Create a Performance Max campaign

You can create a single, easy-to-manage Performance Max campaign to promote your products or services across the Google Network. This article provides information on the various ways to create your Performance Max campaign based on your campaign goals and data feeds, and links to resources that can help you optimise your Performance Max campaign. Learn more About Performance Max campaigns.

On this page

• What to expect when a campaign is created
• Get the most out of your campaign
• Create a campaign with online sales or lead generation goals
• Create a Performance Max campaign with products from Merchant Center
• Create a campaign with a shop goal
• Create a campaign with shop goals using local formats and local inventory ads
• Create a campaign with a travel goal

Before you begin

Performance Max campaigns automate bidding, budget optimisation, audiences, creatives, attribution and more to help you get more conversions and value from your advertising. Performance Max is the recommended option to use when:

• You have specific advertising and conversion goals.
• You want to maximise campaign performance and you aren't limited by advertising channels.
• You want easy access to all of Google’s advertising channels using a single campaign.
• You want additional reach and conversion value beyond keyword-based search campaigns.

What to expect when a campaign is created

After you create your campaign, it can take time for your Google Ads to show impressions. This delay may be because:

• Campaigns that use automated bidding strategies need time to optimise. You may notice performance fluctuations or changes in spend while Google AI learns how to optimise for your set goals.
• It takes 1–2 days for newly created or edited ads to be reviewed to help ensure that they meet all policy requirements.
• It takes Google AI some time to adjust serving if you make changes to your campaign settings.

If your ad doesn't receive any impressions after three working days, review How to fix Google Ads Performance Max campaign not running or low traffic.

Go to Campaigns

Get the most out of your campaign

To run a successful campaign and maximise how your campaigns serve over time, ensure that both conversion tracking and remarketing lists are set up properly. Review the following best practices before you create or edit a Performance Max campaign:

• Track your conversions: You should use conversion tracking with your Performance Max campaigns. Google AI maximises not only conversion events like online purchases, signups and purchases from phone calls, but also your conversion value to determine how to spend a daily budget. You can create Performance Max campaigns without conversion tracking or without meeting conversion tracking requirements, but your campaign’s spend may be limited
• Use remarketing lists: You should use your most updated remarketing lists with your Performance Max campaigns. To ensure the best coverage for your ads, you should maintain more than 100 active users in the last 30 days and at least one new user in the last two days. You can run existing Performance Max campaigns without meeting remarketing requirements, but your campaign’s spend may be limited.

Options to create your Performance Max campaign

You can create a Performance Max campaign if your campaign objective is 'Sales', 'Leads', 'Website traffic', 'Local shop visits and promotions' or if you create a campaign without a goal’s guidance. Review the options below to determine the ideal way to create your campaign based on your goals and data feeds.

Create a campaign with online sales or lead generation goals

One of the most common goals among business owners is to encourage customers to pursue a specific action. You can create a Performance Max campaign to help drive sales and generate leads.

Learn more about how to Create a campaign with online sales or lead generation goals.

Create a Performance Max campaign with products from Merchant Center

Merchant Center feeds are collections of the products or services that you want to advertise. You can create a Performance Max campaign with products from your Merchant Center account to help drive sales on the products that you’ve uploaded.

Learn more about how to Create a Performance Max campaign with products from Merchant Center.

Create a campaign with a shop goal

Shop goals help you provide potential customers with the information that they need to decide when and how to visit your shops. You can create a Performance Max campaign with a shop goal to help make promotion on Google properties like YouTube easy. Learn more About Performance Max for shop goals.

Learn more about how to Create a campaign with a shop goal.

Create a campaign with shop goals using local formats and local inventory ads

Local Inventory Ads show your available products to people who search on Google when they’re near your shop. The ads provide people with information including nearby available inventory and if people can buy your products online for in-store pickup. You can use Performance Max campaigns with shop goals to optimise while serving on LIA and local formats.

Learn more about how to Create a campaign using local inventory ads.

Create a campaign with a travel goal

Performance Max for travel goals campaigns is the easiest way for hotel performance advertisers to serve across all Google properties. This allows advertisers to easily create property-specific asset groups and maximise their performance with Google Ads.

Learn more how to Create a campaign with a travel goal.

Related links

• About business data and data feeds
• About Performance Max campaigns
• About Performance Max for shop goals
• About Performance Max for travel goals
• Drive sales and generate leads
• About asset group reporting
• About asset reporting in Performance Max
• Conversion reporting by asset in Performance Max campaigns

Troubleshoot your campaign