Google announced several new features for your Performance Max campaigns in Google Ads. Some we covered before, like the new location targeting controls and diagnostic insights, and others like seasonality adjustments, optimization scores, data exclusions, and new explanations we have not covered yet.

Seasonality Adjustments

Seasonality adjustments are now available and are designed to help you stay informed on your Performance Max bid strategy. It shows you the changes that you are anticipating in conversion rates for future events like promotions or sales. Google said you should “keep in mind that Smart Bidding already accounts for predicted seasonal events.” Google said you should only use seasonality adjustments if you foresee major changes to conversion rates that are sudden or atypical. Use seasonality adjustments for short periods and events, usually ranging from 1-7 days, such as a week-long promotion or sale.

Optimization Score

Optimization score can help you find new ways to improve performance and is now fully launched for Performance Max campaigns. Using optimization score, you can see where your campaign has room to grow and find recommendations that help you take quick action to drive better results. For example, apply recommendations to optimize for new customer acquisition or to apply a ROAS target. Google said it will continue to add new recommendations over time.

Data Exclusions

You can now use data exclusions to prevent unintended issues with conversion tracking from affecting your Performance Max bid strategy. This new tool tells Smart Bidding to ignore data from dates where you encountered issues with your conversion tracking that impacted the accuracy of your reported conversions or conversion value, such as tagging issues or website outages.

Explanations

Explanations are coming to all Performance Max campaigns in the coming weeks, Google said. Explanations make it easier to identify performance fluctuations and diagnose issues. These explanations can even provide recommendations to help you improve your performance going forward. In Performance Max campaigns for online sales with a product feed, you will see explanations that offer analysis of your product status and your top-moving products, listing groups, and product types. You can use Explanations “to save time, better understand performance changes, and troubleshoot any challenges without having to spend hours manually cross-referencing reports and spreadsheets,” Google added.

Here are Ginny Marvin’s tweets summing up these announcements:

🌟 Location targeting + more Performance Max updates to improve performance & gain visibility into your campaigns are here… 1/5

— AdsLiaison (@adsliaison) July 12, 2022

3/5 Explanations for Performance Max campaigns will be available in the coming weeks to help you quickly identify, analyze & troubleshoot performance changes. Merchants will also gain views into product status, top-moving products, and more.

— AdsLiaison (@adsliaison) July 12, 2022

5/5 ✅✅ Lastly, Seasonality adjustments and Data exclusions are now available for Performance Max campaigns to help you inform & steer automation. For more on the newest features check out: https://t.co/fphmct5Tl5

— AdsLiaison (@adsliaison) July 12, 2022

Forum discussion at Twitter.