In this instructional video, Aaron Young of Define Digital Academy walks viewers through the newly available Insights data for Google Ads Performance Max campaigns. He explains how to access and analyze search‑term insights and audience‑signal data, rank them by conversions, and feed high‑performing keywords and audiences back into the campaign’s audience signal to improve the automated learning model. Young then demonstrates how to examine asset‑group performance using the table view, adding columns for clicks, impressions, cost, and conversions, and shows how this data can guide decisions such as pausing under‑performing asset groups or splitting them into separate campaigns. Throughout, he references his updated optimization checklist, urging viewers to download it from the description, and emphasizes the importance of proper campaign structure. The video aims to empower marketers—especially data‑oriented users—to leverage the new insights for more precise optimization of Performance Max campaigns.
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Since Google launched its Performance Max campaigns at the end of 2021, the main downside of these campaigns is the lack of data that they gave you in Google Ads, when I mean lack of data, there was literally no data to review at all. So if you're a special type of combination of being a data nerd and a control freak like me, you could see why the very thought of running a Performance Max campaign would throw me into fits of rage. But thankfully, right now, Google has enthroned ad mere mortals like you and me with some extra data about Performance Max. And it's great news is because it's allowing us to see the really important data that you need to see in order to be able to review your campaign and then make the right optimizations. So what we're going to do in this video is I'm going to take you through how you can see this data so that you can start reviewing the data in your own campaigns so that you can make the best optimizations for for your Performance Max campaigns. And just in case you haven't met yet, my name is Aaron Young, I'm from Define Digital Academy and I'm your 15,000 hour Google Ads master. Now I do want to stress that in this video I'm going to be referencing my new and updated optimization checklist. And if you've got my old checklist, it's not going to look the same. So if you want to stay up to date, make sure you follow that link in the description below so you can get access to my updated optimization checklist. So once you've got your checklist, you can follow along and let's get straight into today's teaching. So this is what the new updated optimization checklist looks like and it's got it broken down so you can actually review your Insights tab. So what we're gonna be going through first in the Insights tab is I wanna be taking you through two things for your Performance Max campaign. Firstly, I want you to go through and I'm gonna show you how you can go through and review your search terms. Yes, that's right. You can now see the search terms which the users are using in your Performance Max campaign. And then we're also gonna be taking you through the audience review. Now the way and do this is that you go into your obviously Performance Max campaign into an Insights and when you're in Insights, you firstly want to go into your search term Insights. Now you can view this in a couple of ways. The last seven days, 28 days and you've Even got a custom column in here. And let's just go the last 28 days and then we want to view the detailed report. And as you can see, you get a great amount of data that you've got in here, including the search volume, conversions, clicks, impressions, conversion value. So if you wanted to rank this down by conversions, this is showing you the search terms which give you the most conversions versus the ones that give you the most clicks. And let's just say we're gonna review it in here you break this down and this now gives you all of the search terms that have used that word Google in it, whereas this one shows you the ones which have used the word keyword Planner. And there are some double ups in here. So you know Google Keyword Planner is in here and Google Keyword Planner is in here as well. So it's broken it out into the individual theme or subcategory if you wanted to use it that way. So what you want to be doing in here is that what I generally do is I go through and I rank this down by conversions. If there's any keywords which I think are relev. For example, this Google Ads Optimization checklist, I copy that. Then we go over into our asset groups, go into your audience signal, and then I'm adding it into this list. And then I also want to go back into the Insights tab and we do the same thing for the audiences. Now I'm going to explain why I do these two things soon. But while we're here, I just want to show you where you review the audiences. So once again, you go into your campaigns, go into our insights, and you want to do the same thing with your audiences. Now, because I've been actively going ahead and doing this, these are all in blue, and what blue means is that these are already the signals which I've given to Google to optimize. But if you see any green tags in here, like this one in here, this means that I haven't yet added it to my audience signal. And if you've also got enough conversions in here, you'll also see another tab. So you can see impressions, clicks and conversions, and they're the main ones that you want to be adding in. You want to