Google Gives Buyers More Transparency and Controls for Performance Max | Adweek August 2024

By Catherine Perloff

Google is giving advertisers a little more control over where their Performance Max ads appear.

The tech giant rolled out a series of updates on July 30 to ensure greater brand safety and more transparency into ad buys bought using Performance Max, Google’s big AI-driven buying tool that is both popular and at times controversial with advertisers.

Three-year-old Performance Max uses artificial intelligence to determine the best placement for an ad across Google’s swath of inventory, including search, YouTube and display. While Google executives have said the product has driven growth, buyers have complained that Performance Max is a black box. Specifically, advertisers say there’s no sufficient controls on where ads go or reporting data on where ads actually ended up, ADWEEK has previously reported.

Google’s latest announcement addresses some of these concerns. ​“We heard you!” Google Ads Product Liaison Ginny Marvin wrote in a LinkedIn post detailing the updates.

Ad buyers will now be able to see which YouTube videos their ads appear against. Buyers could previously see other URLs that Performance Max ads appeared on, including open web and Google Video Partner inventory, but not on specific YouTube videos.

This lack of visibility into which YouTube videos Performance Max ads ran on became a point of contention when independent research outfit Adalytics found large brands like BMO and Intuit inadvertently advertising on child-oriented YouTube channels when buying via Performance Max.

Brands can now use Google’s own content suitability filters to control which videos their Performance Max ads appear against. The filters vary based on a brand’s appetite for risk. Brands can choose to advertise on expanded content — or all content — or standard inventory, which excludes content with strong profanity, strong sexual content and graphic violence. For brands with strict guidelines around inappropriate language and sexual content, there is an option to advertise on limited inventory.

Also, advertisers can work with third-party brand safety companies including Integral Ad Science, DoubleVerify and Zefr to evaluate YouTube and display inventory in Performance Max buys. Previously, advertisers could only use these third parties to vet other types of Google campaigns.

Advertisers will get new reporting on how well each asset performed within Performance Max, getting a breakdown of how different pieces of creative drove conversions. These updates to Performance Max were first announced at Google Marketing Live in May, but are now rolling out to advertisers. Google also announced on July 30 new generative AI capabilities for advertisers.

Advertiser concerns about Google’s AI

Not all advertisers trust that Google’s algorithms make the right decisions when using AI to place ads.

Buyers have raised concerns that Performance Max places their ads in unsavory content. In one example, Performance Max can favor ads that run against a brand’s own name on search, which could waste dollars on targeting ads at people who would have clicked on a brand’s websites anyway, advertisers have told ADWEEK. A Google spokesperson said buyers can prevent Performance Max ads from showing up when users search for the name of their brand.

Some advertisers have also found ads appearing against a large swath of display inventory when they’d rather most impressions go toward search and YouTube.

In November 2023, Adalytics published research that brands inadvertently bought ads on pornographic and sanctioned websites via a pocket of inventory called the Google Search Partner (SPN) Network. Brands could not opt out of advertising on this SPN inventory when buying ads using Performance Max.

A week after the report surfaced, Google allowed brands temporarily to opt out of advertising on the Search Partner Network on Performance Max buys, ADWEEK exclusively reported. In February of this year, Google announced it would give buyers placement reports sharing which SPN sites Performance Max ads showed up on, and let brands exclude certain SPN sites, a Google spokesperson said.

The spokesperson added that the new Performance Max updates rolling out now are unrelated to the Search Partner Network.

One buyer told ADWEEK that the new changes to Performance Max were ​“very welcome” as their brand had been pushing for brand safety controls.

But other advertisers are still suspicious of Performance Max. A second buyer said they still don’t trust that the AI tool is worth brands’ money, saying they haven’t spent more than test budgets using Performance Max in years.

“It’s a fully correlation product,” the buyer said. ​“It doesn’t really seem to grow business. It just throws ads in front of people brands are already doing business with.” A Google spokesperson said buyers can use settings within Performance Max to direct the tool to help brands find new customers.

A third ad buyer said that third-party brand safety tech needs to be able to see all Google ad placements, and not just rely on the data Google gives them, to be effective. A Google spokesperson did not comment on how exactly the brand safety tech’s reporting on Performance Max will work.