In just a few years, Performance Max has evolved from a largely opaque experiment into a more capable — if still imperfect — campaign type for B2B marketers. The core principles remain the same: healthy skepticism is still essential, first-party data is more important than ever, ongoing testing is mandatory, and actionable reporting is what ultimately powers optimization. What’s different now is how much better Google has become at putting those inputs to work. As a result, your Performance Max approach must evolve as well. Below are five best practices to run stronger PMax campaigns for B2B today.
1. Steer the AI with high-quality inputs
Back in 2022, because of PMax’s heavy automation and the hard push from Google reps, I anticipated a rapid shift toward deeper AI integration. That prediction has largely come true, likely accelerated by competitive pressure from tools like ChatGPT. Google is now heavily prioritizing both AI Max for Search (launched in 2025) and PMax. This isn’t inherently negative for B2B advertisers, especially since standard Search campaigns remain available and Google has rolled out several improvements that make PMax more practical for B2B.
Three particularly valuable updates are:
• Search themes, which enable more accurate and controlled targeting.
• Brand exclusions, which help prevent CPC inflation and reduce overspending on low-incremental branded queries.
• Account-level channel reporting, which consolidates performance data across campaigns into a single view. Use conversion-based segmentation here to evaluate ROI by channel. This quickly highlights channels that are outperforming and deserve more budget, as well as those that are underdelivering and need to be rethought…