8 quick reactions to Google’s Performance Max / Search Partners updates

If you hate Search Partners, a recent Google update has both good and bad news for you.

The bad news: as expected, after March 1, Performance Max campaigns won’t be able to opt out of Search Partners.

The good news: We will get more data at the impression level and the ability to exclude placements within Search Partners.

Overall, the update created quite a bit of conversation at Blackbird. Here are our initial reactions to a pretty major development from Google:

1) We’re all happy about the transparency and exclusion options.

2) All of Google’s protests aside, it had its feet held to the fire after a report from Adalytics showed the placement quality was not brand-safe.

3) There are a few reasons we don’t like Performance Max campaigns; the fact that Search Partners has been historically automatically included is a big one.

4) Especially for B2B and lead gen companies, Search Partners is particularly bad for lead quality. In this example, Search Partners campaigns drove 36% of leads but only 1.1% of opportunities.

5) For B2C brands, Search Partners' performance is generally worse than Google properties though not to the extreme of B2B. B2C campaigns should have enough conversion data density to allow automated bidding to achieve profitability (although it’s a case-by-case scenario). B2B often does not have enough leads to provide a good signal.  

6) This change makes it absolutely imperative for advertisers to import lead quality and value into Google, either through weighted revenue assigned to different conversions or through OCT (offline conversion tracking).

7) Even OCT won’t resolve every challenge presented by Search Partners’ poor quality. Often, brands won’t have enough data to give clear signals to train the bidding algorithm, which will almost certainly hurt performance.

8) What would be ideal in this scenario? We’d love the ability to opt into (or out of) Search Partners and to set a performance modifier, which is something we can already do on the device level. Google, I hope you’re listening…