Google has announced some new updates for its Performance Max campaigns, including new insights and manual checking options, a new customer acquisition goal, and improvements for existing Smart Shopping and Local campaigns.

Performance Max is primarily designed to drive conversion, with Google’s automated system working to optimize ad performance in real-time, and across channels, using Smart Bidding. The process essentially enables Google’s automated bidding, budget optimization, audiences and creative elements to work together to optimize for the best results in your campaigns, reducing manual workload in focusing your ad performance.

As part of its latest update, Google’s launching a new Insights element for Performance Max, which will provide more info on the specific elements being factored into your campaign, and the levers that you can use to improve your results

Google’s adding two new elements here – first off, there’s ‘asset insights’, which will provide data on how your text, image and video assets are resonating with specific customer segments.

“For example, if you’re an outdoor retailer running a campaign for bikes, you may find that exercise enthusiasts engage more with images of people mountain biking, rather than product images of the bike itself. Using these insights, you can tailor your creative and influence your broader marketing strategy.”

Consumer interest insights, meanwhile, will uncover the top search query themes that are relevant to your campaigns.

In addition to this, Google’s also adding a new customer acquisition goal in Performance Max, designed to optimize for leads and sales.

“This was previously available for retailers using Smart Shopping campaigns and is now expanding to more advertiser goals in Performance Max. This goal will allow you to either bid more for new customers compared to existing customers, or focus your optimizations on new customers only while maintaining your cost efficiency.”

Advertisers will also be able to use their own Customer Match lists to maximize the performance of their campaigns.

Finally, Google’s also now alerting relevant ad accounts when they can upgrade to Performance Max campaigns in the Ad Manager app.

As you can see here, advertisers running Smart Shopping and Local campaigns will soon be prompted to upgrade to Performance Max, which will provide additional access placements and formats across YouTube, Search text ads and Discover.

“Over the coming weeks, you’ll see a notification in your Google Ads account when the “one-click” upgrade tool is ready for your Smart Shopping campaigns. You’ll also be able to access the tool from the Recommendations page and the Campaigns page. You can start upgrading your Local campaigns in June.”

Google’s main aim is to have all of these options in place for advertisers so they can test and plan ahead of the holiday period, and it could be a valuable consideration for brands looking for ways to maximize their Google Ads campaigns based on its ever-improving automation tools.

But it will take testing, so it’s good to see Google looking to push the launch of these new tools well ahead of the end of year push.

They could be worth exploring – you can check out a video tutorial on Performance Max, along with a best practices guide to help set up your campaigns.