Search Themes for Performance Max: What They Are, How They Impact Campaigns, & How to Set Up

This is awesome. From Grow My ads and in today's video I'm going to talk about Performance Max search themes. Search Themes are new to Performance Max campaigns. Right now they're in beta. They will be rolling this out further in 2024 across all accounts. I have had access to this beta in several of our client accounts. So I've been playing around with search themes, how they work and how they influence other campaigns. I've also spent a lot of time researching what Google says about search themes on their support pages. I've compiled all of that into a n simple doc that I'll review through the video and I'll also show you a real life case of search themes, how to add them inside of an asset group inside of a Performance Max campaign that I again have access to the beta right now to show that. So let's go ahead and dive in. All right, so what are search themes? I have Google's explanation here, by the way. This is copied and pasted from Google support pages. I did not write this out so just want a heads up there. And I also do link back to those pages that I reference. Basically, I had to take like five support pages that I have found while researching search themes and piece together what I think are the most important pieces of information explaining search themes and how it works and how it impacts search campaigns and everything else. So I did that, compiled it all into this easy sort of notion doc that I'm using and just wanted to give you a heads up. Though I did not write this out, so I do put Google's explanation there. So how does Google explain what are search themes basically? Performance Max currently looks at your assets feed and landing pages to predict which placements, including search queries, will perform well for your campaign. Now with Search Themes beta you can fill in gaps by adding additional information about your business that you can expect to perform well. By combining your expertise with Google AI, you'll be able to expand your reach on all channels, including search. So this including search piece is really big. I'll talk about it a little further later on. But that's the biggest difference between keyword search, keyword custom segments and then search themes. Because when I first heard about search themes I'm like, well how's that any different from utilizing search keyword custom segments? Because I use those quite a bit. That search piece though is the actual explanation as to why. And so I'll explain that a little bit later in this video. But let's carry on to what search themes are based off of what Google says so here are a few examples where search themes can be especially helpful if you have knowledge about your business or customers that I can't easily or quickly learn. So landing pages doesn't have complete details or the latest updates about the product and service you offer. So maybe you just launched a brand new product that you've never had on your website before, or even a product category and then you're building an asset group around that particular product or product category. Well, Google might not have a lot of information yet on that and they don't have historical data on that product category or service because it's brand new. So you would use search themes here to really help steer Google's algorithm to know, hey, this is what you should be looking at targeting people who have intent to purchase or are searching for these type of searches. So think of it as bridging the gap between what you know about what people are searching for your product or service and what Google should go off and try to find. Again, it's a signal, it's not targeting. I talk about that as well in this doc. But you're not targeting keywords with search themes. It still acts like a signal, just like audience signals did. And Google will bypass those signals over time once they learn more about what your sort of customer or converter looks like based off of historical conversion data. But if you launched a brand new product or service, it doesn't have any of that yet. So this kind of helps steer it in the right direction in the beginning. Again, steer and signal are the two key words there, not target. It's not just targeting people who are searching those terms. It's nothing more than a signal. I have that referenced in this document several times. Just because people do forget sometimes that you're not targeting anything. This is very open. It's just nothing more than a signal to to Google's AI. So they also give a few other examples. You're launching a new promotion or sale. You want to expand the reach of performance max. You can read all of this, but when you add search themes you tell in Google a you want to reach that traffic in your performance max campaign across all Google Ads inventory including search. Search themes also help you find audiences across channels based on user search behavior. Here's the support doc there to it. If you want you can read further on my simple explanation. Search themes are just a new additional signal that help bridge the gap between what Google will know and what to target based on your landing page assets or product feeds. Again, if you launch a new product or service and you don't quite have historical data on that yet or Google doesn't, then this will help jumpstart it quicker than just relying on on Google to find out because Google has none of that data yet. All right, so how do Search themes work? Google's Explanation Search themes let you indicate queries that you know your customers are looking for and they say they're optional. You can add up to 25 search themes per asset group. I will show you a real life example of that inside of a performance max campaign that I have Search theme beta access to. Search themes do respect brand exclusions in your Performance max campaigns and account level negative keywords. That's pretty important. So you don't have to worry about if you have brand exclusions or negative keywords added, it won't override any of that. So it will respect those. Still, results driven