Google’s just done something rather remarkable with Performance Max campaigns: they’ve started showing us where our ads actually appear on their Search Partners network. For those of us who’ve been running these campaigns for clients, this feels a bit like finally getting the itemised receipt after paying the restaurant bill.
Let me explain why this matters, and what else happened this week that’s worth your attention.
The Performance Max Transparency Update (Finally)
Performance Max campaigns have always been a bit of a black box. You hand over your products, your budget, and your target returns, and Google spreads your ads across Shopping, Search, YouTube, Display, Discover, and Gmail. The results come back, but the detail about where things actually ran? That’s been frustratingly vague.
This week, Google started populating the placement reports with actual Search Partner domain names and impression counts. Not for everyone yet—it’s rolling out gradually—but for accounts where it’s live, you can now see which third-party search sites your ads appeared on.
Why does this matter for your business? Two reasons. First, brand safety. If you’re selling premium products, you probably care whether your ads are appearing on quality search sites or some dodgy domain that’s barely functional. Second, performance analysis. If you’re getting lots of impressions but terrible results from specific partner sites, you can now spot that and potentially exclude them.
This is particularly relevant because Performance Max campaigns can behave very differently depending on where they’re running. Your Shopping ads might perform brilliantly whilst your Display placements drain budget without converting. Now you’ve got a bit more visibility into at least part of that equation.
Going forward, this should make Performance Max slightly less of a “trust us, it’s working” situation and slightly more of a “here’s what’s actually happening” one. Small step, but in the right direction.
When Smart Bidding Gets Too Smart With Your Budget
Here’s a question I hear regularly: “I’ve set a daily budget and I’m using Target ROAS bidding. Why is Google spending more than my budget allows?”
This week’s industry discussion tackled exactly this issue, and it’s worth understanding because it catches a lot of people out.
Target ROAS (Return on Ad Spend) and Target CPA (Cost Per Acquisition) strategies don’t actually care about your daily budget in the way you might think. They care about hitting your target efficiency. If Google’s algorithm thinks it can get you conversions at your target cost, it’ll push spending up to 200% of your daily budget on any given day—averaged out over the month.
Plain and simple: goal-based bidding strategies prioritise hitting your efficiency target over respecting your daily limit. The daily budget becomes more of a monthly guideline.
What does this mean for your business in the real world? If cash flow matters—and for most e-commerce businesses it does—you need to factor in potential overspend. Set your daily budgets with the understanding that Google might double them on certain days. If you absolutely can’t afford overspend, you might need to use different bidding strategies or set your budgets more conservatively.
It’s not that the system’s broken. It’s that it’s optimising for a different goal than you might assume. Understanding that difference helps you plan properly.
Google’s New Scenario Planning Tool (For the Data Enthusiasts)
Google launched something called the Meridian Scenario Planner this week—a tool designed to help advertisers model different budget allocation scenarios across channels.
This one’s fairly technical, and honestly, it’s more relevant for larger advertisers running complex multi-channel strategies. The tool helps you forecast what might happen if you shift budget from, say, Search to YouTube, or from Shopping to Display.
For most e-commerce businesses, this isn’t something you’ll use directly. But it’s worth knowing about because it signals where Google’s thinking is headed: towards more sophisticated measurement and cross-channel planning. The advertising landscape is getting more complex, and Google’s building tools to help larger operations navigate that complexity.
If you’re spending significant budget across multiple channels and struggling to work out optimal allocation, this might be worth exploring. For smaller operations, it’s probably overkill—but the principle behind it (testing different scenarios before committing budget) is sound regardless of business size.
Microsoft’s Getting Serious About Performance Max Training
Not everything this week was about Google. Microsoft announced they’re rolling out hands-on Performance Max training modules, which is interesting for a couple of reasons.
First, it confirms that Performance Max-style campaigns aren’t going away. Microsoft’s investing in education around their version, which means they see this automated, multi-channel approach as the future of paid search advertising.
Second, if you’re only advertising on Google, this might be a nudge to consider whether Microsoft Ads (Bing) makes sense for your business. The audience is smaller, but it’s often less competitive and occasionally more profitable depending on your sector. If Microsoft’s improving their training and tools, the platform becomes more accessible.
Worth exploring? Depends on your market and your current Google performance. But don’t write off Microsoft Ads entirely—for some businesses, it’s a genuinely profitable secondary channel.
What This Week Actually Means Going Forward
The common thread this week is transparency and control—or rather, the ongoing tension between automated campaign management and advertiser visibility into what’s actually happening.
Google’s giving us slightly more visibility into Performance Max placements. The industry’s discussing why automated bidding doesn’t always behave as expected. New planning tools are emerging for complex scenarios. All of this points to a maturing relationship between automation and human oversight.
For your business, the takeaway is this: automated campaigns like Performance Max aren’t going away, but the tools to understand and optimise them are slowly improving. You still need someone—whether that’s an agency partner or an internal expert—who understands both the automation and the business context. The robots are getting smarter, but they still need adult supervision.
Keep an eye on your placement reports if you’re running Performance Max, understand how your bidding strategies interact with budgets, and don’t assume automation means you can stop paying attention. That’s where the real opportunities (and the real problems) still live.