Paid Search
Performance Max | Friend or Foe?
Performance Max posts a median ROAS of 3.10x, but how much of that is new revenue? What PMax does well, where it hides weak results, and the controls worth using.
BenchMarketing editorial team Updated October 2, 2026 3 min readShare
Performance Max runs one campaign across Google Search, Shopping, YouTube, Display, Discover, Gmail and Maps, and decides for you where each dollar goes. Advertisers either love it or distrust it, often for the same reason: it is hard to see inside.
The numbers
| Metric | Performance Max | Google Shopping |
|---|---|---|
| CTR | 0.80% | 1.35% |
| Conversion rate | 3.80% | 1.91% |
| Cost per conversion | $48.30 | $38.87 |
| ROAS | 3.10x | 3.20x |
PMax medians look healthy. The question is where those conversions came from.
Where PMax quietly takes credit
PMax can serve on your brand searches and on people already in your remarketing lists. Those are the cheapest conversions in the account, and they would often have happened anyway. A PMax campaign that leans on them reports a strong ROAS while finding few new customers. Signs to look for:
- Branded search campaign conversions fall when PMax launches.
- Most PMax conversions come from returning visitors.
- Total revenue does not rise in line with PMax-reported revenue.
Controls worth using
- Brand exclusions stop PMax from serving on your brand terms, so brand search stays measurable in its own campaign.
- Account-level negative keywords apply to PMax as well as search campaigns.
- Audience signals tell PMax who to look for first. They are hints, not limits, but good signals shorten the learning period.
- Customer acquisition goals let you bid more for new customers than for returning ones.
- Separate campaigns by margin or product group so PMax does not push budget into low-margin best sellers.
When PMax is a friend
PMax works well for retailers with a solid product feed, reliable conversion tracking with values, and enough conversion volume (dozens a month per campaign) for the system to learn. It is also the only way to reach some inventory, which is why Google steers advertisers toward it.
When to hold back
With thin conversion data, poor tracking, or a lead generation business where the conversion is a form fill of unknown quality, PMax optimises toward whatever is easiest to count. Feed it offline conversion data on qualified leads, or keep the budget in campaign types you can see into.
The test that matters: hold brand and remarketing constant, launch or pause PMax, and watch total revenue, not PMax's reported revenue.
See Performance Max benchmarks and Google Shopping benchmarks.
About the figures
Benchmark figures in this article come from the BenchMarketing dataset and update when the benchmark pages do. Each benchmark page lists its sources and period; see our methodology.
Sources
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