Google Ads’ Performance Max campaigns became the next big thing in advertising by allowing advertisers to reach their audience across all of Google Ads’ inventory—search, Display, YouTube, Discover, Gmail, and Maps—through a single automated campaign.
But automation led to a new challenge—transparency. Optimizing campaign performance is difficult without proper visibility into what’s working and what’s not. That’s where reporting becomes crucial.
Since the launch of PMax, Google has gradually evolved Performance Max reporting capabilities from limited performance views to asset-level reporting, search term insights, and audience signals.
In this blog, we’ll explore Performance Max reporting features, their evolution, and how you can use them to optimize Pmax campaign performance and make informed decisions.
Table of Contents
- Understanding Performance Max Reporting Metrics
- Analyzing Performance Max Campaign Results
- Segmenting Performance Max Performance by Audience or Asset Group
- Limitations of Performance Max Reporting in Google Ads
- Integrating Performance Max Data into Looker Studio
- Why Is My Performance Max Campaign Not Showing Results?
- Conclusion
- FAQs
Understanding Performance Max Reporting Metrics
In this section, let’s look at the metrics available in Performance Max reporting.
Key Metrics Available in PMax Reports
The following are the key metrics available to analyze Performance Max campaigns performance.
| Category | Metric | Description |
| Core Campaign Metrics | Impressions | Impressions are the number of times the ad appears across the Google network. |
| Clicks | Clicks are the total number of user interactions with your ads. | |
| Click-Through Rate (CTR) | The percentage of impressions that resulted in clicks. | |
| Average Cost-Per-Click (CPC) | Average amount paid per click. | |
| Cost | Total expenditure on the campaign. | |
| Conversions | Number of desired actions completed by users, such as purchases or sign-ups. | |
| Cost Per Acquisition (CPA) | Average cost incurred for each conversion. | |
| Conversion Rate | Percentage of clicks that resulted in conversions. | |
| Conversion Value | Total revenue or value generated from conversions. | |
| Return on Ad Spend (ROAS) | ROAS is the revenue generated for every dollar spent on advertising. | |
| Asset Group Metrics | Asset Group Performance | Track asset group performance with impressions, clicks, conversions, and conversion value. |
| Asset Performance Ratings | The Performance Max campaign provides qualitative assessments for assets labeled as “Best,” “Good,” or “Low.” | |
| Top Asset Combinations | Advertisers get insights into which combinations of assets ( headlines, images) are performing best. | |
| Product & Listing Group Metrics | Product Performance | Product performance data includes individual product performance, including impressions, clicks, and conversions. |
| Listing Group Performance | Listing group performance shows metrics for groups of products categorized by attributes like brand or category. | |
| Shopping Performance View | Provides insights into shopping-specific metrics, such as product views and purchase rates. | |
| PMax Placement & Channel Metrics | Placement Reports | With placement reports in Google Ads, advertisers get Information on where their ads appeared, including websites, apps, and YouTube channels. |
| Channel-Level Reporting | Performance data segmented by channels like Search, Display, YouTube, and Gmail. | |
| Search Term Insights | Provides data on the search queries that trigger ads, providing insights into user intent. | |
| Time & Location Metrics | Dayparting Reports | Performance metrics are segmented by time of day and day of the week. |
| Location Reports | Data on user locations shows where ads are performing best geographically. | |
| Advanced Metrics & Tools | Engaged-View Conversions (EVCs) | Conversions that occur after a user views a video ad without clicking, but later converts. |
| Auction Insights | Competitive metrics show how ads perform compared to others in the same auctions. | |
| Campaign Target Simulator | A tool to estimate the impact of bid strategies and budget changes on performance. | |
| Performance Estimates | Forecasts of potential performance based on different bid types and budgets during campaign setup. |
You can access all these metrics from your Google Ads account. You will find different sections for asset groups, audience insights, assets, ad placements, etc.
