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How to See Placements in Google Performance Max Campaigns

How to See Placements in Google Performance Max Campaigns

10/25/19 UPDATE: Hello Facebook Agency Visitor Person!  We’re delighted to have you visit this awesome post. About a year ago, ZATO stopped offering Facebook Ads solutions so we could focus solely on what we do best: Google Ads. Because of this, we’re always interested in partnerships with great Social Advertising agencies (like yourself, wink wink!) and we offer referral fees for signed clients!  Anyway, back to it, and happy reading…

Post Summary

This post was originally created to show placement reporting on Smart Shopping Campaigns. Because they have been replaced/killed/murdered by Performance Max campaigns, we thought it would be helpful to update the post to show you how to see placements within Google Performance Max campaigns.

Reporting on Placements in Google Performance Max Campaigns

Here's how to view placements in Google Ads' newest campaign type: Performance Max Campaigns.

Step 1: 

Navigate to the Pre-Defined Reports section in Google Ads, Select Other, and then click on the Performance Max campaigns placement report

Step 2: 

You're there! Check out the report, and add in campaigns if you're curious about specific placement details per campaign.

Sadly, we're very limited as to what you can see in this report. At the time of writing this post, you can only see Impressions at the account or campaign level... you can't see clicks, conversions, or other helpful KPIs to determine performance.

You can also segment by placement type to get a high-level view of how your PMax campaigns (or aggregated Performance Max campaigns) are showing for impressions... but again, sadly no performance or traffic data.

If you'd like to see the original Smart Shopping Campaign post, read below.

_____________

Running Smart Shopping campaigns but frustrated at how little reporting and data you are receiving? Here is a way we discovered, where you can at least see the Placements associated with your Smart Shopping campaigns... even though you can't yet take any action on these! 🙄 Check out the video, and/or transcript below. Screenshots are added into the transcript.

EDIT 6/13/19: Thanks to some Twitter conversations and more ZATO digging, we've discovered that you now *can* add placement exclusions at an Account Level to Google Smart Shopping Campaigns!

That's huge news and here is a quick walk-through we put together to help out: How to Exclude Placements in Google Performance Max Campaigns

Reporting on Placements in Google Smart Shopping Campaigns Video Transcript

Hey @PPCKirk (Connect with me on: Twitter & LinkedIn) here with ZATO as we think through all things, ecommerce, PPC, specifically in the Google and Bing ads world. Hope you're doing well. I'm your host for the week.If you've heard me before in movies, or videos I guess, not movies you're thinking: "Wow. His voice sounds so much more lower and... radio like."Well, I have a cold so there you go. I like singing and I can hit lower notes when I have a cold.I wanted to give you a brief update of something interesting to do with Smart Shopping. I've definitely been noting to the world on Smart Shopping, "hey, we need better reporting, we need better transparency in this black box thing that Google has done for us."Albeit oftentimes you'll see Smart Shopping work. It'll work great with ROAS and that but I think there are some good questions to be asking as in hey, this thing works, how can we make it even better?

Well, one thing that Eric Marshall, Eric and I are teammates here at ZATO, and he pointed this out. He saw this in Optmyzr so I did a little bit of digging and thought this interesting. Note, warning, spoilers ahead. You actually can't do anything with this data. Just know that it's there. We can see a little bit more reporting in Smart Shopping and that's around placement. So if you look in Google Ad's UI and you look in your Smart Shopping, you will not see any placements listed there. You have the ability to exclude kind of on the account level content, settings. You can exclude things there. But you actually can't see or exclude any individual placements for Smart Shopping campaigns. If you remember, Smart Shopping runs shopping PLAs across multiple channels, search, display, video, that kind of thing.One of the things that Eric discovered using the tool Optmyzr that we utilize for a number of different optimizations in that Optmyzr was created by Fred Vallaeys. He noticed that in their placements tool, they have a placements exclusions tool where it suggests different placements that are poor ROAS or whatever your filter settings are. He noticed that Smart Shopping campaign data was coming in. You could see specific placements coming in through Smart Shopping.So I dug in and looked at that, and sure enough, there is some placement data. Now, you can't do anything with it, but it's there. It's interesting.

optmyzr placement report in google smart shopping

So then I thought well, hey, if that's coming through in the API to Optmyzr, maybe it's in the reporting tab within Google as well? So I pulled open Google Ads reporting, the reports tab, and looked for campaigns and placement group. Filtered that, created a little table for that. And low and behold there it was!

google smart shopping placements in google ads reports

So you can through API, through Optmyzr, through the Google Ads report, you can see which placements your Smart Shopping campaigns are running on. Now, can you do anything about that? Nope. Not a dad blasted thing. But now you can see it. You're welcome. Have a good one!

Smart Shopping Training by PPCKirk

Psssst, hey! Want to keep learning about Smart Shopping? Check out PPCKirk's Udemy course, jam-packed with 5 hours of exhaustive content on everything from feed tips, to SSC structure, and ad creative recommendations. It's the kind of thing people pay lots and lots of money for, but we're selling it for $69.99. It also comes with exclusive access to a private Shopping Ads Facebook group where you can discuss Shopping Ads with your classmates, and get questions answered directly by Kirk himself. Grab the course now!

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Kirk Williams
@PPCKirk - Owner & Chief Pondering Officer

Kirk is the owner of ZATO, his Paid Search & Social PPC micro-agency of experts, and has been working in Digital Marketing since 2009. His personal motto (perhaps unhealthily so), is "let's overthink this some more."  He even wrote a book recently on philosophical PPC musings that you can check out here: Ponderings of a PPC Professional.

He has been named one of the Top 25 Most Influential PPCers in the world by PPC Hero 6 years in a row (2016-2021), has written articles for many industry publications (including Shopify, Moz, PPC Hero, Search Engine Land, and Microsoft), and is a frequent guest on digital marketing podcasts and webinars.

Kirk currently resides in Billings, MT with his wife, six children, books, Trek Bikes, Taylor guitar, and little sleep.

Kirk is an avid "discusser of marketing things" on Twitter, as well as an avid conference speaker, having traveled around the world to talk about Paid Search (especially Shopping Ads).  Kirk has booked speaking engagements in London, Dublin, Sydney, Milan, NYC, Dallas, OKC, Milwaukee, and more and has been recognized through reviews as one of the Top 10 conference presentations on more than one occasion.

You can connect with Kirk on Twitter or Linkedin.

In 2023, Kirk had the privilege of speaking at the TEDx Billings on one of his many passions, Stop the Scale: Redefining Business Success.

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