Google Expands Performance Max Controls and Reporting

Google Ads just dropped another wave of updates to Performance Max today.

For those who’ve been asking for better audience targeting, clearer reporting on new customer acquisition, and more transparency around auto-generated assets, these updates will feel like long-overdue upgrades.

Let’s break down what’s new, why it matters, and how advertisers should respond.

What’s New in Performance Max

Google has announced three core areas of updates for Performance Max campaigns:

1. Expanded audience and campaign controls
2. Improved new customer acquisition reporting and diagnostics
3. More granular creative reporting and AI-powered asset recommendations

Most are either rolling out now or available broadly, with some elements in beta. Let’s walk through the details.

Expanded Controls Over Audience Targeting and Search Inventory

Performance Max has long leaned on automation, sometimes at the expense of control. Google is slowly changing that, and this release continues that shift.

Campaign-Level Negative Keyword Lists

Advertisers can now apply negative keyword lists across Performance Max campaigns. Previously, campaign-level negatives had to be managed individually, which created friction for accounts with dozens of asset groups.

With this update, advertisers can centralize keyword exclusions. For example, excluding terms like “cheap” or “free” across multiple luxury or premium product campaigns.

You still have the option to apply unique negative keywords to individual campaigns, but this rollout makes managing brand suitability far more scalable.

More Search Themes per Asset Group

Google has doubled the search theme limit from 25 to 50 per asset group. This matters for brands that want to influence where their Performance Max ads show up in Search, without leaning on historical keyword builds.

By expanding your search theme input, you’re giving Google more information to better match your ads to queries. It also helps widen your eligible inventory while staying relevant.

Device and Demographic Targeting Updates

You can now fully control which device types your Performance Max campaigns appear on, something that was previously only partially available.

For example, a gaming company can restrict campaigns to mobile devices, or a B2B advertiser can exclude tablets entirely.

Age targeting is now also available, allowing advertisers to exclude or target specific age ranges.

Google is also testing gender-based demographic targeting in beta. These controls bring Performance Max closer in line with what’s long been possible in Search, Display, and YouTube campaigns.

New Customer Acquisition Reporting Gets Smarter

One of the most frustrating parts of new customer acquisition bidding has been the vague “Unknown” label in reporting. That’s changing with today’s updates in Performance Max reporting.

No More “Unknown” Conversions

In lifecycle reporting for new vs. returning customers, Google previously bucketed a portion of conversions as “Unknown”. This left advertisers with limited visibility into actual performance.

Google has now improved the backend logic that determines if a user is new or existing, meaning those “Unknown” labels should be gone moving forward.

This matters for two key reasons:

• You can now get a more accurate read on how many new customers you’re acquiring.
• Bidding strategies that rely on new customer signals will become more effective as the data improves.

For even more precision, Google encourages advertisers to update their conversion tracking tags to include the new customer acquisition parameter. This signals to Google whether a conversion is from a new or returning customer, based on first-party data.

New Goal Diagnostics and Recommendations

Alongside the reporting improvements, Google has added new diagnostics that surface goal-related issues in Performance Max.

These include broken or missing conversion tags, goal misconfigurations, or other tracking issues that could be holding back performance.

The diagnostics come with actionable recommendations to help advertisers resolve the problem. While this might not be the most glamorous update, it will save time and frustration during campaign setup and troubleshooting.

Creative Reporting and Asset Control Get a Boost

Asset transparency in Performance Max has been a long-standing pain point. While things have improved in the last year, these new changes go further.

Final URL Expansion Asset Reporting

Advertisers can now view reporting for assets generated through Final URL Expansion (FUE). This is Google’s feature that dynamically creates assets based on landing page content.

You’ll be able to see what text and visuals were created through FUE and how they performed.

More importantly, if you don’t like what Google created, you now have the ability to remove those assets from your campaign.

This is a big win for brands concerned about creative consistency, especially when it comes to legal language or brand tone. While FUE can be useful for scale, it hasn’t always produced on-brand results. So, this added visibility is a welcome change.

AI-Powered Creative Recommendations

Performance Max will now generate image-specific recommendations to help you improve performance. These suggestions will include both what types of visuals to add and how to optimize existing ones for better performance on various channels (like YouTube vs. Discover).

Best of all, these recommendations link directly into the built-in AI-powered image editor in Google Ads, so you can make changes right inside the platform without needing to re-upload or redesign assets elsewhere.

It’s clear Google wants advertisers to take a more active role in creative strategy, even inside an automated campaign structure.

Wrapping Up

Google is clearly listening to advertisers’ calls for more transparency and control. These updates to Performance Max mark another step toward striking a better balance between scale and strategy.

While not every advertiser will need to use every new feature, the option to do so means there’s more room to tailor Performance Max campaigns to your business goals, creative preferences, and customer insights.

Whether you’re looking to fine-tune audience reach, fix tracking issues, or clean up your creative assets, there’s something in this update that’s worth your attention.