What happens when you give PMax too much control

PMax is hands down the most powerful campaign type in Google Ads… but it’s also where brands mess up the most.

For many of our partners, PMax drives 60–80% of their prospecting revenue.

Its automation can get you customers that you wouldn’t find through manual targeting.

But that power comes with a trade-off.

You give up some control over how your products are promoted.

To make matters worse, a lot of brands just let the automation run wild.

When that happens, things tend to go sideways.

On a small scale, PMax can send your ads to low-quality traffic and burn through your budget.

On a larger scale, it can chase audiences you never intended to target in the first place.

Case in point:

One brand was letting PMax fully manage their product promotions.

They did zero monitoring of ad placements or traffic quality.

As long as the results seemed good enough, they didn’t question it.

And "good enough" results were exactly what they got.

But when we audited the account, we saw a big problem with their pMax campaigns.

Their ads got served on random websites and mobile apps.

None of which had buying intent.

They were racking up tons of “engaged views,” but very few actual customers.

This is why we never buy into the idea of “just let PMax find your best customers.”

Instead, we believe in steering the algorithm to the right customers.

In this case, that meant:

1. Identifying and excluding low-performing placements and keywords.

2. Adding audience signals to show the algorithm who our ideal customers were.

3. Setting up ongoing reviews to update steps 1 & 2 based on performance data.

By giving the algorithm clear guidance, we showed it where to find our best customers (and where not to).

Because of that, the budget started flowing into the right places.

And as it compounded month after month…

Over the following 12 months, that same brand generated $49 million in revenue.

And Performance Max was a huge driver of that growth.

It shows just how powerful this tool can be for finding new customers…

Especially when you point it in the right direction and check in often to make sure it stays on track.

In other words, it only works if you work with it.

You can’t hand it the keys and walk away.

You have to stay behind the wheel.

Jackson

Founder and CEO of Echelonn

How we can help:

• Get a free Google ads audit: For brands spending more than $20k/mo. or making over 1 million annually, we’ll identify the key bottlenecks in your account, and turn it into a free 90-day scaling plan. Click here.

• Get our E-commerce Growth Toolkit: Get access to our free resources and tools including the Product Feed & GMC Optimization Checklist, YouTube Shorts Ads Playbook, and 12 Plug-and-Play Dashboards. Click here.

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