Didn’t have the time to attend the most recent Google Marketing Livestream? Don’t worry we got you covered.
Back in May Google brought their invite only yearly meetings online and available to the masses. So we jumped on the opportunity to capture all the interesting updates and insights for whats coming in the world of Paid Adverstising.
The most significant update noted for Google Ads was the upcoming rollout of the new Performance Max campaigns to Google Ads.
So, for the purpose of this article we will take you through the review of Performance Max Campaigns and how these have the potential to be a success in driving online awareness and ticket sales for your cinemas.
What are Performance Max Campaigns?
Performance Max campaigns are a new campaign type which will run across all of Google’s products including Search, Display, Gmail, YouTube, Discover and more.
Google is aiming to streamline the process of targeting these channels, rather than creating individual campaigns to target each one, we can utilize Google’s machine learning and optimize for all of it with a single campaign type – Performance Max.
Google has been pushing users towards utilizing smart bidding strategies within Google Ads rather than manually tweaking bids and this campaign type is merely the next iteration of automation.
How does targeting work?
When setting up a campaign you will be prompted by Google to set your Goal – for example More Sales.
Based on your goal, Google’s machine learning will find your customers wherever they are across Google properties.
Many of the options familiar in Google Ads campaigns remain for Performance Max, you still can decide on your budget and even bidding strategy, so whether you want Google to optimize your campaign for a certain Cost Per user Acquisition (CPA) or a Return on Ad Spend (ROAS) you can do so.
Be realistic with a budget, bearing in mind that you are targeting a number of different channels.
Location targeting is also available meaning cinemas can easily be targeted on a per location basis ensuring the users targeted remains relevant to the campaign.
Asset Groups
Asset groups are the new name for Ads within Performance Max campaigns. This is where we will give Google all the creative that we are happy to use as part of the campaign. We can provide images, logos, videos, headlines, text and more.
Google will then serve these assets across all their platforms and optimize using their machine learning algorithm to provide the best results.
Creating and uploading the right assets will be critical to any campaign’s success and will likely be the biggest investment in terms of time for these campaigns.
This is also an area which will need to be continually tested and improved upon to maximise results.
What are the positives?
The barrier for entry of having campaigns running across all these Google platforms previously would have been extremely high and perhaps reserved for only the biggest players with the most budget. Having them all under a single campaign in which Google utilises machine learning provides smaller cinemas an opportunity to test these channels.
Google’s automation, particularly around smart bidding, has worked extremely well for many advertisers (including ourselves) and so using this technology further is an exciting opportunity.
What’s the downside?
There remain some question marks from experienced Google Ads professionals around the ability to run one campaign across so many channels and still be successful. Google is saying that with the power of machine learning, optimizing these on an individual level is unnecessary but that remains to be seen.
Reporting is also described as being weak (although these campaigns are currently still in BETA) – in its current iteration there is no reporting on audiences, keyword targeting, no demographic information etc. – this will ultimately make it difficult for advertisers to get a full picture of what is taking place in their campaigns, yet if its producing results many will not be too fussed with this.
Final Thoughts
We are excited about the introduction of these new campaigns, Google has been pushing advertisers to adapt to their machine learning and automated bidding for a few years now and previously testing smart bidding we have seen excellent performance in most of our campaigns.
With the introduction of Performance Max there is an opportunity to focus more on the overall strategy and marketing funnel and leave the time consuming and monotonous tasks to Google.
These campaigns are not widely available to the public as of yet however if you would like to discuss the opportunity to run these campaigns when they are available, please get in touch as we would love to have a chat with you.