2025 Starts with Enhanced Performance Max Features

In 2024, we rolled out a bunch of cool new Performance Max features focused on beefing up controls and reporting. Performance Max harnesses the full power of Google's channels and AI, all wrapped up in one campaign to really boost your performance. As we head into 2025, we're set to keep expanding Performance Max in some key areas to help you get even better results and get a clearer picture of what's driving your success. Kick off the new year with these fresh features:

• More ways to steer AI in your campaigns
  • Campaign-level negative keywords now available to all advertisers
  • New customer acquisition goal with a high value mode
  • Brand exclusions tailored for different formats in retailer campaigns with product feeds
  • “URL contains” rules now extended to campaigns with product feeds
  • Demographic exclusions
  • Device targeting options
• Deeper dive into Search reporting
  • Search themes usefulness indicator
  • New source column in search terms insights
• Better asset group reporting
  • Now you can segment and download asset group performance data

More ways to steer AI in your campaigns

At last year's DMEXCO, we launched the beta for campaign-level negative keywords, letting you block specific queries where you don't want your ads to show up, whether it's for brand suitability or other reasons. This feature, which many of you asked for, is now rolling out to all advertisers over the next few weeks.

You can also tweak Performance Max to focus more on snagging new customers with the new customer acquisition goals. Last year, we introduced a beta for a high value new customer mode, and now it's available to everyone. With this feature, you can pinpoint your high-value customers and their long-term worth using Customer Match. Google's AI uses this data to guess which new users are likely to bring in the most value over time, and it'll bid higher for them. You'll get campaign-level reports too, so you can track how many new customers your campaign is bringing in, and how many of them are those high-value ones.

For those of you running retail ads with product feeds, you'll soon have finer control over brand exclusions across various ad formats. Before, brand exclusions covered both Search and Shopping ads. Now, you can apply them just to Search text ads while keeping your branded traffic flowing for Shopping ads. This could be super handy if you want to show Shopping ads for brand terms but manage Search text ads differently.

The “URL contains” rules, which were already part of standard Performance Max campaigns, are now coming to campaigns with product feeds too. You can use these rules to zero in on traffic from specific sections of your site. For example, if you sell athletic gear, you can target your campaign to all pages with “shoes” in the URL.

We've got two exciting new betas on the horizon for Performance Max campaigns. The first is for age-based demographic exclusions, letting you block age groups like “18-24” or “65+”. The second is our Devices beta, where you can customize your targeting to focus on computer, mobile, or tablet traffic. If you're interested in trying out either of these, just reach out to your Google Ads account team or Google Ads support to sign up.

Enhanced Search reporting & guidance

We're also beefing up the reporting in Performance Max this month. Remember the search themes we introduced in beta? They let you specify queries that your customers use to find you, adding to the queries and placements that Performance Max predicts will work well based on your assets, feeds, and landing pages. Thanks to your feedback, we're now officially launching search themes with some big upgrades. You'll be able to use search terms insights to see if queries are coming from Performance Max's keywordless targeting or from your added search themes.

[ttpp]Use the new source column in search terms insights to see where your queries are coming from[yyxx]

You'll also spot an indicator next to your search themes that shows how “useful” they are. These new reporting insights will help you figure out if the search themes you've set up are driving extra traffic beyond what Performance Max would find on its own, or if it's time to tweak your search themes.

[ttpp]Check out the search themes usefulness indicator to see if they are helping you improve your reach[yyxx]

Improved asset group reporting

Lastly, we're enhancing asset group reporting. You can now segment your asset group performance in all Performance Max campaigns, breaking down your results into finer details like conversions by device or time. We've also taken your feedback on board about wanting to access and share this data outside the Google Ads UI. That's why you can now download asset group performance data.

Keep an eye out in the coming months as we keep adding more improvements to Performance Max, including more types of controls, reporting, and insights. Your feedback is crucial in shaping and rolling out these features to help you make the most of AI in Google Ads, so keep those ideas coming!