Advantages and Disadvantages of the PMax Reporting Structure
| Advantages | Disadvantages |
| PMax campaigns enable advertisers to publish their ads across Google Ads inventory and channels, extending the reach and increasing engagement. | One of the most significant drawbacks of Performance Max campaigns is their limitations in controlling campaign bidding, targeting, and placements. |
| Saves significant efforts and time for advertisers by automating Performance Max placements and bidding. | Although Google presented advertisers with additional reporting features, the Performance Max campaign cannot provide granular-level performance data. |
| Provides a streamlined approach to managing multiple campaigns. | Advertisers must carefully set up integration with Google Analytics to avoid any misrepresentation of data. |
Differences in Metric Availability Compared to Other Campaign Types
If you have been running Performance Max campaigns for a while, you must be aware that Performance Max reporting lacks certain features compared to other campaign types. Let’s examine how metrics differ between the two campaign types.
Keyword-Level Data: Performance Max doesn’t use keywords, unlike traditional Google Ads campaigns. It relies heavily on audience signals, creative assets, and Google’s automation methods to determine when and where to show ads. Therefore, you won’t find keyword-level performance data for Performance Max campaigns.
Brand and Competitor Targeting: Standard search campaigns are a preferred choice when targeting specific search terms related to your brand. They allow you to bid on exact-match keywords, ensuring your ads appear for specific search terms.
Detailed Audience Insights: PMax campaign provides some surface-level metrics and insights into audience information. On the other hand, standard campaigns offer more detailed insights into audience demographics, locations, devices, and time-of-day performance.
Please note that channel-wise reporting, placement reports, and search term data were also key differences between PMax and other campaigns. However, with recent updates, Google has introduced channel reporting, placement, and search term data.
This means advertisers can now track the performance of PMax campaigns from each channel, their ad placements, and view search terms that lead to impressions and clicks. However, these reporting features do not provide the same level of granularity when compared to standard Google Ads campaigns.
We recommend going through in-depth guides on Performance Max Vs. Standard Shopping Campaigns and PMax Vs. Search Campaigns.
Analyzing Performance Max Campaign Results
We have gathered a handful of useful metrics you should be looking at when assessing a Performance Max campaign’s performance.
They are as follows:
Asset Group Performance
Asset group performance is one of the most critical metrics for examining your assets’ performance.
To access the asset group performance, follow these steps.
Step 1: In your Google Ads account >> select campaigns >> select a Performance Max campaign >> select asset group >> and switch from summary view to table view.
Step 2: To analyze asset group performance in depth, add columns such as clicks, CTR, average CPC, cost, conversion, and conversion value.
Step 3: Examine each asset group’s budget, ROAS, CTR, and CPC to identify the high-performing and underperforming ones. This data will help you evaluate asset group structure.
Important: Using filters like Ad group, Campaign terms, or Campaign content when viewing Performance Max campaign reports can result in inaccurate data. Therefore, it’s best to clear these filters before analyzing your PMax performance.
Asset Combinations
With the asset combinations report, you will know which combinations of your assets are performing well.
- To access it, click View Details in the Asset Group 1 box on the same asset group performance page.
- Click the’ combinations’ tab to analyze performance.
- Here, you can view the performance of asset combinations.
Listing Groups
Like product groups, listing groups allow advertisers to organize and manage products within Performance Max and shopping ad campaigns.
To access listing groups
Go to the asset groups page, and you will find the listing groups under the Asset Group 1 section. Similar to the screenshot below:
Click on Listing groups, and you will see a table like this one below:
This report allows you to compare the costs of your campaign to the cost for a specific listing group. This helps you understand how your budget is spread between your PMax campaign and others.
Assets
- The Assets option lets you assess the performance of individual assets at the account-level and campaign-level.
- To access assets, select campaigns >> assets >> choose assets.
- Add columns such as impressions, clicks, and conversions to analyse the performance of asset types such as callouts, conversions, and conversion values.
- Select the ‘performance’ and ‘asset coverage’ tabs to analyze the performance further.
Products
- You can assess a product’s performance by analyzing clicks, impressions, average CPC, etc.
- You can access the products from campaigns >> products >> products.
- To understand high-performing and underperforming products, consider metrics such as CTR, ROAS, cost, and others.
