Performance Max Campaign Set Up in 2026 | Step by Step Tutorial

Key Takeaways

Hello, my name is Aaron Young from Define Digital Academy and in this video I'm going to take you through the step-by-step process for how to set up a performance max [music] campaign the right way. This video is part of my get Google ready series. And this is a series where I launch every year which takes you through not only how to set up but also how to optimize every single campaign that you'll need for Google Ads in [music] 2026. Now, as we go through this step-by-step process, if you do miss any of these steps, please don't worry at all because if you follow that link in the description below, you can get access to my performance max campaign setup guide, which includes screen shares and also gives you some extra setting options [music] to as we talk through this process of setting up a performance max campaign. Now, performance max campaign, in case you're unaware, is one campaign that shows your ads across all of Google's different networks. So, your search ads, your [music] shopping ads, display network, YouTube, and also the discovery network. For this video, I'm going to be taking you through the step-by-step process that you can use. I will use an e-commerce example. And the reason for that is because it's exactly the same process if you're a lead generation business, but you just wouldn't be adding in your shopping feed. Now, for e-commerce brands that are watching this, I am going to pick it up and run the assumption that you've already got your Google Merchant Center linked into your Performance Max campaign. If you don't have that yet, if you go through and watch my shopping tutorial in the same playlist, it does show you that step-by-step process and it's also included in my campaign setup guide. So, we're purely going to be focusing on the performance max setup guide. The one thing I do want to also just add in before we get into the screen share is that remember where performance max sits. I love performance max as a campaign type, but generally I wouldn't start off with performance max. I would first be focusing on my search campaigns and also my shopping campaigns of an e-commerce brand. If I'm a lead generation business, to be really, really honest with you, as well as I wouldn't be using performance max until we've really started focusing in on our search campaigns, we're getting really, really, really good results because you do need to make sure that you've got some really good conversion data and especially offline conversions because one of the downsides of performance max is that it does use a lot of automate bidding, which is a great thing, but if you don't have the best data feeding back into your Google Ads account, it can lead to some extra spammy leads and can lead to some extra spammy leads. For e-commerce brands, the reason why I like to start on search and shopping first is because it really allows you to really see what products are going to work best, and that way you can also make sure that your product titles are working, your attributes are working, and that your landing pages are working. With all that said, let's get into the step-by-step process for setting up your Performance Max campaign. Let's go through and you can go through a couple of different options. You can go through and click this little create button at the top and press campaign, or you can use this blue plus button and choose new campaign. You're going to be choosing either sales or leads. If you're an e-commerce brand, I would choose sales. If you're a lead generation business, I would choose leads. It is important to note that with this uh choosing your objective, it's not going to make the massive amount of difference. I know some people have attributes of creating a campaign without guidance. What this is going to do, the benefits of this is it's just going to help it a little bit to walk you through that step-by-step setup process. But hey, look, let's not get too bent out about it and try to make it bigger than what it is. So, let's just go through and click sales. Then from there, this is an important one. What you want to make sure is that you're choosing the right goals that you want to be attached to your performance max campaign. Because this is an e-commerce example, we're going to remove the other uh setup there. What is really really important with performance max is you do need to make sure that with performance max you can only use smart bidding. So what I mean by that, it's going to be default to maximize conversions or maximize conversion value. And that's why we first want to get some conversions running through the account before we look to use performance max. And if you're a lead generation business, this is where you'd really want to be focusing on your offline conversions or your conversions which you know are really really high quality. So it could be like a multi-step quote form or it could be a phone call which has like a 3minut limit on it, not just like a 30-cond phone call. And just on that as well, if you stick around to the end of this video, I will show you where you can see another video where we do explain that a little bit further. So I'm going to remove this second goal cuz we just want to focus on the purchases. It's important to note that when you do that, you're not removing it from the account. you're only removing it from the individual campaign. Then you go through and click continue. And we want to choose performance max. All right. This next one is only going to be relevant for e-commerce brands. You want to make sure that you are selecting the merchant center. If you don't have a merchant center set up in your account, so because you're a lead generation business, you want to see that option. So, we're going to select that and just make sure it's the right feed. And then from here, we want to choose our campaign name. If you watched any of these campaign tutorial setup videos, you know that I'm really big on a concept called naming conventions. So, what we would write here is that we would call this something like sales Australia cuz we're going to be focusing in Australia and then I put in brackets PMAX. The reason why I'd like to do that is because when we're running multiple campaigns, it's really really easy to see what campaign we're talking about. This is our sales campaign targeting Australia and it's a performance max campaign. Go through and click continue. Now, as I said, when it comes to bidding, you've only got two options. Maximize conversions, maximize conversion