Create a Performance Max campaign with local inventory ads

A common goal among users is to encourage customers to visit your physical storefront and to showcase products available at nearby stores. This article explains how you can optimize your Performance Max campaigns with local inventory ads to drive offline visits and sales with a linked Merchant Center account and data source.

Google Ads Performance Max is powered by Google AI to generate campaign settings that help you get more value from your advertising. As you create your campaign, you may receive notifications about issues that could affect performance. Use the campaign construction navigation menu to review and resolve these issues. Learn more about how to Set up your campaign for success.

On this page

• Create your campaign and choose a goal
• Set your bidding preferences
• Set your campaign settings
• Set up your asset group and assets
• Set your budget
• Review and publish your campaign

Before you begin

• Make sure your Merchant Center account is set up with required product information like business details, tax information (United States only), verified and claimed website, shipping settings, and a data source with all of your product information.
• Make sure your Google Ads account is linked to your Merchant Center account.
• Automatically created assets can’t be applied to Shopping Ads.

Instructions

If you’re using a Merchant Center data source, follow the steps below to create a Google Ads Performance Max campaign. If you’re unfamiliar with conversion tracking, review Set up conversion tracking for your website before you set up your goals.

Step 1 of 6: Create your campaign and choose a goal

1. Sign in to your Search Ads 360 experience.
2. Navigate to a sub-manager or client account.
3. Select Campaigns from the left navigation, then click the plus button .
4. Under “Choose your objective, select Local store visits and promotions.
5. Select Performance Max as your campaign type.

Select your Merchant Center account and country or feed label where products are sold.

6. Enter a campaign name.
7. Select Continue.

Keep in mind

• Update or remove irrelevant or stale goals: You should update conversion goals to improve performance and to avoid continually removing them from your targeted goals. Click the 3-dot icon to edit or remove irrelevant goals, or go to “Conversions” to update your account-level conversion goals.
• Set conversion values: Set conversion values for different goals or when each conversion is worth a different amount to your business. For example, if your campaign is optimized towards both phone calls and website actions, you can set the value for phone calls as your average sale order value. Automation will optimize for goals with the highest ROAS.
• Performance Max only supports the account-level or campaign-level tracking template: Any tracking template at the lower level, such as ad group or product group, will be automatically removed.

Step 2 of 6: Set your bidding preferences

To set a monthly charging limit for an individual campaign, enter the average daily budget in the "Budget" section. This limit is determined by multiplying the average daily budget by the average number of days in a month. Although daily spending may vary, you won't exceed the limit.

For Performance Max, allocate an average daily budget of at least 3 times your CPA or cost/conv. for your campaign's conversion actions, and monitor its performance regularly, Google recommends waiting for 1 to 2 complete conversion cycles before fully assessing your campaign performance.

Ads can be spent up to 2 times their average daily budget on days with higher traffic, balanced by days with less spending. Campaigns can be set with an average daily budget, which can be adjusted at any time.

Bid strategy

Based on your specified performance goal, Performance Max will help set the right bids for every auction and optimize the campaign to deliver against that performance goal.

The "Maximize conversion values" bid strategy is recommended for tracking values alongside conversions, while the "Maximize conversions" bid strategy is recommended for equally valuing all conversions.

Learn how to Choose your Google Ads bid and budget.

Conversion Goals

Note: Goals are available for Google Ads.

Select the conversion goals you want to use for bid optimization. Learn more About conversion goals.

1. In the "Conversion goals" section, select “Google Ads”.
2. Choose one of the following from the drop-down:
   • Use account default goal settings
   • Use campaign specific goals
     • Click Add goals to select the goals you want to apply to the campaign.
3. Click Next

Learn how to Choose your bid and budget.

Step 3 of 6: Set your campaign settings

1. On the “Campaign settings” page, select the locations to target under “Locations”.
2. To target a location that isn’t listed, select Enter another location, enter the name of the place you want to target, then select Target or Exclude.
   • If you want to target specific places within a location, select Nearby and again select Target or Exclude locations.
3. Under the “Languages” dropdown, select the languages your customers speak. You can select multiple languages to show your ads to specific sets of customers.
   • Note: For more location targeting options, use “Advanced search”. You can add location in bulk or enter a location and radius around that specific location that you'd like to target.
4. Finalize any additional settings you’d like to set up under “More settings”. Click Next.

Turn on automatically created assets

If you keep automatically created assets selected, Performance Max campaigns may auto-generate assets if Google AI predicts that your campaign performance can be improved. Google AI curates text and images from your landing pages and shows them in your ads when it’s predicted to improve performance. Then, you can add information like brand colors to help your campaign look more personalized.

If both the automatically created assets settings (text assets and Final URL) in Search Ads 360 Google Ads are checked and turned on for your campaign, your final URL may be replaced with a more relevant domain based on customer intent , that uses a dynamic headline, description, and creative assets from your landing page’s content. By turning this feature on, you can increase your campaign’s ability to serve.

Final URL Expansion

If both the automatically created assets settings (text assets and Final URL) in Search Ads 360 Google Ads are checked and turned on for your campaign, your final URL may be replaced with a more relevant domain based on customer intent, that uses a dynamic headline, description, and creative assets from your landing page’s content. By turning this feature on, you can increase your campaign’s ability to serve.