- You can check these metrics for Performance Max campaigns at the account and campaign levels.
- You can also select categories, brands, product types, and custom labels.
Landing pages
NOTE: You can’t assess the performance of your Performance Max campaigns’ landing page separately, but you can view landing page performance for overall campaigns.
- Click campaigns >> insights & reports >> landing page to access landing page performance.
Auction Insights
- To view the auction insights report, go to your Google Ads Performance Max campaign, click “Insights & reports” and then “Auction insights”.
- You can also view data separately for search and shopping ads. To do so, change the option from search to shopping in the drop-down box at the top of the table.
- This report gives you insights into your competitor’s ad performance.
- Metrics you can track in the auction insights report are:
- Impression share: Your impression share vs competitors for the same impressions
- Overlap rate: Impressions generated together with other advertisers.
- Outranking share: The total number of conversions out of all the impressions.
Segmenting Performance Max Performance by Audience or Asset Group
Although the PMax campaign is automated by nature, you can segment campaigns and view performance data of how different audiences and asset groups perform.
Understanding Asset Groups and Their Role in Performance Max
Assets are creative assets such as images, videos, descriptions, and headlines. Asset groups combine these creative assets with PMax audience signals to tailor ads across Google Ads inventory and channels.
Each asset group focuses on a theme or a set of audiences to tailor messaging to different audience segments.
Key components of asset groups include:
- Creative assets: Headlines, descriptions, images, etc
- Audience signals: Audience suggestions to guide Google machine learning in targeting ideal customers
- Listing groups: A Subset of your products you wish to include or exclude in your ads.
As discussed earlier, you can view asset group-level performance by visiting the Asset Group tab in the campaigns section of your Google Ads account. Using this report, you can track clicks, conversions, and conversion value and analyze the best-performing asset groups.
Segmenting Performance Data by Audience Signals and Asset Groups
Audience signals act as suggestions to Google’s machine learning algorithms, indicating a specific group of users most likely to convert. These signals can include demographics, interests, and behaviors.
You can provide audience signals while setting up the Performance Max campaign in your Google Ads account. Although adding audience signals aresegen optional, Google recommends doing so to improve campaign performance.
Here’s how you can segment audience signals and asset groups’ performance data:
Step 1: Before analyzing the performance data create distinct asset groups to target different audience segments. Curate each asset within the asset group to align with the audience signals. Incorporate these assets and audience signals in your campaigns and launch them.
Step 2: After launching the campaigns, give them 2 to 3 weeks’ time to assess the performance. To do so, access the asset group section in campaigns to gain insights into asset group performance. Inside the report, you can view metrics such as clicks and conversions.
After closely monitoring the data, identify the high-performing and under-performing asset groups.
Step 3: Similarly, go to the Insights tab and Audience Insights section to track the audience signals’ performance.
Identify audience segments that interact with your ads and convert. Use this data to refine your audience signals in Asset Groups.
Best Practices to Segment Asset Groups
- Align asset groups with specific themes, product categories, or services to ensure creatives within each asset group are relevant and cohesive.
- Although Google lets you create 100 asset groups per campaign, restrict the number to 6 to 10.
- You can check the Ad strength indicator in your Google Ads account to analyze whether asset groups have sufficient assets.
- Include up to 15 headlines, 5 descriptions, 20 images, and 5 videos in different orientations.
- Run A/B tests for variations of asset groups and audience signals to evaluate which ones drive higher conversions.
- Ensure the Final URL is relevant to your ads; if not, consider turning off Final URL expansion.
- All assets must meet Google’s quality guidelines.
- Create variations of assets and ensure that you add all types of assets to each asset group.
- Google advises you to wait for 2 to 3 weeks to assess a particular asset group’s performance.
- Remember, when you create an asset group in Google Ads Editor, you can add a listing group or product group in the Editor.
Limitations of Performance Max Reporting in Google Ads
Restricted Visibility into Search Terms and Keywords
Search Terms Data
In March 2025, Google introduced a search terms report for Performance Max campaigns.
With this feature, advertisers can:
- Access the standard search term report to view the search queries triggering the ads.
