Track Performance Max reporting, campaign controls, creative and bidding developments, with original sources and dated coverage.
Meta Ads
Ginny Marvin has published a new edition of the Ads Decoded newsletter, focused on Google Merchant Centre data quality as the foundation for modern retail campaigns. It covers feed enrichment for AI Mode and conversational shopping, shoppable ad enablement in Demand Gen and PMax, advanced measurement, and practical agentic commerce-readiness steps.
Google Ads
Thomas Eccel has spotted a new Beta button in Performance Max asset groups labelled "Copy and edit with AI." The feature duplicates an entire asset group in one click and connects to Google's creative editing tools: Nano Banana 2 for image generation and editing, and Veo 3 for video variations: allowing AI-remixed creative variants to be produced without leaving the Google Ads interface.
Google Ads
Axel Falck has spotted a new native view in Performance Max called "Channel performance over time," displaying how each channel (Search, YouTube, Display, etc.) contributes to results as a stacked time-series graph, with a filter to toggle between performance metrics and investment. The view was previously only available via custom scripts.
Google Ads
Google has rolled out Asset Group Theming for Performance Max campaigns, allowing advertisers to clone a high-performing asset group and apply a seasonal theme: Easter, Summer, Back to School, Cyber 5, Christmas, Valentine's Day, and others: with AI-generated themed image backgrounds, updated headlines, and matched descriptions applied automatically. The original asset group remains untouched throughout.
Google Ads
v23.2 adds a VideoEnhancement resource that surfaces whether a video ad is Google-generated or advertiser-provided: an important signal as AI-generated video proliferates across PMax and Demand Gen. An AppTopCombinationView resource provides top-performing asset combination insights for App campaigns.
Google Ads
Nikki Kuhlman has spotted Animated Clips, now available in Performance Max campaigns inside Asset Studio. Advertisers upload a source image; the system enhances it and generates multiple variations, with each selected enhanced image producing two animated video clips.
Google Ads
Google has shipped four additions to Performance Max's controls and reporting suite. Advertisers can now exclude specific first-party audience lists from PMax campaigns: providing the targeting guardrails that have been the most consistently requested capability since PMax launched.
Microsoft Advertising
Microsoft Advertising has introduced self-serve negative keyword management for Performance Max campaigns, allowing advertisers to add, modify, or delete negative keywords at the campaign or account level: including via shared negative keyword lists with a 5,000-keyword limit. Negative match types behave identically to standard Search campaigns, and the feature is supported in the API, Ads Editor, and via import from Google Ads.
Google Ads
Google Ads has added a new "Ads using video" segment inside Performance Max Channel Performance reporting, allowing advertisers to break down results by whether video assets were actually used in a given placement. This addition complements the "Ads using product data" segment introduced in July 2025 and helps us understand which creative inputs are driving channel performance.
Google Ads
Google is rolling out an AI-driven voice-over feature for Performance Max video ads. The system pulls from your headlines and descriptions to generate voice-over for silent videos, saving the result as a new asset.
Industry
Google has expanded beta access for text guidelines to all advertisers globally in AI Max for Search and Performance Max campaigns. The feature allows advertisers to define specific terms to exclude or concepts to avoid using natural language rules, such as "don't imply our products are cheap" or "don't use language like 'only for'."
YouTube
Google has released v23.1 of the Google Ads API with several notable features. Text guidelines support is now available for Performance Max and Search campaigns, allowing programmatic control of AI-generated text assets.
Google Ads
Advertisers can now add negative keywords to PMax campaigns directly via Campaigns → Negative keywords. This addresses one of the key control gaps that has frustrated advertisers in Google's PMax implementation.
Google Ads
The new customer acquisition goals, previously in open beta, are now generally available globally for advertisers using "purchase" conversion goals.
Google Ads
After years of opacity around where Performance Max ads actually appear, the "Where Ads Showed" report is beginning to populate with data in some accounts. Thomas Eccel reports seeing placement information for the first time, including the surprising appearance of Ecosia as a Google Search Partner.
Microsoft Advertising
Microsoft Advertising has released a new scenario-based learning path for Performance Max in its Learning Lab, covering setup, optimisation, and troubleshooting across three courses. Advertisers who complete the programme can earn a verifiable badge via Credly to showcase on LinkedIn.
Google Ads
Google has added visual examples that demonstrate how the "Landing Page Images" optimisation works in Performance Max campaigns. When enabled, the feature allows Google to automatically pull images from your landing pages and transform them into ad creatives - effectively making your website a direct input into the PMax creative system.
Microsoft Advertising
Microsoft Advertising is testing a magazine-style layout within its Answer Card format on Bing Search. Ads appear in card formats at the top of results and can be served through Shopping, Multimedia Ads, or PMax: there is no separate auction.
Google Ads
Google Ads has stopped pre-selecting Performance Max as the default when setting up a new Shopping campaign. You now choose the campaign type without a default applied.
Google Ads
Network segmentation is now available via the Google Ads API for Performance Max campaigns, enabling breakdowns by network, time, device, product attributes, CPC, CPM, and ROAS. Mike Ryan published a first-of-its-kind analysis using 41.5 billion impressions from Smarter Ecommerce (smec), offering deeper insight than the UI-based Channel Performance report.
Microsoft Advertising
Google Ads now lets you click a product title under the Products tab to see every campaign where that product is active and how it performs in each. You can compare performance between Standard Shopping and Performance Max at the product level.
Meta Ads
Google Ads AI is now suggesting Facebook Ad videos sourced from third-party provider Pathmatics (Sensor Tower) when editing assets. The suggestions appear in both Performance Max and Demand Gen campaigns, showing competitor creative that could be uploaded.
Google Ads
Performance Max campaigns now support data exclusions for Website Visitor Lists and Customer Match Lists. The feature allows excluding remarketing audiences rather than just using them as signals.
Google Ads
Google's Campaign Mix Experiments let you test multiple campaign types, budgets, and settings in one experiment. You can create up to five experiment arms with any campaigns (Search, Performance Max, Shopping, Demand Gen, Video, and App), with campaigns appearing in multiple arms and traffic split.
Google Ads
Google has released campaign total budgets in open beta for Search, Performance Max, and Shopping campaigns. The feature allows setting a total budget over a specific time period, from a few days to a few weeks, rather than managing daily budgets manually.
Google Ads
Google Ads now allows you to preview Performance Max asset group ads directly from the table by clicking on the images.
Google Ads
Microsoft Advertising has added Share of Voice metrics to Performance Max campaigns. New metrics include impression share, click share, impression share lost to budget, and impression share lost to rank.
Google Ads
Microsoft Advertising has launched a new customer acquisition feature for Performance Max campaigns. Advertisers can now target new customers specifically, with options to either increase bids for new customers or focus exclusively on acquiring them.
Google Ads
Google has silently tripled the video capacity for Performance Max asset groups. Advertisers can now upload up to 15 videos per asset group, up from the previous limit of 5.
Google Ads
Microsoft Advertising has added URL options and tracking templates at the asset group level for Performance Max campaigns. Advertisers can now submit tracking parameters and custom parameters to split data by asset group, extending functionality previously available only at the campaign and ad group level.
