Performance Max vs Standard Shopping: 1 Year of Real Data

Editor's note (July 2026): this is a first-party case study comparing November 2022 against November 2023 in one of our ecommerce accounts. The data and the verdict are unchanged from the original study; we've updated the terminology and added what has changed in Performance Max since. The budget-allocation logic below is still how we run ecommerce accounts today.

Performance Max campaigns and Google Shopping Ads (Standard Shopping) can significantly benefit retailers in promoting online products and local inventory — driving traffic and, for ecommerce, driving real sales.

Over a year ago, Google Shopping Ads were often more effective and performed better than Performance Max campaigns. This was due to the lack of transparency with Performance Max campaigns. It acts as a “black box” where we could not know where the ads showed at, what the ad assets combinations were, and very limited data. However, we found that Performance Max campaigns are performing increasingly well and generated more conversions than Google Shopping Ads recently. Let us first take a look at the campaign performance for a client in November 2022 and November 2023.

Campaign Performance of Company XX, Nov 2022 vs Nov 2023

Reviewing the campaign performance, Google Shopping Ads outperformed Performance Max campaigns in delivering more conversions with a higher ROAS and a lower CPA. However, by November 2023, Performance Max campaigns proved to be the top-performing campaigns, leading in both conversions and ROAS. We also shifted our budget from  Google Shopping Ads to Performance Max campaigns recently.

In October 2023, Google introduced search themes to improve Performance Max performance — see “Optimize Performance Max with search themes for improved traffic”. Since this study, Google has kept chipping away at the “black box” criticism: Performance Max now supports campaign-level negative keywords, brand exclusions and channel-level performance reporting, so you can finally see which surfaces your budget goes to.

How does Performance Max campaigns and Google Shopping Ads work?

The set up for Performance Max campaigns and Google Shopping Ads in E-Commerce are quite similar. You just need to get started by sharing the product data through Merchant Center and set up a campaign within Google Ads. Subsequently, Google will utilize the campaign and product data to create ads across Google platforms and various websites. Since they are very similar to each other, why is there an increasing gap in performance between the two?

Performance Max is an automated campaign based on the audience signals and it aims at achieving more conversions. By utilizing machine learning and automation, it maximizes campaign performance across various Google platforms, such as YouTube, Display, Search, Discover, Gmail, and Maps. Additionally, it analyzes various inputs like budget, product feed, audience data, creatives, and also visuals such as images and videos to display ads to the most conversion-worthy audience at the most opportune time.

On the other hand, Google Shopping Ads is a type of advertising campaign specifically designed for retailers to promote their products online by showing detailed information about the selling items before users click into the ad. Rather than relying on keywords to determine how and where your ads appear, this campaign was created based on the product data provided via Google Merchant Center. These ads showcase product information such as a title, price, store name, images, and other relevant attributes. The details submitted are crucial to ensure the ads are relevant when matched to user searches, and the visual representation also gives users a clearer understanding of the product. For setup details, see our complete guide to Google Shopping Ads.

Why are Performance Max campaigns more preferable than Google Shopping Ads?

In Google Ads, you can use either Google Shopping Ads (Standard Shopping) or Performance Max campaigns to boost your online sales, there is no sure-win answer. However, as Google Ads is getting smarter, we found that Performance Max campaigns truly outperformed Google Shopping Ads. Here are the advantages of Performance Max campaigns in several key aspects.

1. Broader Audience and Enhanced Visibility

Performance Max campaigns encompass all Google Ads placements. Beyond search engines, it includes YouTube, Gmail, the Google Display Network (GDN), and the Discover feed. It increases exposure to potential customers and breaks the limitations of Google Shopping Ads.  Performance Max campaigns further enhance the advertising versatility as it offers a wider variety of Google Ads formats, including display ads, text ads, and video ads.

2. Maximize Your Conversions

Performance max campaigns exhibit better efficiency and incorporate additional AI-driven features that are absent in Google Shopping Ads, such as audience signals, final URL expansion, and new customer acquisition goal. These campaigns can automatically optimize bids, audience targeting, ad creative combinations, and placements based on Google’s machine learning algorithms to maximize your conversions and achieve CPA/ROAS goals.

Besides, in Google Shopping Ads, advertisers pay on a cost-per-click (CPC) basis. If the CPC bid limit is lower than other competitors, it may have limitations of delivering the ads. However, Performance Max Campaigns optimize bidding through Smart Bidding to maximize conversions. It can automatically adjust bids and budgets across different placements, and generally obtain conversions at a lower CPA.

3. Creative Optimization

Performance Max campaigns automatically generate ads using additional creative assets (including headlines, descriptions, images, videos, additional information, URL, etc.), organizing them into different asset groups with product information in the Merchant Center. This enables more accurate predictions, such as understanding which ads, audiences, and creative combinations perform best. In contrast, Google Shopping Ads are only created based on the assets provided in the Merchant Center without additional creative assets, which can make the ads look monotonous.

In Performance Max campaigns, we can set up different asset groups by providing various ads information. This allows us to review the performance of each asset group, helping us understand which groups are critical to overall campaign success. These metrics provide insights into which assets are more effective in engaging the target audience and driving more conversions.

Asset Groups of Company XX

In conclusion, Performance Max campaigns are more flexible than Google Shopping Ads. They allow advertisers to set broader campaign goals, reach multiple platforms, and leverage AI and machine learning for automated optimization. On the other hand, Google Shopping Ads are specific on product promotion and targeted product sales (Example: Discounted item promotion). Both campaigns have their unique features and advantages. Within the same Google Ads account and for the same products, both Performance Max and Standard Shopping can serve — Ad Rank and eligibility decide which shows. Performance Max usually takes the larger share, but Standard Shopping keeps getting impressions. Therefore, I would recommend creating Performance Max campaigns to maximize your conversions. At the same time, we also suggest allocating a small budget to Google Shopping Ads, specific for targeting certain products, such as discounted items.

One important caveat before you copy this playbook: this verdict is for ecommerce, where Performance Max effectively runs Shopping under the hood and conversions are real purchases. In lead generation accounts we have repeatedly seen the opposite pattern — Performance Max fills the pipeline with enquiries, but the overwhelming majority are junk; for lead-gen we keep budgets on Search. If you forget what the Performance Max campaign is, you may check this article:  “Performance Max Campaign: Boost Your Google Ads with Ease”.

FAQ

Is Performance Max better than Standard Shopping now? Based on our client data, Google Shopping Ads still led in November 2022, but by November 2023 Performance Max delivered more conversions and a higher ROAS. Within the same account and for the same products, the two compete and Ad Rank decides which serves — in our account experience Performance Max usually takes the larger share, which is why we put the main budget there at the time; but that is an account-level trade-off, not a hard Google priority rule.

What is the difference between Performance Max and Google Shopping Ads? Both use product data from Merchant Center, but Performance Max runs across all Google placements - Search, YouTube, GDN, Gmail, Discover and Maps - with Smart Bidding and additional creative assets. Standard Shopping only shows product listing ads built from the feed and is paid on a CPC basis.

Why has Performance Max performance improved? Google added AI-driven features that Standard Shopping lacks, such as audience signals, final URL expansion, new customer acquisition goals and search themes (introduced in October 2023), plus asset group reporting for creative optimization.

Should I stop running Google Shopping Ads completely? No. We suggest keeping a small budget on Standard Shopping for targeted product pushes, such as promoting discounted items, while Performance Max handles the bulk of conversions.