As a business owner, you’re probably well-versed in advertising online with help from many different platforms. If you’re like most, the one you’re most familiar with is probably Google Ads. However, here is the latest scoop, Google is part-way through transitioning its Ads users towards an upgraded version of its platform, called Performance Max.

This might not be so much of a secret, as you may have already noticed your own local campaigns might have recently upgraded automatically to performance max during August and September, which was precisely when Google started rolling out these auto-updates.

If your campaigns haven’t or weren’t automatically updated to Performance Max, that means they won’t from now through the end of 2022 — Google has paused automatic changes during the holiday season in order to minimize disruptions. However, after the holidays, Google will pick up again and let you know a few weeks prior to when they will automatically upgrade your account’s campaigns.

Once a Performance Max campaign is live, you’ll no longer be able to create or enable the previously standard local campaigns. You will still, however, be able to access historical performance information from your original local campaigns.

Self-upgrading during the holidays and the improvements you’ll get from Performance Max

If you haven’t been auto-upgraded to Performance Max and still want to upgrade a campaign without waiting until 2023, you can still do so — you just have to do this manually with Google’s self-upgrade option. You can access this tool on Google Ads via your campaigns page, recommendations page, or through relevant notifications. The processes are pretty similar, but Google has a step-by-step guide on self-upgrading through each of these pages that will walk you through it here.

Whether you upgrade manually before 2023, or automatically in the new year, your campaign settings will carry over from your pre-Performance Max time and remain constant in the new format.

What Are You Getting Out of It?

Now, after this discussion on just what is happening with Performance Max and how it’s happening, we should probably get to the “why.” Why is Performance Max rolling out? What are you getting out of it?

Just like all automated, machine learning-based technologies across not just Google Ads, or even digital marketing, but really everything in the world (theoretically, at least), the bottom line is about increased efficiency.

The characteristics of Performance Max that work to that end include generally improved machine learning that gives you better results while requiring less energy, time, and through extension money investment from you. It also gives you the ability to identify business goals, and from there Performance Max’s automation can use those goals to more effectively reach potential customers — and this is implemented across Google’s platforms, including YouTube, Gmail, and Maps, along with more standard search and display ads.

And, to complement this improved targeting capacity, Performance Max also includes improved, more in-depth insights.

Altogether, Performance Max equates to better results for less, so you can have more time, energy, and money to invest elsewhere.