How to use TrafficGuard’s analytics to improve Performance Max

Meet Performance Max, the black box of Google Ad products.

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A revolutionary ad campaign type introduced by Google back in 2021, Performance Max was designed to maximise the efficiency of advertisers’ efforts and minimise the complexities of campaign management. 

While advertisers can interact with the platform and set parameters, the decision-making and inner workings of the AI algorithm remain firmly locked inside Google’s black box. Advertisers are left to trust that Google’s algorithms will optimise their campaigns effectively.

Marketers aren’t happy. And they’ve spent the last two years complaining about the dangers of the black box system, mainly:

• The lack of detail in Google’s reporting creating inefficiencies with channel utilisation and campaign management 
• The lack of visibility and control over placements, targeting, and creative combinations 
• Subsequent problems determining and optimising for ROI

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Although PMax has had a few updates over the months to improve control, by nature, Google will never provide the insights that marketers need to succeed.

TrafficGuard on the other hand? We’re doing something about it.

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More analytics, better control: TrafficGuard’s Performance Max solution

We launched our Performance Max solution to give marketers greater visibility and control over their Performance Max campaigns. In-depth reporting analysis was priority number one, we knew marketers were craving the important metrics they needed to make effective optimisations.

The feature best suited to combat the black box of performance max is our comprehensive reporting suite. 

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With unmatched transparency, the reporting suite shows spend breakdown across channels as well as impressions, clicks and conversions, as well as the amounts of invalid traffic (IVT) in your Performance Max campaigns. 

• Your top five campaigns by invalid traffic so you can see which campaigns are most at risk
• Your Performance Max channel distribution showing what percent of your spend is going where
• Campaign breakdown by channel across Search, Display, Video and Shopping
• A comparison of PMax spend from one month to the next, so you can track is spend gets out of control
• The campaign whose budget is most affected by invalid traffic so you can quickly know what to deprioritise

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That’s all great, but how can you use these Performance Max analytics?

Armed with a tonne more insight than provided natively by Google, you can now…

• See where budget is being allocated across channels, deprioritise those which are not driving ROI
• Use metrics which you could not previously see (impressions/clicks/conversions) to assess quality of your collateral 
• Take findings to your Google Account Manager or agency to make intelligent optimisations based in fact

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The outcome? You get the most from your Performance Max campaigns. Better channel utilisation and improved ROI—all by smashing open Google’s black box.

“This solution addresses a crucial need within our marketing community. Trusting black box algorithms has become increasingly challenging, and we believe TrafficGuard’s PMax solution offers the protection they seek. Our initial trials have been promising, filtering out bot traffic amongst other invalid traffic, and enabling Google’s Performance Max AI to seek genuine users across Google advertising channels.”

Elie Shuggi, Chief Product Officer, TrafficGuard

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As well as advanced Analytics, TrafficGuard’s Performance Max platform also includes powerful Protection capabilities in the form of our Negative Audience Targeting Solution. Use Protection features to make Performance Max’s AI algorithm work for you and boost your ROI by diverting away from sources of invalid traffic. The feature removes polluted traffic from your Performance Max algorithm, diverting the targeting away from sources of invalid traffic and ensuring the AI learns and develops on only valid traffic sources.

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TrafficGuard for Performance Max is now live. Ready to give it a go? 👇

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