 days of Google Ads sets out the early checks.
Allow 4 to 8 weeks for a first read and about 90 days to judge cost per lead. Allow longer when the sales cycle is long. None of that means pressing on through a serious fault.
Test properly, or don't call it a test
Write down the comparison, the costs included, the business outcome and the downside you can afford.
Google's Performance Max experiments page offers an uplift test without a Merchant Center feed. With a feed, it offers a Standard Shopping against Performance Max test. It also offers optimisation tests, such as final URL expansion. Some options appear only for campaigns with enough conversion volume. Applying a migration test pauses the original campaign automatically.
In its experiments FAQs, Google recommends running an experiment for at least 4 to 6 weeks. With a long conversion delay, it recommends longer. Two overlapping copies of a campaign aren't a clean test. Judge the result on account and CRM totals:
brand and non brand
new and returning customers
qualified leads
contribution
total spend
A before and after shift proves neither growth nor cannibalisation. Inconclusive is a valid result.
Decision | Agree the trigger before launch |
|---|---|
Continue | Mature qualified outcomes and contribution meet the target, with nothing operational broken |
Change | Results are inconclusive, or one control is clearly wrong, such as brand leakage |
Pause | The outcome feed fails, a destination breaks or spend reaches the loss limit early |
Stop | Mature results miss the target at the review date, or the business can't handle the leads |
When the outcome feed stops
A campaign keeps spending after its feedback stops. The reviewer checks whether capture, the import, matching or genuine demand changed. They also keep the last reliable baseline, log every change and verify clean outcomes before expanding again. Meanwhile, cap spend under the loss limit. Never switch the goal to button clicks to make the numbers look healthy.
If Smart Bidding saw bad data, Google's data exclusions page points to a data exclusion. Available for Performance Max, it removes those dates from bidding without changing your reports.
Google's guidance on conversion data outages says to:
apply the exclusion quickly
cover at least 90% of the affected clicks
allow for conversion delay
never remove it once applied
Last successful import and normal delay: [date, time and the usual lag]
What changed and what still works: [capture, import, matching or genuine demand]
Spend limit or pause decision: [the action taken under the agreed loss limit]
Data exclusion: [the dates excluded, if bidding saw bad data]
Repair owner and deadline: [name and date]
Clean outcomes verified: [evidence and date]
Next expansion review: [the condition that must hold first]
Three Australian business scenarios
These are example fit assessments, not client case studies. The same questions lead each business to a different first move.
A Melbourne plumber spending $3,000 a month
Basic tracking, no CRM and most enquiries by phone. We'd fix call outcomes first so the account knows which calls became booked jobs. Then we'd prove a focused Search campaign on the services that pay. That's a conditional call about this business, not a minimum budget rule for Performance Max. Our guide to Google Ads for tradies covers the trade specifics.
A Brisbane accounting firm spending $8,000 a month
Search already works, the CRM records qualified consultations and the sales cycle is long. That can support a Performance Max test. The test would be planned around qualified consultations and mature signed clients, not early button clicks. The firm sends back only the outcomes Google's policies allow. It also checks any customer list against the permissions above.
An Australian retailer spending $30,000 a month
A healthy feed, clear margins, reliable purchase tracking and good creative make a plausible test. It would run as a Standard Shopping against Performance Max experiment. Catalogue size and budget alone guarantee nothing. If the retailer also sells from shops, local inventory needs its own accurate setup first.
Regulated services need one more check
Check the regulator's advertising rules before generated text or customer lists go near a campaign. Health practitioners should start at Ahpra's advertising hub. It gathers the regulator's advertising guidance. ASIC's RG 234 on advertising financial products and services is the regulator's guidance for promoters of those services. A firm that also gives financial advice or arranges credit should read it.
Audit an existing campaign and get help
If Performance Max is already running, these twenty questions find most of what's worth fixing. Answer each one with evidence, not memory.
Measurement
What exact outcome is the campaign bidding on? Are duplicates removed? Are the values meaningful? Do calls and CRM stages reconcile?
Demand
Which search terms appear? Is each exclusion justified? How much brand traffic is included? What's the evidence on new customers?
Destinations
Is final URL expansion a deliberate choice? Do page feeds do what you assume? Which feed URLs can serve? Are all destinations live and suitable?
Creative and stock
Are assets approved and current? Has someone reviewed the generated variants? Are the listing groups right? Is local and online availability accurate?
Decision
What is the full acquisition cost? Are the outcomes mature? Did the business improve beyond attributed totals? Who owns the next decision?
Getting help is reasonable when the answers are thin. Before you hire anyone, put these questions to any Performance Max consultant, us included.
Business outcome and full cost: [what counts as a result, and every cost included]
Brand, query and destination controls: [what you will set, and how you will check it]
Data access and account ownership: [confirm the business owns the account and keeps raw access]
Test design and customer quality report: [the comparison, the dates and the qualified outcome report]
Decision if results are poor or inconclusive: [the stop, change or continue rule]
Management scope, fee and reviewer: [who does the work, the fee and who signs off]
Whoever you choose, keep ownership of the account and raw access to its reports. For a second opinion, see how we audit and manage Google Ads accounts.
What we recommend at Elev8d
For most local service businesses, we start with focused Search and fix measurement first. Call outcomes and qualified leads go into the account before Performance Max goes anywhere near the budget. We test Performance Max once the account can send back qualified outcomes. We also need the loss limit agreed and someone booked to review the test.
For a retailer with a clean feed and honest margins, we'd run feed based PMax against Standard Shopping. That means a proper experiment, not two campaigns chasing the same products.
Before any launch, we:
set brand exclusions or a deliberate brand plan
decide final URL expansion with exclusions in place
review every automated creative switch
give one person the job of checking what the automation writes
Then we judge the test on business totals at the review dates we set. The conversions Google reports don't decide it.
We'd hold off when lead quality can't be fed back. The same goes when a Search campaign that already works is still limited by budget. Fund that first. If your account is already running, our Google Ads audit scorecard is a quick first check.
FAQ
Why is my Performance Max campaign not working?
Work through it in order. No spend or few impressions points to eligibility: approvals, feed status, budget, targets and location settings. Spend with no conversions points to tracking or the destination. So test a conversion end to end.
Conversions with poor leads point to the goal. So move bidding onto qualified outcomes. Good leads with poor economics point to the target and the margins.
Change one thing at a time and note the date. Our guide to why Google Ads is not working covers wider account diagnosis.
Can I see which sites and videos my ads appeared on?
Partly. Google's placement report page for Performance Max describes a predefined report under Insights and reports. It shows impressions by placement across Display and Google owned properties such as Gmail and Discover. It also covers some YouTube formats and, since March 2024, search partner sites.
Google Search isn't a placement. Google also says the report shouldn't be used to evaluate performance. Treat it as a brand safety check and exclude anything unsuitable at account level.
Next steps
Write down the outcome you'll bid on
Define the conversion, how it's deduplicated and what it's worth. Then test it from click to CRM before anything else.
Check every control against its scope
Fill in the control record for brand, negatives, signals, destinations and each creative switch. Record the reason for every choice.
Book the review before launch
Name the reviewer, agree the loss limit and set the review dates. That way the decision rests on evidence rather than the next invoice.
