One of the biggest reasons new advertisers end up in underperforming Performance Max campaigns is simple: they followed Google’s advice.
Google Ads reps are often well-meaning and, in many cases, genuinely helpful at a surface level.
But it’s critical for advertisers – especially new ones – to understand who those reps work for, how they’re incentivized, and what their recommendations are actually optimized for.
Before defaulting to Google’s newest recommendation, it’s worth taking a step back to understand why the “shiny new toy” isn’t always the right move – and how advertisers can better advocate for strategies that serve their business, not just the platform.
Google reps are not strategic consultants
Google Ads reps play a specific role, and that role is frequently misunderstood.
They do not:
- Manage your account long term.
- Know your margins, cash flow, or true break-even ROAS.
- Understand your internal goals, inventory constraints, or seasonality.
- Get penalized when your ads lose money.
Their responsibility is not to build a sustainable acquisition strategy for your business. Instead, their primary objectives are to:
- Increase platform and feature adoption.
- Drive spend into newer campaign types.
- Push automation, broad targeting, and machine learning.
That distinction matters.
Performance Max is Google’s flagship campaign type. It uses more inventory, more placements, and more automation across the entire Google ecosystem.
From Google’s perspective, it’s efficient, scalable, and profitable. From a new advertiser’s perspective, however, it’s often premature and misaligned with early-stage needs.
Dig deeper: Dealing with Google Ads frustrations: Poor support, suspensions, rising costs
Performance Max benefits Google before it benefits you
Performance Max often benefits Google before it benefits the advertiser.
Because it automatically spends across Search, Shopping, Display, YouTube, Discover, and Gmail, Google is given near-total discretion over where your budget is allocated. In exchange, advertisers receive limited visibility into what’s actually driving results.
For Google, this model is ideal. It monetizes more surfaces, accelerates adoption of automated bidding and targeting, and increases overall ad spend across the board. For advertisers – particularly those with new or low-data accounts – the reality looks different.
New accounts often end up paying for upper-funnel impressions before meaningful conversion data is available.
Budgets are diluted across lower-intent placements, CPCs can spike unpredictably, and when performance declines, there’s very little insight into what to fix or optimize.
You’re often left guessing whether the issue is creative, targeting, bidding, tracking, or placement.
This misalignment is exactly why Google reps so often recommend Performance Max even when an account lacks the data foundation required for it to succeed.
‘Best practice’ doesn’t mean best strategy for your business
What Google defines as “best practice” does not automatically translate into the best strategy for your business.
Google reps operate from generalized, platform-wide guidance rather than a custom account strategy.
Their recommendations are typically driven by aggregated averages, internal adoption goals, and the products Google is actively promoting next – not by the unique realities of your business.
They are not built around your specific business model, your customer acquisition cost tolerance, your testing and learning roadmap, or your need for early clarity and control.
As a result, strategies that may work well at scale for mature, data-rich accounts often fail to deliver the same results for new or growing advertisers.
What’s optimal for Google at scale isn’t always optimal for an advertiser who is still validating demand, pricing, and profitability.
Dig deeper: Google Ads best practices: The good, the bad and the balancing act
Smart advertisers earn automation – they don’t start with it
Smart advertisers understand that automation is something you earn, not something you start with.
Even today, Google Shopping Ads remain one of the most effective tools for new ad accounts because they are controlled, intent-driven, and rooted in real purchase behavior.
Shopping campaigns rely far less on historical conversion volume and far more on product feed relevance, pricing, and search intent.
That makes them uniquely well-suited for advertisers who are still learning what works, what converts, and what deserves more budget.
To understand how this difference plays out in practice, consider what happened to a small chocolatier that came to me after implementing Performance Max based on guidance from their dedicated Google Ads rep.
Get the newsletter search marketers rely on.
A real-world example: When Performance Max goes wrong
The challenge was straightforward: The retailer’s Google Ads account was new, and Performance Max was positioned as the golden ticket to quickly building nationwide demand.
The result was disastrous.
- Over $3,000 was spent with a return of just one purchase.
- Traffic to the website and YouTube channel remained low despite the spend.
- CPCs climbed as high as $50 per click.
- ROAS was effectively nonexistent.
To make matters worse, conversion tracking had not been set up correctly, causing Google to report inflated and inaccurate sales numbers that didn’t align with Shopify at all.
Understandably, the retailer lost confidence – not just in Performance Max, but in paid advertising as a whole. Before walking away entirely, they reached out to me.
Recognizing that this was a new account with no reliable data, I immediately reverse-engineered the setup into a standard Google Shopping campaign.
We properly connected Google Ads and Google Merchant Center to Shopify to ensure clean, accurate tracking.
From there, the campaign was segmented by product groups, allowing for intentional bidding and clearer performance signals.
Within two weeks, real sales started coming through.
By the end of the month, the brand had acquired 56 new customers at a $53 cost per lead, with an average order value ranging from $115 to $200.
More importantly, the account now had clean data, clear winners, and a foundation that could actually support automation in the future.
Dig deeper: The truth about Google Ads recommendations (and auto-apply)
By starting with Shopping campaigns, advertisers can validate products, pricing, and conversion tracking while building clean, reliable data at the product and SKU level.
This early-stage performance proves demand, highlights top-performing items, and trains Google’s algorithm with meaningful purchase behavior.
Shopping Ads also offer a higher level of control and transparency than Performance Max.
Advertisers can segment by product category, brand, margin, or performance tier, apply negative keywords, and intentionally allocate budget to what’s actually profitable.
When something underperforms, it’s clear why – and when something works, it’s easy to scale.
This level of insight is invaluable early on, when every dollar spent should be contributing to learning, not just impressions.
The case for a hybrid approach
Standard Shopping consistently outperforms Performance Max for accounts that require granular control over product groups and bidding – especially when margins vary significantly across SKUs and precise budget allocation matters.
It allows advertisers to double down on proven winners with exact targeting, intentional bids, and full visibility into performance.
That said, once a Shopping campaign has been running long enough to establish clear performance patterns, a hybrid approach can be extremely effective.
Performance Max can play a complementary role for discovery, particularly for advertisers managing broad product catalogs or limited optimization bandwidth.
Used selectively, it can help test new products, reach new audiences, and expand beyond existing demand – without sacrificing the stability of core revenue drivers.
While Performance Max reduces transparency and control, pairing it with Standard Shopping for established performers creates a balanced strategy that prioritizes profitability while still allowing room for scalable growth.
Dig deeper: 7 ways to segment Performance Max and Shopping campaigns
Control first, scale second
Google reps are trained to recommend what benefits the platform first, not what’s safest or most efficient for a new advertiser learning their market.
While Performance Max can be powerful, it only works well when it’s fueled by strong, reliable data – something most new accounts simply don’t have yet.
Advertisers who prioritize predictable performance, cleaner insights, and sustainable growth are better served by starting with Google Shopping Ads, where intent is high, control is stronger, and optimization is transparent.
By using Shopping campaigns to validate products, understand true acquisition costs, and build confidence in what actually converts, businesses create a solid foundation for automation.
From there, Performance Max can be layered in deliberately and profitably – used as a tool to scale proven success rather than a shortcut that drains budget.
That approach isn’t anti-Google. It’s disciplined, strategic advertising designed to protect spend and drive long-term results.
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. Search Engine Land is owned by Semrush. Contributor was not asked to make any direct or indirect mentions of Semrush. The opinions they express are their own.
Source Link: https://searchengineland.com/google-performance-max-advice-fails-new-advertisers-468188