The recent wave of updates to Performance Max offers more than mere automation, it gives advertisers deeper control, clearer visibility, and sharper optimization levers. If you’re a PPC marketer who wants to push beyond the basics, here are 7 actionable strategies to immediately put the new features to work.

Tip 1 – Enforce Campaign-Level Negative Keyword Lists

One of the most impactful changes is the rollout of campaign-level negative keyword lists for Performance Max. You can apply a shared negative keyword list across multiple PMax campaigns, ideal for excluding low-intent or brand-inconsistent queries such as “free sample” or “cheap discount”. Set up your list, apply it to all relevant campaigns, then monitor the search-terms report after 7-14 days to validate that exclusions are effective and budget waste is reduced.

Tip 2 – Expand Your Search Theme Input to Drive Intent

Google has doubled the number of allowed search themes per asset group from 25 to 50. This gives you a bigger canvas to define user intent. Think beyond generic themes, e.g. “men’s watches”, “floor installation”. Then enrich these into more specific variants such as “luxury men’s watches for sale” or “wooden flooring installation service Amsterdam”. Use these enriched themes to attract more qualified traffic, then compare performance via search term insight reports to prune underperforming themes.

Tip 3 – Leverage the New Channel Breakdown Report

Finally, you can see how your Performance Max campaigns perform across individual Google channels: Search, YouTube, Display, Gmail, Discover, Maps and more. Navigate to the “Channel Performance” page within your PMax campaign and you’ll find a distribution table showing impressions, clicks, and conversions by channel. Is your budget going to a well-performing channel? Now you can spot, for example, that YouTube is eating budget but delivering minimal conversions, and decide whether to adjust creative, exclude placements, or separate it into its own campaign. If you don’t see this channel breakdown yet, contact Google Support since it might still be in Beta in your region.

Tip 4 – Fine-Tune Device and Demographic Controls

Where once targeting was largely hands-off, PMax now supports more precise device and demographic exclusions. If your data shows, for example, that tablet traffic produces high CPAs or a specific age range underperforms, test excluding or deprioritising those segments. Note that you can only apply −100% exclusions, and this option works exclusively when using target CPA or target ROAS bidding strategies. It’s about alignment: audience × device × context. A small tweak here can significantly improve relevance and budget efficiency.

Tip 5 – Command Creative Asset Performance with Granular Reporting

You now have visibility into how individual assets (images, videos, headlines) perform and you’ll see which ones were auto-generated via Final URL Expansion. This setting can be found in your campaign setup and best practice is to keep it switched off to maintain control over your creative output. Review asset-level metrics (cost, clicks, conversions), identify under-performers, replace them with fresh creative, and make use of Google’s AI image enhancement recommendations. In short: creativity matters more than ever, even in a highly automated campaign type.

Tip 6 – Target New Customer Acquisition with Confidence

Thanks to improved tracking, the “Unknown” category for new/returning customers has shrunk, meaning you can more reliably measure how many new customers your campaigns bring in. Define a “New Customer” conversion action (this can be set up via Google Tag Manager), optimise a PMax campaign for it, and adjust bids or budgets accordingly. Distinguish results for new vs returning customers to prioritise growth segments and long-term value.

Tip 7 – Institute a Weekly Review Rhythm & Test Framework

With the influx of fresh data, your next job is to build discipline. Each week: pull your search-term report to identify new negatives, review channel performance, Audit your creative asset roster. Document your changes (what you changed, why, expected outcome) and evaluate after 7–14 days.

Conclusion

The latest PMax updates mark a clear shift: from just automation to automation + transparency + control. Each new feature offers more insight into how your campaigns truly perform and more ways to refine them with intent and creativity. Use these updates as an opportunity to experiment, learn, and share findings.