Performance Max has delivered great results in the past and thinks it can still do so today and tomorrow.
But the disapproved products are out, and Performance Max has to (re)discover new clicks that perform at least as well as the clicks on these disapproved products.
This learning phase involves a lot of trial and error, testing new kinds of clicks, most probably with a lot of clicks that do not convert.
A lot of waste, unless you take action.
You could, for instance, use seasonality adjustment to indicate lower expected conversion rates until you get the top products re-approved.
Or you could decrease the budget to prevent excessive spending with low returns in the short run.
If you do not act when top-performing products get disapproved, you probably waste spend.
Therefore, I created a script to alert you when products that receive significant clicks (or conversions) are disapproved.
Script 3: Exclude spammy placements
Did you know there is a report called Performance Max campaigns placement?
It is located in the Template gallery of the Report editor.
The report shows what placements on the Google Display Network (GDN) generated impressions for your Performance Max campaigns.
Unfortunately, again, the report is not that easy to find.
It only shows the number of impressions – no click data, no conversion data. This makes it hard to judge these impressions’ quality (revenue value).
The GDN is full of spammy “built-for-AdSense” sites that lead to a lot of fake clicks.
Remember, the horrible performance of these clicks is hidden from us in the aggregates we use to evaluate Performance Max’s performance.
Luckily for us, there are many scripts that will help you exclude these spammy placements.
Tip: Ask ChatGPT to expand the script to also look at domain spam scores like the Moz spam score (with a tool like Reviewgrower) and auto-exclude the spammy ones.
Use scripts to maximize your profits, not just spend
Performance Max, left on its own, maximizes Google’s revenue, not necessarily yours.
You need to monitor Performance Max campaigns like a hawk and proactively make changes based on your first-party data and insights.
Google Ads Scripts can automate a lot of these tasks for you and alow you to take back control to optimize your profits.
Watch: Mastering Performance Max using Scripts
You can find more scripts and tips to improve your Performance Max performance in my SMX Advanced session.
Contributing authors are invited to create content for Search Engine Land and are chosen for their expertise and contribution to the search community. Our contributors work under the oversight of the editorial staff and contributions are checked for quality and relevance to our readers. The opinions they express are their own.