Lately, I've been seeing a lot of debate online around PMax.

Many people argue that it’s one of those dumb automated features.

They say the results aren't great. Most of the revenue comes from branded traffic anyway.

You have little control over where your ads show up or how they're delivered.

And it’s crazy to rely on something like that to scale.

My thoughts?

Honestly, I agree with some of those points.

They're right about the control side of things.

You don't get the same level of control you get with other campaign types.

For example, you can nudge the split between different channels, but you can’t dictate where the budget goes.

However…

I think people are blaming PMax for problems that come from how it's being used.

And that's usually because they have the wrong expectation about it.

Google kinda positions PMax as the “ultimate” campaign type.

The one campaign that does everything.

This gives people the impression that it can handle the entire Google network by itself.

And that you barely have to touch it for it to work.

But it’s not the case at all.

PMax’s built to maximize ROI.

The way it does that is very simple:

It looks for the conversions most likely to happen, then pushes harder into what generates those conversions.

(I'm simplifying it a bit here, but that's generally how it works.)

And it’s really good at that.

But that's also where the problem starts.

Because the majority of brands have no idea how to support the algorithm in doing so.

For example:

If you’re selling an ergonomic chair…

And you're giving Google a weak product feed with a generic title "Office Chair Model X1"...

And you’re sending traffic to the homepage…

And the customer list you're using is 2 years old...

Do you expect the algorithm to figure out the best ads and placements?

On top of that…

“Conversions most likely to happen” is NOT what you want in many cases.

Because Google naturally gravitates towards the easy sales like branded searches or retargeting traffic.

That's why you'll see so many accounts where the majority of their PMax revenue is just branded traffic.

But here’s the thing…

The same thing that makes PMax so effective can be used for something much more valuable.

Remember how I said it's really good at maximizing ROI?

You can direct that power toward prospecting instead if you know what you’re doing.

And it's kind of ridiculous the level of scale you get when you use it this way.

In a lot of our accounts, it's the #1 campaign type, driving over $1M/mo in non-branded revenue.

At the end of the day, everyone has their own way of running Google Ads.

But I think it's such a wasted opportunity to write off such a powerful campaign type like PMax because of its flaws.

And I’d argue that every brand should figure out how to get more out of it.

I think of it like the current AI models.

You probably have no idea how they work behind the scenes.

But that doesn't stop them from being useful.

So instead of fighting it, you learn how to take advantage of it.

You give it better prompts, tools, and context to make it work in your favour.

That's how I think about PMax.

You don't need to control every little thing.

But you have a lot more control over it than you think.

Jackson

Founder and CEO of Echelonn

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