- Analyze clicks, impressions, and other relevant data for each search term.
- Add negative keywords in PMax directly from the Search Terms report to refine targeting.
Keyword-Level Data
- No Keyword Targeting: Unlike traditional campaign types, PMax campaigns don’t allow advertisers to target specific keywords.
- Limited Granularity: While search term data is available, it doesn’t provide the same level of granularity and depth as standard search campaigns.
- No Ad Group Structure: PMax does not support ad group segmentation, thus limiting the advertiser’s ability to analyze campaign performance in detail.
Challenges in Attributing Conversions across Channels
- When integrating Performance Max campaigns with Google Analytics 4, advertisers must carefully view and analyze the PMax data.
- In Google Analytics, PMax data is not shown under the paid search channel; it is in a separate grouping called cross channel, which contains PMax and smart shopping campaign data.
- Therefore, applying filters incompatible with Performance Max may result in inaccurate data representation. Viewing and analyzing cross-channel insights for Performance Max campaigns can be challenging.
| Tip: To analyze Performance Max campaign individually, use custom channel groupings or explore reports with secondary dimensions like “Source/Medium” or “Campaign name” in GA4. Be mindful of the differences in the attribution model between GA4 and Google Ads. Click here to learn more about how to set up key events in GA4. |
Tools for Enhanced Reporting
- View Conversion metrics at the Asset-level: With the new reporting feature, advertisers can now analyze the performance of each asset, allowing them to quickly identify and improve elements such as images, videos, and headlines that drive conversions.
- YouTube video Placement Reporting: This tool lets you understand where your ads appear on YouTube. With this information, you can adjust bids and targeting strategies accordingly.
- Third-party verification for brand suitability on YouTube and Display networks: This feature is a game-changer for brands concerned about their ad placements on irrelevant sites. It ensures ads are placed on sources that align with the brand’s values and safety standards.
- Custom Report: Creating a custom report lets you aggregate data across channels to gain a holistic view of your campaign’s performance. To create custom reports, select campaigns >> insights & reports >> report editor >> click ‘+’ and choose the type of chart. Drag and drop campaigns and metrics and your table will start showing values. Click on ‘Save.’
Apart from these features and tools, you can also create custom dashboards using Looker Studio. This Google developed and owned platform let’s you visualize data from multiple sources with various visual indicators.
Integrating Performance Max Data into Looker Studio
Looker Studio (formerly Google Data Studio) is a free data visualization and business intelligence tool that allows companies to create interactive dashboards and reports. This tool benefits advertisers looking to integrate Google Ads, Google Analytics, and Google Search Console data in one platform for comprehensive data analysis.
Steps to connect Google Ads data to Looker Studio
Step 1: Go to Looker Studio and sign in with your Google Ads account. Inside the tool >> Click Create >> Click Report.
Step 2: Select Google Ads and authorize your account.
After authorization, your Google Ads accounts start appearing. Select one account from those and select Performance Max campaigns.
Step 3: In the next step, you will see the report canvas. You can then create customized reports using charts and more interactive elements. You can also choose dimensions and metrics that matter to your business, such as clicks, conversions, etc.
| NOTE: You can also pull Performance Max metrics via the Google Ads API to create custom reporting. |
Creating Custom Dashboards for PMax Campaign Analysis
Here’s how you can start creating custom dashboards using Looker Studio.
- Choose Visual Elements
You can create reports using charts, graphs, scorecards, tables, etc. You can choose from:
- Score cards
- Bar charts
- Line charts
- Pie charts
- Geo Maps
- Tables
After choosing the elements for your layout, focus on presenting them logically for easy exploration.
- Select a Predefined Theme/ Create Custom Template: You can use a theme from the Looker Studio library or create a custom one. Theme helps elevate the user experience.
- Use Filters: Add filters to the dashboard where users can easily filter the data by date ranges, campaign names, or other dimensions.
Tips for optimizing Looker Studio performance with PMax data
- Before creating the dashboard, take some time to define goals and the target audience for the report.