Learn more about Automatically created assets in Performance Max in the Google Ads Help.

More settings

You can set up ad scheduling, campaign start and end dates, and URL settings under “More settings”.

Ad scheduling

Use ad scheduling to determine the number of days and hours your ad will show. For some goals, you may want your ad to only show during business hours or when you are available to handle customer inquiries.

• Learn more About ad scheduling.
• Learn how to Create an ad schedule.

Exclude brand traffic

You can prevent your Performance Max campaign ads from serving for specific brand searches (including misspellings) by creating a Brand list in your account and applying it to your Performance Max campaign.

Learn more About brand exclusions for Google Ads Performance Max campaigns.

Campaign URL options

The tracking template is where you put tracking information. Google Ads Performance Max only supports the account-level or campaign-level tracking template. Any tracking template at the lower level, such as ad group or product group, will be automatically removed.

You can use URL parameters within the template to customize your final URL. When an ad is clicked, the information is used to create your landing page URL.

Step 4 of 6: Set up your asset group and assets

Google’s default setting is to auto-generate assets on your behalf, but you can launch without assets. However, it’s recommended that you add your own assets to help your campaign to maximally serve across surfaces and help you achieve optimal performance.

If you attach a Merchant Center data source to your campaign, assets are automatically generated from that and you don’t have to provide additional assets. It’s recommended you still upload headlines, descriptions, and images to help Google AI automatically create and optimize your ad creative.

Listing groups are required and will default to all products in the specified Merchant Center account. You’ll also follow the steps below to upload assets if you’re creating a Shopping ad.

1. On the “Asset groups” page, enter a unique asset group name.
2. Confirm Listing groups for the campaign. Listing groups allow you to select which products will show in your campaigns's ads. The default will be all products in your attached Google Merchant Center account, but if you wish to only use a selection of products follow the steps below:
   1. Sign in to your Search Ads 360 experience.
   2. Navigate to a sub-manager or client account.
   3. Click the pencil icon next to "All products".
   4. Select Use a selection of products in your ads.
   5. You can select products by Category, Brand, Item ID, Condition, Product type, Channel or Custom labels from the dropdown. You can also choose values in bulk by manually entering product types separated by line breaks.
   6. Check products that you want to include in your Performance Max ads and they'll appear in the column to the right. To remove products, click the red remove dot icon next to the product group.
   7. Click Save to finish setting up your Performance Max campaign.
3. Build your asset group using the guidelines below.

Tip: You can create one or more asset groups with assets related to a single theme or audience. After creation, combine assets from the same group to create ads that serve across Google Search, Google Maps, Display, YouTube, Gmail, Discovery data source, and Google partner websites. Hover over the question mark icon to learn more about the requirements.

You can create one asset group before launching your Performance Max campaign and additional asset groups after setup. Your assets will automatically be assembled into all applicable formats and show the most relevant ad creative.

Audience signals

Search Ads 360 Audience signals allow you to add audience suggestions that help Google Ads automation optimize for your selected goals. Although adding audience signals is optional, using audience signals can help you accelerate and guide Google AI on the ideal way to optimize your campaign.

Remember that Performance Max campaigns may show ads to relevant audiences outside of your signals if they have a strong likelihood of converting to help you meet your performance goals.

• Learn more about how to Build audience signals in the Google Ads Help.
• Learn more about how to Use the Audience builder in the Google Ads Help to reach the right audience for each campaign and ad group.

Ad strength

Ad strength is an indication of the relevance and range of your ad creative combinations. Having more relevant and unique content can help you get the right ad in front of your customers and improve your ad’s performance.

Add Additional assets

Ad assets expand your ads and give people more reasons to view your ads or take action on them. Assets add useful custom dimensions below your ad, including locations, additional links, prices, and more. For this reason, assets are recommended in Performance Max campaigns. Learn more About assets.

In Performance Max campaigns, ad assets are tied to specific marketing goals and will be featured more prominently based on the campaign’s goal. Ad assets can:

• Display information that gives the user an opportunity to learn more about your business.
• Display actions that invite the user to do more than visit the website. Some actions covered may be to call the business, submit a lead form, or view locations.
• Invite the user to gather more information about the business or extend interaction between the business and user.

Step 5 of 6: Set your budget

Your budget establishes a monthly charging limit for an individual campaign. The charging limit is the average daily budget that you set, multiplied by the average number of days in a month. While your spend may vary each day, you won’t pay more than your monthly charging limit. Learn more About spending limits in the Google Ads Help.

For Performance Max you should:

• Set an average daily budget of at least 3 times your CPA or cost/conv. for the conversion actions selected for your campaign. You have the flexibility to change your budget at any time.
• Check your account daily to know how your campaigns have performed so far.
• Remember that on days when your ads are likely to get you more traffic, you may spend up to 2 times your average daily budget. Those days are balanced by the days when your spend is below your average daily budget.

Step 6 of 6: Review and publish your campaign

Before you finish setting up your campaign, you'll be taken to a review summary with the details of your new campaign. Select Publish Campaign to complete the process.

Related links

• About Google Ads Performance Max campaigns
• Build an asset group in Google Ads Performance Max campaigns
• Final URL expansion with Google Ads Performance Max
• Use feed labels to advertise products from specific feeds