Set up a new campaign

Create a Performance Max campaign

Learn how to create a Performance Max campaign.
Notes
  • This feature is available in all Microsoft Advertising markets.
  • Support for Performance Max in SA360 is now available.
  • We recommend using IndexNow to enhance ad performance for your Performance Max campaigns. By expediting indexing, IndexNow helps search engines update your ads with your most current website content, improving their relevance and effectiveness. See Using IndexNow to enhance ad performance for more information.

Please follow the instructions below to create a Performance Max campaign. You can create a maximum of 100 Performance Max campaigns per account. For information about best practices and recommendations for Performance Max campaigns, see Best practices for Performance Max campaigns.

  1. From the navigation menu on the left, select Create.

  2. Choose Drive conversions or Sell products as your campaign goal.
  3. Select Performance Max.
  4. Select Continue.
  5. (Optional) Select a Merchant Center store to advertise your products. If you want to deliver Product ads across the entire Microsoft Advertising Network and have already set up a Merchant Center store, then follow these steps:
    1. Choose the store you want to associate with your Performance Max campaign.
    2. Select Start campaign.

      Note: To display Product ads, you must select a Merchant Center store. However, if you do not wish to display Product ads, you can skip selecting a store. Keep in mind if you decide to advertise products in the future, you will need to create a new campaign. Additionally, once you select a store for this campaign, you cannot change it.

  6. Follow the steps provided by the campaign creation wizard.

Here's some information about what you'll see in your settings for products, assets, targeting, campaign, and budget:

Product settings

Product settings are only applicable if you chose a Merchant Center store to advertise your products. If you didn't select a store, skip down to asset group settings.

Shopping settings
Choose which products to show in your ads. Please note that some of your ads will use images, headlines, and descriptions from Merchant Center.
  • By default, all products from the selected store will be made available to advertise in this campaign. You can choose to Filter by feed label or Filter by country/region of sale.
  • Optionally, select Enable local inventory ads.
Listing groups
Listing groups are used to determine which products from your Microsoft Merchant Center catalog should be included in a particular asset group under Performance Max campaigns. Up to 20,000 listing groups can be applied to each asset group. For your listing groups, you can choose to show All products in your ads, or you can select Filtered products. If you select Filtered products:
  • Select Add filter.
  • Next to Divide by, choose your preferred filter from the dropdown.
  • Select the checkbox next to the products you want to show in your ads.
  • Select Save.
Asset group settings
Asset group name
Give your asset group a unique name. Your asset groups should be based on your campaign's goal, and it's a good idea to have your asset group's name reflect its goal.

Note: An asset group name cannot contain scripts, HTML, or other markup language.

Final URL
This is your landing page URL; in other words, the URL of the page that displays after a customer selects your ad. The Final URL is required and once provided, we'll generate text assets and will download images from your website to be used in Performance Max campaigns. If you have selected to create a Performance Max for selling products from your Merchant Center store, then we'll auto-populate your Final URL based on your Merchant Center settings. Your Final URL's domain must match your Merchant Center store's URL.

To review your landing page URL, follow these steps:

  1. From the navigation menu on the left, select Campaigns.

  2. Select your Performance Max campaign.
  3. Select Asset groups.
  4. Select Summary.
  5. Select Edit asset group.
  6. Review your Final URL.
Images
Add images to your ads. You may use an image from your existing images, Website images, Stock images, Social, or upload an image.

Note: You can add up to 20 images. You only need one wide (rectangle) image, sized 1200 x 628 pixels or higher (minimum 703 x 368 pixels). However, we recommend the maximum amount of images possible.

Please follow these best practices for images:

  • Use high-resolution .JPG or .PNG images, so they don't pixelate or degrade across screens.
  • Before you upload your images, make sure they meet the imagery guidelines.
  • If you don't have advertising-ready images, Microsoft Advertising has partnered with Shutterstock with free access to over 300 million commercially licensed images. To learn more, see About stock images.
  • We don't recommend images with text or logo overlays because they may appear distorted in different aspect ratios and ad placements. Some publishers may also prohibit the use of embedded text within images. Your text and logos may appear invisible or may be cut off in smaller ad placements or when images are resized. Make sure to use your Ad text, Short headline, and Long headline for all ad messaging. If text is required for legal or other reasons, we recommend using as few words as possible, small font size, and centered text.
  • Review your images in the ad preview tool before saving your ad to ensure that they look as expected. Re-crop your images as necessary.
Logos (optional)
Add brand logos to your ads.

Note: You can add up to five logos.

Headlines
Enter up to 15 Short headlines and up to five Long headlines. Both are required for display flexibility. Short headlines must be 30 characters or fewer and long headlines must be 90 characters or fewer.
Description
Enter up to five ad descriptions. Descriptions must be 90 characters or fewer. This is the most visible text of the ad and allows for more character space to engage with potential customers.
Business name
Enter your Business name. Depending on your ad's placement, your business name may appear in your ad.

Note: A business name cannot contain scripts, HTML, or other markup language.

