Performance Max Lessons from Real Client Wins | Avalaunch Media

Google’s Performance Max (PMax) is a fully automated campaign option that serves ads across search, display, YouTube, and other channels based on machine learning. It gives your ads a broad reach, simplifying the management process and optimizing automatically over time.

At Avalaunch, we use PMax regularly and see it as a valuable part of many client strategies — but it’s not a stand-alone replacement for thoughtful marketing tactics. In our experience, the platform performs best when paired with strong marketing fundamentals and personalized strategies. You’ll get more value out of it when you also have a clear keyword strategy, smart creative inputs, and the right audience insights.

Not convinced? This is something we’ve confirmed through real client work. Keep reading to learn the pros and cons of PMax, real stories showing its strengths and limitations, and other lessons for marketers looking to optimize performance.

The Promises and Pitfalls of Performance Max

Google built PMax to help marketers achieve reach, efficiency, and cross-channel coverage in a single campaign. It includes all of Google’s main ad types in an automated mix, optimizing your spending over time as consumer trends evolve.

Machine learning drives everything, including the ad mix, placements, creative combinations, and bidding process. It’s easy to see why marketers are drawn to PMax, but many believe that it can be a full replacement for an internal marketing strategy. That’s not exactly true.

Google Performance Max works best when used with oversight. You need to have an overarching strategy in mind to analyze its performance effectively. Otherwise, you could overspend on things like volume over value and get less out of Google ads than you should.

What PMax Gets Right and Where It Falls Short

PMax is a powerful tool for scaling campaigns across Google’s full ecosystem of ad channels. It can help you capture more conversions faster and with less manual management than other processes.

But PMax is far from a magic switch. In fact, for companies that value quality over volume, it can actually get in the way. 

PMax means:

• Broad targeting: Without the right inputs, you may spend more than you should on low-intent traffic, spam form fills, and irrelevant leads.
• Inflated click volume: PMax increases clicks, which can mask poor performance if you’re optimizing for the wrong conversions. For example, you may get more page visits but fewer visitors filling out the form that you need to qualify them as leads.
• No keyword-level control: PMax doesn’t allow advertisers to manage targeting directly on a keyword-by-keyword level. This makes it hard to see when campaigns are working as intended.

So, while PMax is an excellent tool for increasing reach and certain other metrics like click volume, it can obscure performance trends and doesn’t always offer the customization you’ll need to optimize your campaigns. This makes Performance Max worth using in many cases, but not the singularly powerful tool that some marketers make it out to be. For example, you may still need to test Performance Max vs. search results to see if it’s really worth paying for.

Client Story #1: When Less PMax Led to More Qualified Leads

We’re sharing this article because we’ve seen an overreliance on PMax impacting several of our clients. Let’s get into a few Performance Max campaign examples to show how this problem can affect a company in practice.

We recently worked with a business-to-business (B2B) service company that helps small businesses scale. In this industry, keyword precision matters. The brand found that out the hard way after early PMax tests yielded low-quality spam and residential leads. In other words, PMax was targeting volume keywords that weren’t actually relevant to the intent they meant to capture.

This created two key issues:

• Inconsistent lead quality inflated their average cost per lead unnecessarily.
• The company needed to find a way to attract business clients, not residential ones.

We helped the company pause PMax and create a custom search strategy more focused on their true B2B intent. This involved:

• Building a landing page to align with high-intent messaging and call tracking
• Targeting commercial-only queries with better keyword segmentation
• Excluding keywords with a negative value via filtering to capture more relevant traffic
• Geo-targeting to focus more on the tri-state area, which the brand targets
• Conversion tracking with Google Tag Manager (GTM) and Unbounce
• Shifting the bid strategy from maximizing conversions to targeted cost per acquisition (CPA)
• Completing weekly optimizations with tight feedback loops based on actual lead quality

As a result, the company now averages a 3-4x return on ad spend (ROAS) and has a 9% average conversion rate. They ended up pausing their services with us because they were so overbooked.  

This is a great example of how targeted search campaigns can outperform PMax when quality matters over volume. It also highlights the importance of landing pages and the necessity of using negative keywords. Ultimately, asking when to use Performance Max isn’t always the right question. Sometimes, it’s more about how you use the platform than when.

Client Story #2: Better Results Through Conversion Clarity

We had a similar experience with a financial organization that saw early success with PMax only after redefining what counted as a conversion. Before that, they recognized that their campaigns weren’t optimizing for the outcomes that truly mattered for the business and wondered why Performance Max wasn’t working.

The key pain points for this client were:

• A high cost per funded account, around $650
• Poor performance from traditional display ads

Our strategy was to replace the display ads with PMax for better reach. Then, we recalibrated their conversion tracking to reflect funded accounts instead of the lower-value actions they were targeting before.

Rebuilding the company’s PMax campaign brought its cost per funded account down from $650 to $212. It also increased funded account volume, helping the credit union turn more visitors into active customers with Performance Max for B2B clients.

This shows how vital targeting and tracking are to PMax success. You need to set up the right conversion goals and key performance indicators (KPIs), or PMax can optimize incorrectly over time and reduce your ROAS. Following Performance Max best practices is an important step toward reaching your goals.

Lessons for Marketers: Making PMax Work Harder, Not Louder

These case studies show how PMax can be a powerful tool for driving business results with the right inputs. You still need an overarching PMax campaign strategy and weekly refinements based on data to reach your performance goals.

Here are some of our agency’s tips for helping you get there:

• Pair PMax with strong conversion tracking (not just form fills, but true business KPIs).
• Don’t skip negative keywords, exclusions, or geo-targeting.
• Your creative strategy still matters. Poor headlines and generic assets waste ad spend.
• Use weekly feedback loops and human judgment to refine over time.
• Build campaigns based on intent, then choose channels to support that goal instead of the other way around.

Final Thoughts

So, is Performance Max worth it? When used intentionally, PMax can drive remarkable marketing performance. But it only works when you have clear goals, smart inputs, and ongoing strategic oversight. Without these, you may end up wasting ad spend on sub-optimal campaigns and targeting KPIs that won’t make a difference for your brand.

If you need help with this process, Avalaunch Media has you covered. Our experienced Fractional CMOs, backed by our full-service agency specialists, can deliver the strategic oversight PMax needs to perform at its best. Like the two clients we’ve discussed, we can pinpoint the issues with your current strategy, teach you how to optimize Performance Max campaigns for the right KPIs, and provide ongoing support to help you get the best results from every channel.

So, why wait? Set up a call today to learn more about how we can help.