Introduction to Google Ads AI Max for Search Campaigns
It's been more than a year since Google launched AI Max for Search Campaigns, which was framed as a natural response to changes in search behaviour. Now that search engine users are often entering longer, more conversational search queries in order to receive an expanded AI summary, the traditional methods of targeting ads to specific keywords can sometimes miss potential customers.
AI Max does not represent a new type of campaign or ad, but instead simply an optional "enhancement" for search campaigns. Described by Google as "a comprehensive suite of targeting and creative enhancements that brings the best of Google AI to help you take your Search campaigns to the next level", AI Max harnesses generative AI to expand ad targeting and improve ad creation in an attempt to deliver performance gains.
The new AI Max features include:
- Expanded Query Matching AI: This feature enables Google to identify potential qualified leads who are searching for your product or service using keywords or phrases which are quite different to what you anticipated with your keyword list.
- Final URL Expansion: With this feature, AI Max will dynamically select the most relevant landing page from your website based on the user's search intent. By this means, your ad will direct each user who clicks on your ad to a landing page that is most likely to convert them into a customer.
- Text Customization: This feature will use your website's up-to-date content, existing ads and real-time search queries to generate ad headlines and descriptions that you can then review before using.
- Enhanced Reporting: With updated reporting dashboards, you can gain insight into how each search term correlates with specific ad creatives and landing pages, offering a new level of transparency.
Making the Case For And Against AI Max
Google claims that advertisers who activate AI Max typically see 14% more conversions or conversion value at a similar CPA (Cost-Per-Acquisition) and this climbs to 27% for campaigns that still rely heavily on exact keyword and phrase matching. This suggests that if you have already ceded some control of your keyword matching to Google in the form of broad matching, then some of this optimization already takes place without AI Max. They also cite the success of early adopters such as L'Oréal who saw a 200% increase in conversion rate at a 31% lower CPA.
However, according to Smarter Ecommerce (SMEC), this only tells some of the story. After analyzing more than 250 search campaigns running AI Max, they found that revenue increased by 13% (very close to Google's claim) but that the average CPA also increased by up to 16%. More alarmingly, the Return on Ad Spend (ROAS) was affected in 78% of cases, ranging from 42% more to 35% less that the ROAS before AI Max was activated. This means that anyone activating AI Max should be wary of a sudden change to the profitability of their campaign.
How To Start Using AI Max
An analysis by Brainlabs across 16 mature advertiser accounts found that advertisers who enabled all three AI Max features simultaneously saw the best results. But as we have seen, if you haven't yet tried AI Max, it's important to test it before switching it on and forgetting about it:
- Start with a test campaign with which you can afford to experiment
- Add any pages on your website you do not want used as landing pages to the list of excluded URLs
- Familiarize yourself with the new reporting features and how to interpret them. Monitor these as frequently as is practical to ensure you identify any dramatic shifts in performance or costs
- Compare the performance of the test campaign with your "control" campaign over a reasonable period of time (e.g. a calendar month) before making any permanent changes
If your test performs well and you roll out the changes to all your campaigns, make sure you or your marketing department continue to monitor performance reports closely. When processes become automated it can sometimes lead to complacency and you want to be sure that any subsequent changes in performance or cost are observed and acted on quickly.
Should You Use AI Max for Search Campaigns?
AI Max can be a good fit if you want to rapidly expand your Google Ads activity but don't have the resources to do this granularly, if you are not happy with your campaign's current Return on Ad Spend, or if you just want to see if Google can find new leads for you from different search terms. But if you have a limited budget, are very happy with your campaign's current performance or simply like to have as much control over your ads as possible, there is currently no evidence that AI max would definitely improve your campaign performance.
