Once your Performance Max campaign has been serving you may want to compare the performance with your existing campaigns to understand where it is bringing value and where you might want to make improvements.
Before you compare performance of campaigns, it is recommended you run campaigns for at least 6 weeks to allow Google AI time to ramp up and curate sufficient data to compare performance.
Compare reports
Our guide on Performance Max reporting is the first place
to start to understand which attributes and metrics are compatible with
Performance Max and how to retrieve them using
GoogleAdsService.SearchStream.
This section will cover which resources are comparable between Performance Max and other campaign types.
Asset groups instead of ad groups
Performance Max campaigns use the concept of asset groups which are a set of creatives that will be used to create an ad depending on the channel it's being served on. Similar to ad groups in other campaigns, you should use them to group assets, such as text, images and video, by a common theme. Google AI will assemble the assets in an asset group into all applicable ad formats for your goal and show the most relevant creative for your campaign.
Although the specific resources (asset group assets and ad group ads) in both types of group are different it is a good place to start investigating comparable performance especially if you used the data from an existing ad group to create an equivalent asset group.
Here are a few examples of resources and reporting views that are similar in Performance Max:
| Your current resource or view | Performance Max similar resource or view | Notes |
|---|---|---|
ad_group |
asset_group |
As both group by theme, metrics such as
conversions
can be compared for the theme.
|
ad_group_ad |
asset_group |
As a collection of assets are used to generate ads, some structural
data can be found at this level, such as
final_urls.
|
ad_group_criterion.listing_group |
asset_group_listing_group_filter |
Only for campaigns with product or listing groups. |
product_group_view |
asset_group_product_group_view |
Only for campaigns with product feeds. |
Search Terms Insights instead of Search Terms
If your existing campaign serves on the search network you are probably used to
measuring the performance of search terms using the
search_term_view.
In Performance Max, search is only one of the possible networks your ads can
serve, so instead, we have
search term insights,
to help you understand how your customers are searching and engaging
with your business on Google. They analyze the search terms where your ads have
appeared in the selected time period, grouping them into search categories and
subcategories to provide you with key performance metrics for each.
The existing search_term_view used by other non-Performance Max campaigns,
aggregates metrics
the at ad group level. For search term insights metrics can be segmented to
aggregate at appropriate level using either
customer_search_term_insight
(aggregate at the campaign level) or
campaign_search_term_insight
(aggregate at the ad group or asset group level).
| Your current resource or view | Performance Max similar resource or view | Notes |
|---|---|---|
search_term_view |
customer_search_term_insight |
Segment by campaign to understand search term insights data across all campaigns |
search_term_view |
campaign_search_term_insight |
Segment by asset group to understand search term insights data across at the equivalent level to ad groups provided by search term view in other non-Performance Max campaigns |
Optimization & Troubleshooting
For more best practices for optimizing and troubleshooting Performance Max campaigns, see our Performance Max optimization and troubleshooting guide.