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Import your Performance Max campaigns

October 31, 2022
A Microsoft laptop on a desk with a blurred person in the background.

As you continue to evolve your digital advertising to infuse more automation into your strategies, we’re here to support your needs to help maximize your volume and return on investment (ROI) with minimal effort required. To help meet these needs, Microsoft Advertising has launched a solution within the Google Import tool to simplify duplicating your efforts across platforms when using Google Ad’s Performance Max campaigns.

Leading into the holiday season, we prioritized building the import solution for your Performance Max campaigns that use a Merchant Center. These campaigns will be imported as Smart Shopping Campaigns and Local Inventory Ads.

We’ve also started a pilot solution for importing your other Performance Max campaigns that aren’t using the Merchant Center, starting with an experience that will import these campaigns as Search campaigns and create Dynamic Search Ads (DSA). We’ll continue to progress in these import developments and explore other ad formats later. Stay tuned to our monthly product roundup blogs for more information.

Details and best practices of the Performance Max Import for campaigns using the Merchant Center

Imports may be scheduled daily, weekly, monthly, or now as a one-time option:

FeaturesPerformance Max to Smart Shopping Campaigns import mapping
CampaignCampaign settings will be imported as-is from Performance Max campaigns to Smart Shopping Campaigns including campaign name, budget, maximize conversion value bid strategy, location targeting, and merchant store.
Ad group nameAsset group names will be mapped to ad group names;
however, text and image assets won’t be imported.
Product groupListing groups from Performance Max campaigns will be mapped as-is to the product groups in Smart Shopping Campaigns/Local Inventory Ad campaigns.
Note we’ll be able to import multiple ad groups/product groups for all Performance Max—shopping import customers.
Product adsProduct ads will be autogenerated, consistent to today’s experience.

Note: We currently don’t support the import of Maximize conversions bid strategy for Shopping Campaigns.

It’s very important that your imported Performance Max campaigns use Merchant Center before importing. Use the following checklist to set it up:

1. Complete setting up a Merchant Center store within Microsoft.

2. Set a realistic target return on ad spend (ROAS) goal. Setting this too high can negatively impact your campaign performance.

3. Make sure that Universal Event Tracking (UET) and conversion tracking are accurately set up.

4. If targeting multiple countries, make sure there’s a feed for each market used by the campaigns (country/region of sale setting).

5. Activate any paused campaigns that were intentionally imported.

6. Check feed rejections and remedy promptly for formatting issues with the feed and product rejections. You can get help for specific issues here.

Details and best practices of the Performance Max Import for campaigns not using the Merchant Center

Imports may be scheduled for daily, weekly, monthly, or now as a one-time option:

FeaturesPerformance Max to Search campaigns import mapping
CampaignCampaign settings will be imported as-is from Performance Max campaigns to Search campaigns including campaign name, budget, location targeting, and merchant store.
Ad group nameAsset group names will be mapped to dynamic ad group names. We’ll import your text, image, and logo assets in order for us to create ads for you.
Bid strategyWe support all Performance Max bid strategies except for Maximize conversion value. Don’t worry, your Maximize conversion value bid strategy will be imported as target ROAS with a default value of 150%.

For more information on the Google Import experience for your Performance Max campaigns: What gets imported from Google Ads (microsoft.com).

Authors

  • Lauren Tallody

    SR. PRODUCT MARKETING MANAGER, SEARCH & CHAT PARTNER EXCELLENCE, MICROSOFT ADVERTISING

    Lauren Tallody
  • Hemant Kumar

    PRINCIPAL PRODUCT MANAGER, MICROSOFT ADVERTISING

    Hemant Kumar
  • Mei Hua

    SR. PRODUCT MANAGER, MICROSOFT ADVERTISING

    Mei Hua

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