Set up multiple control campaigns vs. one Performance Max campaign

You can now test multiple control regular shopping campaigns vs. one Performance Max campaign. This feature allows you to merge multiple regular shopping campaigns such as brand and non-brand or different properties into a single Performance Max campaign, so you can assess the impact of consolidating budgets and streamlining campaign management.

Instructions

1. In your Google Ads account, click the Campaigns icon .
2. Click the Campaigns drop down in the section menu.
3. Click Experiments.
4. Click the plus button at the top of the “All Experiments table” and select Custom experiment.
5. Select Performance Max experiment.
6. Under “Experiment type”, select “Test vs. Shopping/Search/Display campaign”.
7. Click Continue.
8. Select Control arm. Select up to 5 control campaigns to act as your control campaigns. You can view the full list of the selected control campaigns during creation.
   • Note: If you select Shopping with Performance Max, these campaigns must all use the same Google Merchant Center (GMC) feed.
9. Select traffic split: A 50/50 traffic split is applied by default. Each control campaign will serve on 50% of its original traffic, while the Performance Max campaign will serve on the remaining 50% of the combined traffic.
10. Select Treatment arm. The trial Performance Max campaign can only be selected from an existing Performance Max campaign. Choose your trial campaign from the option “Select existing campaigns”.
    • A recommended budget will be provided if the Performance Max campaign's budget is too low to effectively compete with the combined traffic of multiple control campaigns. Click Upgrade budget or Next.
11. Enter the name of your experiment. Your experiment shouldn’t share the same name as your campaigns and other experiments.
12. Select the experiment's start and end dates. The maximum experiment duration is 12 weeks.
13. Review your experiment settings again, then click Schedule.

Reporting

You can find your control campaigns under the "Control campaign" column of the table in your Experiment Report page. In the Experiment Home page, your control campaigns are listed in the “Control group” entry under the “Experiment arm” column.

Related links

• About the "Experiments" page (formerly Drafts and experiments)
• Performance Max experiments FAQs