Preparing for the Upgrade to Performance Max (PMAX) Campaigns
Official Timeline
The time is upon us… Smart Shopping campaigns will soon be sunset and part of a distant memory like ETAs. So, if you haven’t already, now is the time to start transitioning to a Performance Max strategy to continue reaping the benefits of the Smart Shopping format.
Google announced that the self-upgrade feature is available through September 2022 and the auto-upgrade will be rolled out in batches from July through the end of September 2022.
You will receive a notification (shown below) of your account’s specific deadline for the auto-upgrade.
Auto-Upgrade vs Net-New
As a best practice, Google recommends using the migration tool to upgrade your Smart Shopping campaigns.
At Seer, we take a data-driven approach to our recommendations so we tested using the migration tool versus creating a net-new Performance Max campaign. Our test aimed to determine if the migration tool improved short-term efficiency (we defined this as a 2-week period).
For both the net-new and migrated campaigns, we measured performance pre vs post:
💡 The campaign that utilized the migration tool had better immediate results than the net-new campaign.
The migrated campaign had a -14% CPS (Cost per Sale) with a stable ROAS (Return on Ad Spend) -- whereas the net-new campaign had slight decreases in both efficiency metrics.
Additional Considerations
- Your Smart Shopping campaigns will be set as "Removed". Although, this point is fairly moot since these will soon be obsolete.
- Double check all campaign settings. Some settings will be pulled over (ex: product segments); However, there’s many settings that will need to be updated, for example:
- Ad copy / images - Performance Max has a much more robust copy and image build, so you’ll want to expand your coverage.
- URL expansion - This setting is automatically opted-in.
- Audience Signals
- Implement negative keywords. PMAX won’t directly target keywords actively used in campaigns. However, misspellings are fairplay and can flood search term reports. Consider negative keywords in your PMAX campaigns.
- Google says the migration should take a day or less. Note that all of our migrations so far at Seer have taken less than 5 minutes.
- Fix campaign names. Google will automatically adjust campaign names during the migration process so make sure to go back and fix it.
That's it for now! Migrate those campaigns and follow Seer on Twitter for more analyses like this.
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