be adding in any audiences that are getting conversions. And you may remember that when Google Ads first launched, I used to say this quite a bit how you give Google its keywords and audiences, but Google is going to go beyond your selections to find new conversions based on your goals. And that's what this data is in Here now, Google now actually gives us what those audiences are. As long as they're inside that top 10, then you can see it in from there. Now, before we get back into that screen share and I'll show you that third area where you can see new data now in your Performance Max campaigns, I wanted to touch on why it was so important to get the keywords and audiences that are generating conversions in your Performance Max campaign. Why it's so important to then go through and add them into your audience signal. The reason for why that is so important is this. We know that Performance Max is built on a lot of automated learning and we do know from these automated learning tools, say for example, if you're using Google's Bard, we know that it's going to be giving you a lot more accurate results with the more data that you feed into your question. Say for example, if you are new in town and you wanted to find the best pizza, and if you are asking for the best authentic Italian style pizza that also offered gluten free options, I know that's not authentically Italian, but just go with me here. You would get a much better result. Rather than just asking Google for what is the best pizza store in my area. By giving that extra information saying that you're wanting an Italian style that also has gluten free options, you're getting a much better result. And the same is true with your Performance Max campaigns. You want to be giving it as much information as possible. So when you add in your keywords and your audiences to your audience signal inside a Performance Max campaign, Google uses that as its initial starting point. Yes, it is going to go out further and do different tests, but that's the initial starting point that it's going to be focusing on. So by you continually adding in those extra keywords and those extra audiences, you're building out that core focus point that you want Google to base your campaign on. So I hope that makes sense. That's a great way that I found that I've been able to increase the performance performance of my Performance Max campaigns. So with all that said, let's go back into a screen share so I can show you that third area where you can get some great data in Performance Max. And finally, this last bit of data is great for people who are running multiple asset groups. So what you want to be doing in here is that when you're in the asset group section of your Performance Max campaign, you want to go into here and you can see you've got the summary view and the Table view and let's go back to the summary view and then once again that table view. And when you're in that table view, you can then go to columns, modify your columns, and this is where you can then add in your clicks, your cost, your impressions and your conversions. Now you may note here I've got a date range that happened a while ago from February, May, earlier this year. And the reason why I've got that is you can actually see here of our four asset groups, we've got two that are paused and two that are active. Now when we go back to February, and I think it was April, sorry, it was when we went back to February and March, what we could actually see here is we could see there's a really clear trend on these two asset groups. They're getting a lot more clicks and impressions and they're getting a lot more of the spend. As you can see, these two had over a thousand. These two were just at around about the 100 each. But these top two, they were still converting. You can see the conversion rated cost were some great results and the cost per conversion across all of them were well within range of what this client wanted. When we took on this account, it was originally $25 and we were wanting to get that cost per conversion down to 15, which we were achieving or very close to achieving on all the individual asset groups. So what we did with this data is that that then allowed us to make the decision to break these two out because they'll both to do with night lights. These ones were more sort of general gifts. So we're able to split that out into individ campaigns. So that's another way that you can get some amazing data in Performance Max that was not available when Performance Max first was launched. So I also encourage you to go into your asset groups and review the table data, adding in that columns data in and around your clicks, impressions, cost and also conversion data so that you can make some better decisions around about how you're going to split the spending of your Performance Max campaign. So that's the new data which is now available to you and me inside of Google Ads about your Performance Max campaign. And remember, if you want to get my updated version of my optimization checklist, all you need to do is to follow that link in the description below. Now, one thing I do want to make really, really clear that it's not only about making sure that you've got the correct data to review that you do need to make sure that you're using the correct structure when you're setting up your Performance Max campaign to make sure you've got the correct structure for your Performance Max campaigns, go through this video right here. Once again, thanks for joining me. See you next time.
