Performance Max beat branded search on CPA. That is not what the playbooks say.

Key points

• Two changes made Performance Max easier to control: negative keywords, and more detailed reporting.
• Roughly 40% of Google Ads-attributed revenue came through it in accounts our team has scaled since. That is attribution, not proof of extra sales.
• An incrementality test we ran found it beat a traditional branded Search campaign on cost per acquisition.
• It must be coordinated with Search, or the two compete for the same people.

Performance Max earned its early reputation. Targeting was opaque, attribution was worse, and it absorbed budget while telling you very little about where it had gone. For a long stretch the sensible advice was to keep it small or keep it out.

That advice is worth revisiting. The campaign type has changed enough that the old reasons may no longer apply to your account.

The two changes that mattered

Negative keywords in Performance Max. This addressed one of the main objections. Excluding terms gave advertisers an additional layer of control over irrelevant Search and Shopping queries, which helped reduce some unproductive clicks and spend. It is not the precision of a Search campaign, and it is not complete control over targeting. But it is enough to run the campaign responsibly.

More detailed reporting. Newer reporting shows more of where Performance Max spends and what it produces, so you can follow the customer journey instead of guessing it from what changed elsewhere. That is the difference between a campaign you can optimise and one you can only switch on and off.

Together they changed what the campaign type is for.

Where it now fits

Our read, after scaling it since those changes:

The share of revenue reflects that shift: in accounts our team has scaled since negative keywords and the new attribution reporting arrived, roughly 40% of Google Ads-attributed revenue came through Performance Max. That is an attribution figure, not an incrementality claim — it describes where the platform assigns credit, not what would have happened without the campaign.

Roughly 40% of Google Ads-attributed revenue came through Performance Max. That is where the platform assigns credit — not proof of what it caused.

Attribution is not incrementality

The finding that surprised us

We ran an incrementality test comparing campaign types on branded search. Performance Max came out ahead on CPA.

That runs against the conventional structure, which treats branded search as a tightly controlled Search campaign and keeps Performance Max away from brand terms entirely — usually with brand exclusions applied specifically to prevent it from claiming that traffic.

We are not arguing the conventional structure is wrong. We are arguing it is an assumption, and assumptions in this part of the account are worth testing rather than inheriting. The result came from a test we could have skipped, on a question we thought was settled.

This was the result of our test, not a universal rule. Test it in your own account before acting on ours.

Coordination is the part people skip

Performance Max running alongside Search is not the same as Performance Max coordinated with Search, and the gap matters most when Search is running an expensive strategy.

If Search is on value-based bidding — selective, deliberately conceding volume in exchange for lead value — then what Performance Max is doing with the traffic Search declined is a strategic question, not an afterthought. Left uncoordinated, the two campaign types compete for the same auctions, attribution muddies, and you end up unable to explain your own results.

Set the division of labour deliberately. Decide which campaign type owns which part of the funnel, apply exclusions to enforce it, and review the boundary as the account matures.

Common questions