(P)maximize Your Digital Advertising

In the ever-evolving landscape of digital advertising, staying ahead means embracing new tools and technologies. One such tool that has been making waves in the last couple of years is Google’s Performance Max (Pmax). This advanced campaign type, available on the Google Ads platform and the Microsoft Ads platform (Bing), is designed to maximize ad effectiveness across either Google’s or Microsoft’s networks.

Whether you’re an advertiser aiming to reach a wider audience or a business striving for greater visibility, understanding Pmax could be the game-changer you need. In this article, we delve into the workings of Pmax, its application in the travel industry, and how it can revolutionize your advertising strategy.

 

More specifically, what is Pmax?

As mentioned, Pmax is a sophisticated ad campaign type that leverages machine learning to optimize ad effectiveness across different networks and placements. If we look at Google, these ads can appear on a wide array of platforms, including Google Search, Display Network, YouTube, Discover, and Gmail. This flexibility enables advertisers to reach their target audience across diverse digital channels, thereby enhancing the visibility of their ad content.

 

The Power of Pmax in the Travel Industry

As digital advertising continues to evolve, specific sectors are finding unique benefits in tools like Pmax. One such sector is the travel industry. Google has tailored Pmax to meet the distinct needs of this industry with a feature called ‘Travel Goals’.

Pmax for Travel Goals is not just a general ad campaign type; it’s a specialized tool designed to cater to the dynamic needs of the travel and hospitality sector. It offers unique targeting criteria specifically designed for travel-related businesses. This can include targeting based on destinations, travel dates, price levels, and other factors crucial for travel ads.

One of the key features of Pmax for Travel Goals is its integration within hotel feeds. This allows hotels and other travel-related businesses to customize their ads with real-time information about available rooms, prices, and other relevant details directly from their hotel feed.

Moreover, Pmax for Travel Goals enhances visibility on travel-related placements across the Google network. This includes not only traditional advertising placements like search and display but also specific travel-related locations like Google Maps, Hotel Finder, and other relevant platforms.

 

In essence, Pmax for Travel Goals provides a tailored solution that enables travel-related businesses to maximize their ad effectiveness and reach out to relevant customers across various digital channels and placements. It’s a game-changer for businesses looking to connect with potential travelers during all stages of their planning process.

 

Our experience with Pmax for Travel Goals

To illustrate the effectiveness of Pmax for Travel Goals, let’s look at a case study from our own experience working with a client in the hotel industry.

Our team implemented Pmax as part of this client’s advertising strategy and observed significant improvements. When comparing year-over-year data, we saw a 33% increase in bookings and a 23% boost in Return on Ad Spend (ROAS) across search, hotel campaigns, and Pmax combined.

It’s important to note that Pmax wasn’t used in the previous year, so its introduction can be directly linked to the overall improvement in performance. This demonstrates how the strategic implementation of Pmax enhanced results, even when integrated into an already robust advertising strategy.

One of the challenges we faced during this process was ensuring that Pmax added value and didn’t cannibalize existing keywords in the account, which already had precise ads and landing pages built.

The results showed that the use of Pmax indeed improved performance. Pmax achieved this by extending our placements on the different platforms based on the travel goal. This highlights the importance of having clear goals for Pmax since that is what ensures a good performance.

 

GroupM script

One of the challenges with Pmax is that the reporting and insights that you have access to is quite limited. You are able to see overall performance, but you aren’t able to see details about how the budget has been utilized.

In order to overcome this challenge, we here at GroupM have developed a script that allows us to pull data on the Google Ads campaigns running Pmax, which enables us to measure how the campaigns are performing across the different platforms. We chose to develop our own script instead of using an external one to ensure the highest level of security.

Let’s look at an example of how our script works in practice: In one case Pmax affected a client’s display creatives, making them less appealing due to the way Google put them together. Despite this, our script revealed that the display creatives actually created conversions for the client, which wouldn’t have been possible without the script.

With the same client, we also observed that if we excluded placements on display, then the spend on search increases. With this, we regain more control over the campaign and don’t have to rely solely on Google’s algorithms.

 

Do you want to learn more about Performance Max and its possibilities? Then feel free to reach out to Ida Bollerup Holm, Senior SEA Operations Specialist, at [email protected]