At long last, the powers that be at Google Ads have extended an olive branch to Google Ads marketers. As of today, I have noticed that someone can now “finally” add a negative keyword to a Performance Max campaign. Performance Max campaigns are goal-based advertising campaigns that leverage AI to optimise across multiple Google channels, including Search, Display, YouTube, Discover, Gmail and Maps.

 

For the last 3 years (yes, it really has been that long), the early adopters of the Performance Max campaigns had to work around Google’s black-box of m̵i̵s̵e̵r̵y̵ mystery, with only a limited area for configuring your campaign’s objectives, and there was a very limited opportunity for direct influence.

 

Marketers could only add “account-level” negatives, which would affect all active campaigns, without the opportunity to provide specific exclusions based on each campaign’s historical data and performance, which is far more accurate. So this is a HUGE breakthrough and not to be ignored by anyone who wants to achieve the very best returns on ad spend (ROAS)

 

Marketers are now free to add negative keywords as they see fit. For those that are new to Google Ads: Negative keywords are words or phrases that you add to your advertising campaigns to prevent your adverts from appearing for irrelevant search queries (keyword phrases), thereby reducing wasted advert spend and improving the quality of traffic to your website.

 

If you are running Google Ads campaigns and require assistance on how best to optimise your account and revenue profits using Digital Marketing, feel free to get in touch today for a free consultation.