- Choose the right visualizations, such as charts, graphs, and tables, to communicate complex data in a simple format.
- Use headers, dividers, and colors to group elements, where necessary.
- Visual indicators like circles, arrows, and rectangles to pinpoint the most critical data.
- Use specialized visualizations to create KPIs. These include scorecards, gauges, or bullet charts.
- Looker Studio provides rich customization options for various chart types, axis labels, data point styles, and more. Ensure you use them to your advantage.
- Review the layout thoroughly, checking for alignment, arrangement, logical flow, placement, and size, and making adjustments accordingly.
- Before sharing it across the teams, test every functionality and address bugs to improve the user experience.
Why Is My Performance Max Campaign Not Showing Results?
In this section, we will examine all the possible reasons why your Performance Max campaign is not performing as expected.
Common reasons for Underperforming PMax Campaigns
- The primary reason could be your account. Check for account suspension or if there’s a billing issue. Only after resolving these issues can you run ads.
- Confirm if the campaign is enabled and check for the campaign start date and end date.
- If your campaign is still learning, Google AI takes time to optimize your campaign.
- A low Google Ads budget is also one reason your ad does not appear frequently. Ensure the budget you set aligns with your campaign goals.
- Overly targeting an audience or a specific location can narrow down the potential reach of your ads.
- Campaign overlap due to similar targeting may hinder performance.
- URL expansion might be disabled, limiting traffic.
- Insufficient conversion data or conversion tracking issues.
- Performance Max campaigns do not follow Google Ads policies.
- Poor asset coverage and ad strength. Google needs a diverse set of assets to serve across Google surfaces.
- A Performance Max campaign might not perform well when you use certain features, or if your account does not show a history of positive user engagement.
- There could be additional issues if you’re using Google Merchant Center Feed.
Use the Diagnostic Tool in Google Ads
When you use the Diagnostics tab in your Google Ads account, you will understand issues with your campaigns and the recommendations for fixing them.
To access: Go to campaigns >> Insights & Reports >> Insights.
The Dashboard insights tool highlights the following issues:
1. Account cancelled/suspended.
2. Budget exhausted or reached an end date.
3. All assets disapproved.
4. Inactive asset group/campaign.
5. Low account budget/ad strength and so on.
Conclusion
Asset groups and audience signals are key to successfully running your Performance Max campaigns. Remember to follow Google’s guidelines and add high-quality, varied creative assets to each asset group. Leverage audience signals to guide Google AI in reaching more relevant customers.
Although the Performance Max campaign allows you to access the entire Google Ads inventory in a single campaign, focus on other campaign types, such as search or display, to gain comprehensive insights into campaign performance.
Google continuously keeps updating the Performance Max reporting features. Keep up with new features to optimize campaign performance.
For those interested in testing and refining these metrics, explore Performance Max Experiments.
FAQs
What metrics are available in Performance Max reporting?
You can find metrics such as impressions, clicks, conversions, conversion value, conversion cost, and more in Performance Max reports.
How can I analyze Performance Max campaign results?
In your Google Ads account, you can analyze asset group-level performance, individual asset performance, the audience insights section, the landing page, the placements report, and more.
What are the limitations of Performance Max reporting in Google Ads?
Although Performance Max campaigns provide insights into placements, asset groups, and more, they do not offer more profound insights into audience, placements, and bidding strategies, unlike other campaign types such as search and shopping ad campaigns.
How do you segment Performance Max performance by audience or asset group?
As discussed in the blog, you can segment performance data by structuring asset groups based on audience signals or product categories (high-performing and underperforming) and analyzing their metrics separately.
Can I integrate Performance Max data into Looker Studio?
You can integrate your Performance Max campaigns with Looker Studio by connecting your Google Ads account.
Why is my Performance Max campaign not showing results?
There are various other reasons for Performance Max campaigns not performing well, including the common reasons such as disapproved assets, insufficient budget, or targeting settings.
How does Performance Max reporting differ from standard campaign reporting?
PMax reporting offers less granularity and limited access to search terms and placement data. Standard campaigns provide more detailed insights into keywords, audience, and placements.
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