The client
The client is a major provider of financial services to consumers in South Africa. Most website leads are acquired via SEO, paid search and now Performance Max.
The problem
"Performance Max" (Pmax) cannibalises both paid search and remarketing campaigns, and about 90% of the leads are low quality. This makes it a difficult channel to assess and grow for the client: would the 10% of valuable leads have been acquired via search or remarketing if Pmax was switched off?
The solution
We found ways to assess and limit sources of low quality leads. We proceeded in 2 phases, as new Performance Max features that offered way more control were rolled out it Q1 and Q2 2025.
Prior to Q3 2024, we had already exclude the client's brand and landing pages with a low conversion rate from Pmax.
Q3 and Q4 2024:
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we listed and excluded all landing pages that might appeal to consumers with insufficient income
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we excluded all apps and "family-friendly" content
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we asked our Google rep to exclude a list of negative keywords coming from our paid search campaigns
Q1 and Q2 2025, as Google Ads released more control features for Performance Max
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we used the Brand exclusion feature
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we ran a script to list all placements and Youtube videos used by our Pmax campaign, and excluded placements that were low quality or off target
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we ran a script to list search terms used by our Pmax campaign, excluded the low quality ones and included the high quality ones as [exact] match into our search campaigns
The results
Over 9 months
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traffic from Pmax dropped by 75%
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leads from Pmax increased by 45%
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the share of quality leads went from 10% to 25% for Pmax
Next steps
As of August 2025, we started gradually ramping up the Pmax campaign, with more ad spend budget and higher target CPL (to reflect the increased ration of quality leads)