Call to action

Choose a Call to action from the predefined list. This will provide potential customers with a brief, compelling reason to click your ad right now.

Note: “Automated” is the default option for your Call to action. If you don't choose a Call to action from the predefined list, then it will be automated by default during ad delivery to help boost campaign performance. This means that we'll automatically choose your Call to action and the language it serves in.
Ad extensions
Ad extensions are additional pieces of information about your business that you can add. We'll feature the ad extensions that are most relevant to your selected campaign goal. Learn more about ad extensions.
Path
A simplified webpage address that appears in your ads, similar to the display URL in text ads. Please note that the Path is distinct from the Final URL. The Final URL is the actual webpage URL that customers are taken to after they select your ad. The Path can be a shorter or friendlier version of your URL showing one or two subdirectories.
Mobile URL
Add a Mobile URL where potential customers go to after selecting your ad on mobile devices. For more information about Mobile URLs, please see Can I set a separate URL for my mobile website?
URL rules

This is how you specify the pages of your website that you want to target to help generate ads:

  • Target all webpages: Microsoft Advertising will look at content from all pages of your website in order to generate ads.
  • Target specific webpages: You choose specific pages of your website to target based on their URL, category, page title, or page content. This is a good idea if you want to set different bids for different parts of your website or to make sure you're not targeting parts of your website that are not relevant to your campaign goal.
    • Rules: Use the “contains” operator to target URLs, categories, page titles, or page content that contains specific words or a specific sequence of characters. If you use the "and" condition (for example, URL contains "food" and URL contains "delivery"), make sure that you have webpages that meet all the specified conditions on your website.
    • A "page title" is the text that appears at the top of a webpage—in your website's code, it's the text in this area: 

      <head>
        <title>This is the page title</title>
      </head>
    • "Page content" is the visible text on a webpage—in your website's code, it's the text between these tags: 

      <body></body>
  • Target webpages from page feeds: Use a feed of URLs to specify which pages should be used for your ads.
Start and end dates
Choose when you want your ads to run.
Targeting settings
Location
This is where you want your ads to appear. You can target or exclude specific countries/regions, states/provinces, cities, or zip/postal codes. Learn more about how language and location targeting affect who can see your ads.
Language
This is the language you'll write your ads in. This should match the language of the sites that you'd like your ads to appear on. Learn more about language options in Microsoft Advertising.
Audience signals (optional)
Create an audience signal or choose from your existing audience signals. We'll use them as a starting point to find customers and determine who sees your ads. Learn more about audience signals. We recommend providing audience signals as this can reduce learning period for the campaign as well as improve overall performance.
Search themes (optional)

Enter the search themes (words or phrases) associated with your campaign to help Microsoft Advertising optimize your campaign during the learning period. Search themes act as signals to help us reduce the learning period and get your campaign up and running quicker. Search themes can help determine who sees your ads and are intended to drive conversions. This is an asset group-level feature and can be provided during asset group creation and/or editing. Up to 25 search themes can be included, and each theme can be 80 characters or less.

Note: Customers will not see any of the search themes in your ads. The search themes act as signals to help during the learning period by letting us know how to better target your ads to the right customers at the right time.

Campaign details
Campaign name
Give your campaign a unique name. It's a good idea to have your campaign's name reflect its goal.

Note: A campaign name cannot contain scripts, HTML, or other markup language.

Ad schedule
Select Ad schedule if you want to show your ads only on certain days or certain times of day. Learn more about ad schedule settings: How can I get my ads in front of my customers?
Conversions
This allows you to specify which actions to count as conversions, as recorded by UET. You have two options for choosing conversion goals:

  • Use your account's Include in “Conversions” setting. This applies your account's conversion goals to this campaign. To see which conversion goals are included in your account settings:

    From the navigation menu on the left, hover over Conversions and select Conversion goals.

  • Choose specific conversion goals for this campaign.
Note: Conversions for your store visit goals are only included at the account and campaign levels, and only if your campaigns have enough ad clicks to pass our privacy thresholds.

Learn more about conversion goals: What are conversion goals and goal types?
Autogenerated assets (optional)
Notes
  • Note: Previously, any Performance Max campaign serving only Product ads with autogenerated assets enabled failed to serve autogenerated assets. This was an error, and we have fixed the issue.
  • If your Performance Max campaign serves Product ads and has autogenerated assets enabled, then it'll now serve autogenerated assets in your ads in addition to the assets associated with your feed file. Your ads will be eligible to serve in both Search and Product ad placements. This includes any Smart Shopping campaigns with autogenerated assets enabled that were upgraded to Performance Max.
This setting allows Microsoft Advertising to automatically generate assets to enhance ad relevance and performance. We use information pulled from your Final URL as well as any assets you provide to automatically generate additional assets for your ads when available. Choose which assets you'd like us to automatically generate by selecting the checkbox next to Text assets, Image assets, and/or Final URLs (to allow for Final URL expansion). Final URL expansion navigates traffic to relevant URLs on your website to drive better results, including the URLs provided in your page feeds. See below for more information about deleting autogenerated text assets from your asset groups.
Campaign URL options (optional)
Set up the tracking and redirect information for your ads. Learn more about including tracking templates or URL parameters in your final URL.
Brand exclusions
This setting allows you to add brand lists for the branded search queries you don't want your ads to serve on. Learn more about brand exclusions.
Budget settings
Budget
This is the amount of money you want to spend per day.