value. As a general rule, e-commerce, you choose maximize conversion value. For lead genen, you could choose maximize conversion value if you've assigning lead value to your leads or you could just focus on maximize conversions. We're going to set maximize conversion value. When it comes to setting a target rorowas, I would generally not set a target rise or a target CPA. And let me briefly explain the reason for that. You need to really remember that with a target rise or a target CPA that they actually operate as a break. Yes, your shopping campaign may be performing at a target rise of say for example 300%. Google would then give the recommendation to set your target ROS at 300%. What we don't know is your performance max campaign may function at 500%, may function at 600%. We just don't know. So that's why we want to just keep it on maximize conversion value or maximize conversions to start with until we get enough data and then once we get enough data then we can make that decision. Later in this playlist series, I am going to be doing a whole video on bidding strategies. So it'll make more sense when we get to that video. And then from there, we want to choose whether you want to adjust your bidding to acquire new customers or only bid for new customers. If you are a new business, you may not have enough data in here. The other thing that I would note, you may have seen some of these previous videos that I have set up where we would specifically go for only bidding for new customers. I still really like that as a strategy. You just need to be really careful because over the past 8 months, there were some known bugs where Google was stopping to display performance max campaigns. We think that's fixed up yet. So another way that you can go through and do this is really looking at your target rower settings. Also looking at now that you can add in some negative keywords and performance max. That's more the way that we're going through because what you want to avoid is you really want to avoid the situation where you've got multiple campaigns all targeting the same keywords, the same products on the same networks. So let's go through and click next. We want to choose Australia. Now you've got to come back and do this in a different way for search and shopping. You can go through and change the location targeting. We can't do that directly in the setup for performance max. We want to say no to political ads unless you of course you're running political ads in the EU. And then when it comes to your asset optimization, now what I would say with this with performance max, if you are hellbent on controlling all of the keywords that your ads appear on, if you want to control all of the ad copy, all of the images, all of the videos, and you want to have that really tight level of control over your ads, I would actually say the Performance Max is not for you. The reason why I say that is at its core, Performance Max was designed to look at what's working in your account and find more conversions. So that's why I don't like overwriting all of these cuz if you're going to go through and just overwrite all of the settings in Performance Max, you might as well just stick to search and shopping. So that's why I don't mess with those. Now, when it comes to the more settings, there are things that if you did want to potentially, I am open if you did want to like say for example turn off TVs and just focus on computers, mobiles, and tablets, you can do that there. Definitely please add in brand exclusions. So with performance max, what you do need to remember that if you don't add your brand as a brand exclusion, it is going to target your brand and you're going to find out that you're spending a lot of money on brand. What you really want to be focusing on performance max is getting conversions that you're not going to be getting in the first place. And then also as well with your demographic exclusions, these are really important. If say for example, you know overwhelmingly that your products are for certain age brackets that perform better, you can turn on age exclusions for example. So let's just say that you know in your search and your shopping campaigns if you're running shopping and also just within your own business data that all of your conversions come from 35 45 55 age bracket. It makes sense to potentially exclude them from 18 to 24. But as I said just tread tread slowly with those changes that you're making. Then go through and click next. Now Google will bring you to this next screen which is all about your asset generation. I do skip this section because we go through and manually set these up. And when you get to this section, this is what you really need to be starting to think about. Performance Max uses terminology called asset group. So rather than an ad group, if you've been running search shopping campaigns, we'd run it. You need to think about it as your ad groups. I just want to show you the product that we're setting this up for. And what we're going to be doing in through here, there is two main products. They've got a toothpaste and mouthwash. So in that situation, I'd be looking at setting up two separate asset groups. So, what you want to be thinking about when it comes to performance max is you want to be thinking about how you want to be structuring your performance max campaigns. We find time and time again that performance max works better when you're looking to mimic or copy the menu structure within your website. For example, we've had another business where we set it up for our villa resort. We've got one-bedroom villas and two-bedroom villas with our Performance Max. We've had an asset group for onebedroom villa, asset group for two-bedroom villa with some service-based businesses with a company that's doing certification around doctors and nurses. And we found that we only focused on the doctor certification for performance max and we didn't worry about the nurses. And that was basically obviously I don't have anything against nurses. That was just purely data driven. So that's why it's beneficial to obviously look firstly where you're getting your conversions and where you really want to focus this performance max campaign. So we're going to focus this one on toothpaste. We will go through and set up a secondary asset group. But firstly we just want to focus on toothpaste. For e-commerce brands, this step is only going to be for you. You want to make sure that you set up a listing group. With your listing group, you only want these products to be appearing in the performance max campaign for