Staying in control of Performance Max: brand exclusions, search themes and transparency

Performance Max has a reputation: it is the campaign where your budget disappears and where you cannot see what is happening. One campaign type running simultaneously on Search, Display, YouTube, Gmail, Discover and Maps, steered by Google’s AI, with an interface that barely gives you any buttons. For anyone used to a classic search campaign with keywords, bids and placements, that feels like riding along without a steering wheel. The black box objection is fair, but it is also overstated. You have fewer levers than before, not zero. In this article you will read which control you really have, where the blind spots are and how to keep grip, as a B2B advertiser, on where your money goes.

Why does Performance Max feel like a black box?

The complaint is familiar to anyone working with Google Ads: you do not know which keywords you show up for, you cannot see which placements are eating your budget, and you cannot bid per channel. Google bundles everything into one automated campaign and asks you to trust it. For a webshop steering on sales volume, that is often fine. For B2B, where you do not have thousands of transactions but dozens of qualified leads, the lack of insight feels riskier. One badly optimised week can spend a sizeable chunk of your monthly budget on irrelevant traffic.

That sense of losing control comes from three things. You see less data than in a search campaign. You can intervene less directly. And you are not sure whether the algorithm is optimising for your definition of success or for its own. Those three worries are not the same, and they have different solutions. The first two are about transparency and exclusions. The third, and by far the most important, is about your conversion data. Anyone who only complains about the black box while their measurement setup is a mess is solving the wrong problem.

What control do you actually have over Performance Max?

The idea that you cannot steer anything is simply wrong. There are more levers than the interface shows at first glance.

• Brand exclusions. You can exclude branded search terms so Performance Max does not spend your budget on people already typing your name. In B2B this is crucial: you want to tap into new demand, not pay for traffic that would have reached you anyway. The distinction between branded and non-branded traffic determines whether your campaign buys growth or skims existing demand, as we explain in brand versus non-brand keywords.

• Account-level negative keywords. For a long time, negative keywords in Performance Max could only be arranged through your account team. By now you can set account-level exclusions that apply to Performance Max as well. That keeps job applicants, freebie hunters and competitor names out. How to build a solid exclusion list is covered in negative keywords in Google Ads.
• Search themes. With search themes you hand the algorithm search topics you know convert. They are not hard keywords, but signals that steer where Performance Max learns to go. For a niche market with specific jargon, that is a way to put the AI on the right track faster.
• Asset groups and audience signals. You split your creatives and audience signals into asset groups. By passing your best customer lists, website visitors and relevant in-market audiences as signals, you tell the system what your ideal buyer looks like. It is not targeting in the old sense, but it genuinely steers the learning phase.
• Placement and brand safety exclusions. You can exclude content and placement types so your ads do not appear in inappropriate or worthless spots.

That is not full control the way a manual search campaign gives you. But it is enough to keep the campaign inside the lines that matter to your business.

The real control point: your conversion data

This is the heart of the story, and it is not an interface setting. Performance Max optimises towards the conversions you feed it. Feed it every newsletter signup, every contact form click and every PDF download as a “conversion”, and the algorithm will dutifully steer towards maximising those actions. It will then deliver exactly what you asked for: lots of cheap, low-value interactions. Next you point at the black box as the culprit, while you gave it the wrong instruction yourself.

Flip it around. Only feed in your valuable events as conversion goals, ideally with a value per lead that reflects the difference between a quote request and a no-obligation download. Connect your offline conversions so the system learns which clicks eventually became a sales opportunity or a deal, not just a form submission. Then that same black box suddenly optimises for pipeline instead of noise. The algorithm is exactly as smart or as dumb as the signals you give it.

This is also why you do not switch Performance Max on before your measurement setup is right. A new campaign in the learning phase with polluted conversion data learns the wrong patterns, and those patterns are hard to correct afterwards. Clean data first, then automation. Reverse that order and you buy a black box that works hard towards the wrong goal. At Customer Impact we do not treat paid as a clicks or ROAS game, but as the fast acquisition layer of a single growth engine: SEA brings demand in, and your conversion measurement determines whether that demand is actually worth anything.

How do you get transparency out of Performance Max?

The data is there, it is just less visible than it used to be. Three reports give you the most insight.

1. The search terms report. Performance Max shows which search term categories generated traffic. It is coarser than a classic search terms report, but you can still see whether your budget goes to relevant themes or to fringe queries. Find nonsense in there and you add account-level negative keywords.
2. Asset performance. Per asset group you see how your headlines, descriptions, images and videos perform, with labels like “best”, “good” and “low”. That tells you which message lands and which creatives you need to replace. It is not a channel breakdown, but it does steer your creative work.
3. Insights and placements. Under the insights tab and the placement report you see where your ads appeared. This is where you catch YouTube channels or apps eating budget without delivering anything, so you can exclude them.

For deeper breakdowns, think channel split or full search term data, you still lean partly on your Google account team. An experienced Google Ads specialist knows which reports you can unlock through scripts or the API and which exclusions you need to escalate via the account team. That is exactly the kind of grip that separates a campaign you endure from one you steer. You will find a detailed routine in our Performance Max optimisation checklist.

When is Performance Max the wrong tool?

Honest advice is part of the deal: not every B2B situation suits Performance Max. If you have little conversion volume, the algorithm gets too few signals to learn properly and you stay stuck in a slow, expensive learning phase. In that case a tightly built search campaign with manually chosen keywords is often both more transparent and more efficient. Likewise, if your product needs so much explanation that broad channels such as Display and Discover rarely reach the right buyer, a focused approach can pay off better.

Performance Max is at its strongest when you have enough conversion volume, your measurement setup including offline conversions is right, and you deploy it alongside your branded and generic search campaigns rather than on top of them. Whether it is the right tool in your case depends on your market, your sales cycle and your data. We are a B2B growth partner, not an agency that pushes every new campaign format, so we first check whether the foundations are in place before we open up the automation. If you want the bigger picture, start with our explanation of what SEA is and when it pays off.

Frequently asked questions about control in Performance Max

Can I exclude keywords in Performance Max?

Yes, through account-level negative keywords that also apply to Performance Max, plus brand exclusions for your brand name. It is less granular than in a search campaign, but you do keep irrelevant and branded traffic out.

Does Performance Max automatically optimise for quality?

No, it optimises for the conversions you feed it. Give it valuable leads and offline conversions as the goal and it optimises for pipeline. Feed in every light action and it optimises for volume and low-value interactions.

How do I see where my budget goes?

Through the search terms report, asset performance per asset group and the placement and insights reports. For the most detailed breakdowns you sometimes need your Google account team, scripts or the API.

Is Performance Max suitable for B2B with few conversions?

Often not straight away. At low conversion volume the algorithm gets too few signals to learn properly. A focused search campaign with manual steering is then usually more transparent and more efficient until your volume grows.

Ready to get a grip on your Performance Max?

The black box is less closed than it looks, but you need to know where the levers are and which data to request. The real work is not in the interface, but in clean conversion measurement, smart exclusions and the discipline to steer on pipeline instead of clicks. Get that right and you let Google’s AI work for you without losing the wheel.

Would you like us to review your Performance Max setup together and check your conversion data before you scale up? Schedule your free intake