from search themes will bring in customers to the landing pages that you've indicated in your final URL expansion, page feed or URL settings. So just know whatever the URL is that you have added to your asset inside of your asset group, that is where they will land. Unless you do have final URL expansion on or page feeds, Search themes will have the same priority as your phrase match and brand broad match keywords in your search campaigns. This piece is huge. I explained that a little later on the next section actually on search priority so we'll talk about that a little more. They have some more information here. What's the simple explanation though? Search themes work like audience signals and are just signals to Google. They are not targeting. So I've already talked a lot about that. But again you're just signaling to Google. These are search terms that I believe you should be looking at when trying to target for my ads for my customers based off what your product or product categories that you're selling Search priority so Google's explanation on search inventory Specifically search themes will have the same priority as your phrase match and broad match keywords in your search campaigns and the one with the highest ad rank will be optimized. I've got this screenshot here from this support page. It shows you all right, what about exact match keywords and then what about phrase and broad? So you can go through and look at this but simple explanation here is if it is an exact match keyword that you have added in a standard search campaign. So let's say LG Smart TVs you have set as an exact match keyword in your standard search campaign. But you also have LG Smart TVs as a search theme theme inside of your performance max campaign. Who does Google give that ad impression to? That should go to in according to Google's definition here, it should actually go to your search campaign. So this is why I still believe that nice themed search campaigns while utilizing still exact match. I know some people only use broad now. I still don't believe in that. I still have great success with exact match keywords. Part of it too is being able to kind of control some of that away from Performance Max because we know performance max likes to cannibalize a lot of other campaign types, especially search. So exact match still gives me back a little bit of control. So Google saying, hey, if you have the exact match keyword added in a standard search campaign, your ad impression should go to that campaign and not Performance Max. Even if you have it as a search theme inside of your Performance max asset group, then phrase and broad match. That's different because your search themes are acting as if they are phrase and broad match keywords. Again, they're not, they're not being targeted specifically like they sort of act in a standard search campaign. They still are theme signals. So your, your campaign's not just going after those keywords, it's going to go beyond that. But if someone types in, let's say you don't have the exact match of LG Smart TV added, but you are using a broad match term or a phrase of LG Smart tv then it could either go to your standard shopping campaign or standard search campaign or it could also go to your Performance max campaign. Google will use ad rank to determine where they give the impression to. They say that I actually in most cases believe Google's yielding to performance Max campaigns. In those scenarios I just see definitely drop offs in search term traffic from from phrase and broad when utiliz Performance Max. So they're going to claim its ad rank for phrase and broad match keywords. My own personal opinion is you're going to see most of it probably flow to Performance Max. But simple explanation here. Exact match Google goes to standard search phrase and broad Google yields to whoever has the highest ad rank. So just know that's how your search campaigns are being impacted by search themes. All that information's here and again all this links to the support pages. If you want to read more, then search based custom segments will be phased out. So this is why when this first came out, why I was interested in how they're any different than using search keyword custom segments because I used that quite a bit basically They've upgraded search keyword custom segments to search themes. They're going to be more powerful and I'll explain that. And they're just going to phase search custom segments out completely. So all of that information's here, but you may still have access to access to it now. But as soon as search themes are universal across all accounts in says early 2024, then you will no longer have access to actually creating these search keyword custom segments. So how are they different though than custom segments? So here's the biggest piece. I'm going to read this carefully. Custom segments allow you to define an audience by specifying custom intent. The keywords. These audience typically search for custom affinities, interest apps, URLs, et cetera. To help you reach your ideal audience, custom segments are used on non search inventory. That is the key. So when you had custom keyword search custom segments created, that was used on non search inventory. That was influencing all other Google Ad inventory but search. So to reach people who have searched for the input to the related keywords in the past, Search themes allow you to share your insights based on your business or product to your performance max campaigns. You can add up to 25 search themes that could work very well in any channel, not just as an audience, but also as search placements. Okay, so that is those search inventory and search placements, those are the keywords here. So simple explanations. Search themes are basically an upgraded search keyword custom segment that can also be used on search inventory and non search inventory. Think of search themes as nothing more than an upgraded version of search custom segments. But instead of influencing non search inventory, it influences all the inventory, including search. So basically it can do everything custom segments did, but it