Reviewing reporting metrics for Performance Max campaigns is crucial for optimising campaign performance. By analysing fluctuations, interactions and Engaged-view conversions (EVCs), you can assess the effectiveness of your campaigns. Regularly monitoring these metrics can empower you to maximise your return on investment and achieve your goals.
In this article, you’ll learn how to understand fluctuations and key reporting metrics from your Performance Max campaigns.
On this page
- Understand performance fluctuations
- Interact with Search campaigns
- Measure full value of video in Performance Max
Understand performance fluctuations
Fluctuations in performance are often driven by internal and external factors. You can use the Explanations tool to gather insight into large changes in performance for the following factors:
- Bid strategy shifts
- Low conversion data
- Attribution model changes
- Change in audience signals, location, language and ad schedule
- Large or frequent changes
- Conversion goal changes
- External factors
When to take action
Target CPA/ROAS is designed to help you hit your goals over time. As a result, campaigns with limited daily conversions may not provide enough data, making accurate prediction generation take longer. Conversion volatility may also make prediction generation more challenging.
Follow these steps if your spend or performance appear abnormal over a sustained period of time:
- Check Explanations to identify causes of changes, such as customer behaviour or demand changes.
- Temporarily lower your budget to align more closely with your recent spend.
- Increase the ROAS target by ~ 30% max and monitor the impact. Continue to adjust if necessary, and wait 1–2 conversion cycles between changes.
- Use data exclusions if there’s a recent tagging issue.
- Contact Google Ads support team to investigate abnormal performance
Interact with Search campaigns
If your Search campaign has keywords in any match type that are identical to the user query, it would be prioritised over Performance Max. Learn more About keyword and search theme prioritisation within a Google Ads account.
A Search keyword may not be eligible to trigger an ad if:
- The campaign is limited by budget
- It has low search volume status
- All creatives or landing pages for the ad group are disapproved
- All campaign or ad group targeting isn’t met
Measure full value of video in Performance Max
- Engaged-view conversions (EVCs) are counted when a user watches at least 10 seconds of a skippable in-stream ad and then converts within your EVC look-back window
- EVCs are a more accurate way to measure performance delivered by direct response video ads
- Default 3-day attribution window is aligned with broad incrementality studies
