What is that?
Recently, Google launched a new campaign type - Performance MAX.
These campaigns are basically a mix of all campaign types (search, shopping, display, youtube, gmail, discovery) and allow users to advertise specifically on YouTube, Display, Search, Discovery, Gmail and Google maps. On September 30, 2022, Smart Shopping campaigns were converted to Performance MAX and with this move, Google has permanently discontinued support for Smart Shopping campaigns.
Users using this campaign type can therefore advertise on all Google Ads services, resulting in more customers and conversions. It aims to improve campaign performance and works on the principle that Google itself chooses what and where to advertise, based on the input data.
If you're interested in a more detailed description of what Performance MAX actually is, we recommend reading the article on our Blog.
Where is it located?
Select Campaigns from the left menu and then click +. You will see the current campaigns options and in this case we are selecting the Performance MAX campaign.
How to use it?
First, choose the data source you want to use. There are two campaign options, but if you select a feed that is not Merchant, the one without it will be automatically selected.
Campaign variants:

The feed you have available can help you choose which option to work with.
If you have a GMC feed, choose:
Google Merchant
Requirements:
- You must have a Google merchant account, which must be linked to your Google Ads account.
- You must have a Google Merchant feed created in Dotidot.
Options:
- For this type, you can only work with the information you have in GMC.
- You can filter only the data that is in the Google Merchant center in your campaign.
- This campaign type allows filtering of products + branching + time restrictions.
If you have a different feed, dont worry, select this option and you can customize the feed according to your campaign needs:
For Dynamic feed
Requirements:
- Have any Google Ads account.
- Have any data feed loaded in Dotidot.
Options:
- Filters in the campaign, like anywhere in the App, are completely unlimited and can use any conditions, data from enrichments and can work with any data and additional data.
- You can use the Image editor.
- When creating ads, it only allows branching + time restriction
Let's see the setup of both options.
Google Merchant:
1. Name the campaign.
2. Name the campaign in the system.
3. Choose a variant - in this case Google Merchant.
4. Choose the country of sale.
5. We can filter the products we want to use in the campaign.
At the bottom, we will display a preview of our selected products.
Then we save the selection.
We're getting to the asset groups. This is where you upload all the materials that Google can use to create the final ad. It is therefore necessary to upload all possible ad types (texts, images of different formats, etc...).
Use "+" to create a new asset group.
- Name it.
- Set the Final URL - the url to which the ad will be targeted (unless Google evaluates that another URL from the underlying data has a higher probability of conversion)
- Set up Path1 and Path2 which will be used in some formats.
- Insert your marketing images. The limit is a maximum of 20 images, these are inserted in three different aspect ratios.
Logos are then inserted. The limit is a maximum of 5 logos in two aspect ratios.
For YouTube ads, you subsequently upload videos. You can insert up to 5 links to Youtube Videos.
The following are the headings. The limits are:
- Short Headings (maximum 5)
- Long Headings (maximum 5)
- Long descriptions (maximum 4)
You can also set the Company name and Call to action text.
You can now also set up Audience Signals. Just connect your campaign to your Google Ads account.
If you are working with your GMC account, we also have conditions available.
There's also a time restriction if you want a Black Friday trigger, for example.
And of course, you'll also see a preview of your ads on the right-hand side.
As the last setting, we have a setting with the advertising system:
You can also target Languages and Locations:
All we have to do is save, run the campaign and we're done :)
Dynamic feed:
In this option you can choose any data source and use any variables and conditions available in Dotidot.
Next, we set the Catalog Mapping here. This is the same type of mapping as for Display campaigns.
When mapping, adjust your data source to match the requirements of your target platform.
A very handy feature here is the ability to use our Image Editor ,which allows you to customize your images the way you need (add elements, crop, etc...).
Just like in the Google Merchant variant, we set up asset elements and also fill in the ad system settings.
And we're done! Please let us know how your setup went and how your Performance MAX campaigns are working for you.