Google Performance Max campaign users will soon notice four new features in their accounts.

What’s new. The four new Performance Max campaign features are:

1. Seasonality adjustments are intended to allow advertisers to adjust the bid strategy based on anticipated changes in conversion rates for events such as holiday sales. Because Smart Bidding already exists for predicted seasonal events, advertisers should only use the adjustments for changes that are otherwise atypical. The adjustments should be used for long weekend promos or sales that typically last between 1-7 days. 
2. Data exclusions will tell Smart Bidding to ignore data from dates where you may have encountered issues with conversion tracking which may have impacted the accuracy of your data. An example of this would be website outages, bugs or tagging issues.  
3. Explanations will make it easier for advertisers to identify performance fluctuations and diagnose issues. The feature will also provide recommendations to help improve performance. If you have a product feed, the explanations will analyze the product status as well as top moving products, groups and types. This will become available for PMax campaigns in the coming weeks.
4. Optimization Score allows advertisers to see where the campaign has room for improvement and finds recommendations to help you take action to try and drive better results. 

Recent releases. Google also announced two new features that we reported on last week. These were advanced location targeting controls and diagnostic insights. 

Best practices. You can understand more about Performance Max campaigns and read Google’s best practice guide here. 

Why we care. Google is attempting to give advertisers more transparency and control over their Performance Max campaigns. While many advertisers agree that this is a step in the right direction to better control and performance, they should also be aware that the explanations and optimization score recommendations are guidelines, not required fixes. Always test your campaigns and monitor them on a regular basis. Make campaign adjustments based on data and your unique business.