Standard shopping vs. Performance Max: Are we finally ready to switch sides?

We’ve found ourselves in a bit of a battle between Standard Shopping and Performance Max ever since Google introduced the latter to its Ads platform. As an agency, we’ve often been reluctant to fully commit to the automated campaign – and with good reason.

The lack of control that comes with Performance Max has always made us cautious. We’re firm believers in having a manual, hands-on approach when it comes to managing our clients’ campaigns and budget. Every penny matters, and we want to make sure it’s being spent where it’ll make the biggest impact.

That said, times are changing.

The powers that be at Google have been rapidly rolling out new features and insights for Performance Max – features that give us more of the control we’ve been craving. So let’s dig into a few of the big ones.

Asset conversion reporting

One of the biggest headaches with Performance Max has been the lack of visibility around which assets were actually driving results. We had to rely heavily on experience, intuition, and a very segmented approach to asset groups – always focusing on relevance and alignment between product groups, ad copy, creative assets and audience signals.

Now, with asset conversion reporting, we can finally see how individual assets are performing. That means we can test and optimise much more effectively, rather than operating in the dark.

Brand exclusions

Another early frustration was the cannibalisation of brand traffic across Search and Standard Shopping. With no clear visibility on how much we were paying for branded traffic through Performance Max, we were concerned about cost inflation – and there was little we could do about it.

Google eventually gave us the option to exclude brand lists, which was a welcome step in the right direction. But even then, brand misspellings and close variants still managed to sneak through. Progress? Yes. Perfect? Not quite.

Negative keywords

This one was a bit of a turning point. After a lot of industry-wide venting, PPC’ers were finally gifted the ability to add negative keywords to Performance Max campaigns. Initially capped at 100 keywords, that limit has thankfully been lifted.

This gave us back a massive amount of control. We could stop wasting spend on brand variants, misspellings, and those high-cost, low-converting search terms that sneak into every campaign if you’re not watching closely. It’s one of the changes we’ve most welcomed.

Age & device exclusions

Another recent update is the ability to exclude certain age ranges and devices – something we’ve long had in Search. It might not be a headline feature, but it opens the door to smarter testing across audience segments and platforms.

So… what side of the fence are we on now?

Thanks to these new features, we’re finding ourselves leaning more toward the Performance Max side these days. The ability to regain some control has been a game-changer, and it feels like Google is actually listening to feedback from the paid media world.

That said, just because we can do more with Performance Max doesn’t mean it should be used for everything. We still believe strongly in running standalone Demand Gen, Search, Display and Video campaigns. These give us even more control and granularity, which is still essential depending on a client’s goals.

We’re excited to see how Performance Max evolves – and we’ll continue testing, optimising, and making sure every campaign is working as hard as it can for our clients.