Note: A constrained budget hinders Performance Max campaign optimization. It's best to give Performance Max campaigns up to two to three times the budget of your historical standalone campaigns in Microsoft Advertising, due to Performance Max serving across multiple ad formats and inventory.

Here are the benefits and drawbacks of smaller versus larger budgets:

Smaller budget

Pros:

  • You can test how well your budget performs without committing a large amount of money.

Cons:

  • A constrained budget won't provide enough data for accurate optimization and insights.
  • With fewer conversion opportunities and potential budget exhaustion, it'll take longer to gather meaningful results and make adjustments during the learning period.
  • Your campaign might not reach a wide enough audience for significant performance improvements.

Larger budget

Pros:

  • Ample budget will provide enough data for accurate optimization and insights.
  • A larger budget offers faster campaign learning periods which gather meaningful results to help you meet your performance goals.
  • Get wider available reach by finding more conversion opportunities that drive results.

Cons:

  • There's greater financial risk if the campaign doesn't initially perform well.
  • A larger budget requires more oversight to ensure that the funds are used effectively, and that the campaign is seeing results.
Bid strategy

Note: We highly recommend setting up conversion tracking to take full advantage of our automated bid strategies.

Note

If you don't have a conversion goal in Microsoft Advertising during Performance Max campaign creation, we'll automatically convert your campaign's bid strategy to maximize clicks. Once you create a conversion goal, we'll track a sufficient amount of conversion data and then your Performance Max campaign will automatically switch to your selected conversion-based bid strategy. Please note that you can always change the bid strategy in your campaign settings.

Your bid strategy setting tells Microsoft Advertising how you want to manage your bids. With automated bidding for Performance Max, we automatically adjust your bids to optimize your campaign and meet your performance goals. You can choose from these options:

  • Maximize conversion value: This bid strategy focuses on optimizing high-value conversions and the total sales value of your campaign. We'll automatically set your bids in real time to maximize total conversion value within your budget. If you have specific return on investment (ROI) goals, you can choose to add a Target ROAS (return on ad spend). To learn more about Target ROAS, please see Let Microsoft Advertising manage your bids with bid strategies.
  • Maximize conversions: With this bid strategy type, Microsoft Advertising automatically sets your bids in real time to get as many conversions as possible within your budget. If you have specific ROI goals, you can choose to add a Target CPA (cost per acquisition). To learn more about Target CPA, please see Let Microsoft Advertising manage your bids with bid strategies.
Learn more about auto-bidding: Let Microsoft Advertising manage your bids with bid strategies
Optimize for new customer acquisition

Note

Not everyone has this feature yet. If you don't, don't worry—it's coming soon!

When enabled, this setting helps your campaign drive conversions by reaching new customers who are ready to make purchases. You have two options for new customer acquisition:

  • Increase bids for new customers: This increases your bids for new customers while continuing to bid for existing customers. If you choose this option, you must:
  • Bid only for new customers: This optimizes your bids to target new customers exclusively. If you choose this option, you must select at least one audience list. Your audience list will help us optimize for targeting only new customers during ad delivery.

If you enable Optimize for new customer acquisition, then you need to add your customer acquisition settings at the account level:

  • If you haven't yet added your customer acquisition settings at the account level, you can do so during Performance Max campaign creation:
    1. Select Set up new customer acquisition within your Budget settings below Optimize for new customer acquisition.
    2. Enter the Conversion value for new customers and optionally add an audience list. Note: If you choose Bid only for new customers as your optimization strategy, then you'll need to add an audience list.
    3. Select Save.
  • You can also add your customer acquisition settings at the account level from the Conversion goals page:

    1. From the navigation menu on the left, hover over Conversions and select Conversion goals.

    2. Select Customer acquisition.
    3. Select Create.
    4. Enter the Conversion value for new customers and optionally add an audience list. Note: If you choose Bid only for new customers as your optimization strategy, then you'll need to add an audience list.
    5. Select Save.
Note

Review your settings in the Summary page and select Go live or Don't go live.

Deleting autogenerated text assets

Note

Not everyone has this feature yet. If you don't, don't worry—it's coming soon!

Follow these instructions to delete any autogenerated text assets that you don't want to serve in your ads:

  1. From the navigation menu on the left, select Campaigns.

  2. Select the appropriate Performance Max campaign.
  3. Select Asset groups.
  4. In the Assets column, select View asset details for the appropriate asset group.
  5. Select the checkbox next to the autogenerated text asset you want to delete.
  6. Select Delete in the blue action bar.

Note: Once an asset is deleted it cannot be restored. You can still view asset reports for 30 days after deletion.

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