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Answered Performance Max

How are you splitting PMax and standard shopping without cannibalising?

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Priya Deshmukh Asked Mar 25, 2024
2 1871
Client runs both and I can't get a clean read on which one is doing the work. The theory is that PMax wins the auction when it expects to do better, so the overlap is fine and you should judge the total. The practice is that standard shopping volume fell off a cliff the week PMax launched and combined revenue is flat, which is a much less flattering way of describing the same event. Three approaches I know of: 1) Run both and accept that PMax takes priority. 2) Split by product margin - high margin into PMax, the rest in standard. 3) Turn standard off and stop arguing with yourself. Has anyone tested more than one of these on the same account? I am wary of drawing conclusions from a single before-and-after when seasonality is doing half the work.

Replies (2)

Accepted answer
J Jenna Krause · Mar 27, 2024
Worth being precise about what cannibalisation means here, because two different things get called it. If PMax takes a conversion standard shopping would have got anyway, your blended cost per conversion is unchanged and nothing bad happened. You moved the credit, that's all. If PMax bids up an auction you were already winning cheaply, you paid more for the same conversion. That one is real, and it shows up in neither campaign's report - only in the combined CPC trend. So before choosing a structure, look at blended CPC before and after launch. Flat means the split is a reporting preference and you should pick whichever you can maintain. Risen means you have an actual problem, and structure will not fix it - targets will.
M Marcus Hale · Mar 26, 2024
We ran 2 for about four months. It reads well in a deck and it's a nuisance to maintain - feeds drift, someone adds a product to the wrong bucket, and by month three the split does not mean what it meant in month one. Ended up on 3. Not because it performed better but because the reporting finally made sense, which turned out to be worth more than the theoretical control.

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