this ad group because this business only has, I think, 20 different products. We've done it by the item ID. You can also do it down by brands, product types, or custom labels. And then once you've got that set up, you then go into the different details that you need to go through and add. And we're going to put the business name in through here. We're going to go through and add in some logos. And then we want to come through and add in the URL. Now, when it comes to the URL, remember what I was speaking before with performance backs. You want to be really, really careful that you can't have 100% control over here. This is the main URL, but the product setting that we've got in there is going to put the main focus in there. And then it's just a matter of putting in our headlines and our descriptions. We've already got our different top performing headlines. So, we've got this in a Google sheet. I would really recommend that you'd have this data in through here. remembering cuz performance max is a secondary campaign. You're generally going to be using your best performing search headlines. And you can go through and change these a little bit if you want to, but we are going to be going through and putting these through. So, just let me go through and set these up. Now, for the purpose of this tutorial, I've only put three headlines and two descriptions in. I'd recommend that you'd add at least 10 headlines. You can add add up to 15. And you can also add in four different long headlines and four different descriptions. And these are the ones which are appearing across your display ads and your YouTube ads and obviously your search ads. Then from there you need to go through and add in some images. We've already got some images in here. I'm going to add these in. But if you are uploading these for the first time, you just go through to upload and then you can upload them from your computer. And the same with your video. Now it's important to note for most strong performing performance max campaigns, the vast majority of the spend. Now I mean when I mean vast majority I mean well over 90% of the spend is generally on your search and shopping campaigns. If you see a performance max campaign which is heavily spending a lot of money on display or video generally they are an underperforming performance max campaign. That's not saying that they don't give good results on those networks. I'm just saying when we see a high performing performance max campaign the vast majority of the spend is on your search and shopping ads. And it's for that reason that yes, we do spend some time with our images and our videos, but if we're really looking at testing out different image angles or different video angles, we're doing that in a separate YouTube or a separate demand gen campaign. But I've gone through and added those campaigns. You can also go through, I would recommend that you add in your site links. If you don't know what site links are, they are your little titles that appear below your search ads. And not only with site links, you can also add in things like your promotions, your prices, different callouts. I do heavily recommend that you add all of those in. And now that we've set up our ads, it comes to what called your signals and your audience signals. It's really important to note that with performance max, once again, performance max is not a campaign where you can specifically target individual search terms. It's always going to be looking for related and similar themes. So, what we would generally do in through here is that we've gone through and added our top three performing broad match keywords. So, that's what we've added in as our search themes. And then with our audiences, what you can do in through here as well with our audience signals. Once again, it's really important to note that Google goes beyond these signals provide valuable information about the people you want to reach. And this is where Google says they help guide who sees your ads in Google search, YouTube, and more. What I really just want to let you know is these signals are kind of more like recommendations. You're not locking in the targeting. Remember what I said at the start of this. If you really want to lock down and be super super specific around who you're targeting and who sees your ads, Performance Max is not for you. So with your data, we're adding in all of our purchases and all of our users. And then you can also add in some different interests or demographics. And then once you've got that, I would recommend that you would add in a name. This is going to be for our toothpaste. Then we go through and click next. When it comes to your budget, once again, if you're going to be using performance max, we want to see a lot of volume in there. We generally like to see at least 20 clicks going through a day. We know for that for this one, that means this budget is going to be need to be at $100 a day. And then we go through and click next. As Google's doing this, it's going through and checking to make sure there's no errors. Because there's no errors and it's all run through, we can go through and click publish campaign. And then you've got your performance max campaign set up. Now, if you wanted to go through and add in a secondary asset group, so remember for this business, they had toothpaste and we wanted to set up a second one for mouthwash. You click on the campaign, go to the asset group, and then what you do from there is that you would go through and set up a secondary asset group where you go through, add in the search themes, add in those audience signals, and then go through and recreate those ads. If you are doing e-commerce, remember to make sure that you do go through and set up that secondary listing group. And then once you go through those steps, you would see that secondary asset group, which would be for mouthwash. And you just really, as I said, want to make sure for e-commerce that you're separating out those listing groups. So that's how you set up your performance max campaign. Thank you so much for joining me. And remember, if you want to get my Performance Max campaign setup guide, just follow that link in the description below. As promised, if you did want to learn more about offline conversions because you are a lead generation business, I want you to go through and watch this video right here. Or if you want to watch all of the videos in my get Google ready playlist, go through and watch this video right here. Thank you so much for joining me and I look forward to seeing you in the next video real soon. See you.