actually does more now because it also includes the search inventory. So that's like to me, the easiest way of explaining it without going too far into the weeds. Okay, so how to set up search themes? I've got this broken out here real quick. I'm actually going to jump into an account and show you real quick. So let's go ahead and do that. Okay, so I'm inside of a performance max campaign right now. I'm looking at the asset group level. So here's an asset group. It might be blurred out for keeping things confidential, but I can go into this signals thing right here by my audience signals. Now I just hit this pencil icon. This now takes me into basically my, my audience signal and search theme settings, which you would only see if you have the beta for search themes right now. So if you're still on just what is standard for audience signals, you're not going to see what I'm seeing. But again, in 2024, this is what everyone's going to start seeing. So I have my audience signal here, but now I've got this area called search themes where I can go ahead and actually just add search terms here. So if I wanted to add LG Smart tv, I would just add that. Boom. So again, don't go like super long tailed exact match type keywords here. Go, go broad. So for me, if I'm selling LG TVs in this asset group, I would just be putting LG Smart TV keywords or search themes in here. You could test, I haven't tested this too much yet, like a super broad term or a theme like smart TVs. I'd probably do that. I don't think that would matter too much though. I haven't tested that quite yet. So for me, if I've been adding these inside of the beta, it's just whatever product, category, product I am selling, I'm just simply adding in some search themes there. That makes sense. I have even used 25. I don't think in most of the cases that I've tested this, I was just being redundant. If I were trying to fill up 25, I don't believe that's necessary. Google knows again, these are just signals. These aren't actual keywords they're targeting. You're just giving it the themes to kind of look at. And so in many cases I'm. I'm just putting a handful in here. That makes sense. So that's simply how you would add it. Boom, you add it and you hit save and you're done. So let's go hop back in the dock. Okay, so my thoughts on search themes overall, number one, I think these are used mainly to just warm up new performance max campaigns. So like audience signals, I'm in the camp that I actually don't think audience signals are as important as what some people claim they are. From my testing, audience signals are really good in the beginning, but then Google bypasses them once it has conversion data. So I don't really see a lot of needle moving going on inside of a campaign when it's already dialed in and hitting the conversion goals that I give it. So search themes from my limited testing seem to behave just like that as well. So I believe it's. They're going to be very important when you're launching a brand new campaign or even a brand new asset group, but not as important to an existing already high performing Performance Max campaign. If you see search term gaps in your Insight reports, test adding them. I think that's going to be big. So if you, if there are certain keywords that are search terms that you think you should have more coverage on that you're not quite seeing in the Insights report of your Performance Max campaign, go ahead, sprinkle some search themes into those ad group or asset groups where it makes sense and then check back in the Insights tab to see if you start seeing maybe upticks in impressions, conversions or clicks for those search themes that you've added. You can test adding search themes to existing pmax campaigns now, but I haven't seen massive upticks at all. I'm doing this, but it is early. This could change six months from now or a year from now from my testing. Adding in search themes to my existing asset groups in Performance Max campaigns that I've already had running really hasn't moved the needle too much yet. Now it's early, I'm in the beta stages here and it could change over time, but I just think search themes still are going to be more like how audience signals are now. It's just now going to include more signals to search inventory, whereas again, custom segments did not include search inventory. Also, if you are launching a new product product category and you are adding that as a new asset group inside of an existing Performance Max campaign, then absolutely I think search themes are going to help jumpstart it because Google has no historical data on something that would be brand new, like a product or service that you've never sold before. But if you're looking at a Performance Max campaign that you already have been running, it's already performing well, it's already dialed in, then I do not think search themes are really going to change your world much. And that's how I also feel about audience signals. Speaking of signals, remember, they are just signals. These are not keywords that Google will only target. They're you're just signaling. You're simply signaling to Google's AI. These are search themes or search terms basically that you believe your customer would be searching or interested in. And then last, if you don't have 25 search themes to add, don't worry. Just add what makes sense. There you go. There's Performance Max search themes again. It's still in beta right now, so you may not even see access to this, but it will be coming to you at some point in 2024. It'll be coming to everyone at some point in 2024 and this is our initial thoughts on search themes, our initial findings from testing it, how they behave and how they influence your other campaigns. I hope you find that helpful. If over time we find a different opinion after testing it further, or we believe we feel strongly a different way about search themes than what I presented in this video, we will make sure to update and do a new video on it. But for now, this is sort of our findings from using search themes and also researching it again. Hope that helps and I'll see you on the next video.