Red Flag #4

Performance Max is running with zero search-term transparency

Performance Max (Google’s campaign type that bundles Search, Display, YouTube, Discover, Gmail, and Shopping into a single automated campaign) is not inherently a red flag. Used carefully, with the right exclusions and the right oversight, it can outperform manually structured campaigns for the right business. The red flag is when it is running with no exclusions, no brand carve-out, and no human review of where the spend is actually going — which is, in my experience auditing accounts, the default state on most retainers.

The problem with Performance Max is that it deliberately reduces transparency. You don’t see ad placements the way you would in a Display campaign. You don’t see the full search terms report the way you would in a Search campaign. You see what Google chooses to show you, and Google’s incentives are not perfectly aligned with yours. If your agency hasn’t built guardrails around that fact, you’re paying for a blank check.

Why agencies do it

Two reasons.

It is the path of least resistance. Performance Max is what Google’s account reps push during their quarterly check-ins with agencies. The pitch is real and it works: less manual labor, broader inventory access, automated creative. For an agency managing a hundred accounts, an automated campaign type that produces decent-looking aggregate numbers with minimal touch is a profitability lifeline. The implicit trade is that some accounts get under-served because the optimisation is delegated to Google.

It produces conversions that look attributable. Performance Max is aggressive about claiming credit for conversions, including ones that would have happened through brand search anyway. If your brand is searchable and PMax is running without a brand exclusion, the campaign will report a strong cost per acquisition number that is partly your existing brand demand cannibalised. The agency reports a healthy CPA. The CPA is, in fact, partially fictional.

What it looks like in your report or account

A Performance Max campaign exists and consumes 25% or more of total spend.
There is no brand exclusion list applied at the account or campaign level — meaning PMax is allowed to bid on searches for your own company name.
There is no negative keyword list applied at the account level (Google now allows account-level negatives for PMax; many agencies haven’t set them).
The category exclusions inside Performance Max settings are blank.
When you ask for the search themes that drove conversions, your agency tells you Google doesn’t share that data — which used to be true and is now mostly false. Search-term insights and asset-group-level performance are available; they have to be requested and reviewed.

What to ask your agency

Three questions, and the order matters.

First: “What brand-name searches is PMax allowed to bid on, and how do you know?”

Second: “Show me the account-level negative keyword list and the category exclusions inside the PMax campaign settings.”

Third: “What does the most recent search-term insights review tell us, and when is the next one scheduled?”

Good answer

“Brand search is excluded at the account level using the brand exclusion list — here are the eight variants we’ve included. We pulled out competitor terms and three irrelevant categories last quarter. Account-level negatives have 62 entries. Search-term insights are reviewed monthly; last review surfaced two new themes that were eating budget without converting and we’ve excluded them. PMax represents 31% of spend and is running 18% below target CPA on incremental conversions, with brand-cannibalisation modeled out.”

Bad answer

“PMax is fully automated — the algorithm decides where to show ads. We monitor performance at the campaign level and the CPA is currently strong. Adding too many exclusions can limit the algorithm’s ability to find new conversions.”

What it means if you get the bad answer

It means PMax has been turned on, the surface-level numbers look fine, and nobody is doing the work to figure out whether the surface-level numbers are real. The phrase “adding too many exclusions can limit the algorithm” is the rhetorical move that signals an agency has decided not to bound the campaign — which is convenient for them and expensive for you.

The first thing I do on any audit involving Performance Max is check the brand exclusion. If it’s missing on a brandable business with any organic search demand, I can usually find ten to thirty percent of the campaign’s reported “conversions” were going to happen regardless. Strip those out and the actual incremental cost per acquisition is wildly different from what the agency has been reporting. That conversation tends to change the renewal meeting.

The fix is rarely killing PMax. The fix is bounding it: brand exclusion, account-level negatives, category exclusions, monthly search-term insights review with the findings shared in writing. Twenty minutes of setup, an hour a month of review. If your agency won’t agree to that, you’re not really running Performance Max — you’re running “whatever Google felt like buying that month.”