If you’re running Performance Max (PMax) campaigns in 2025, you’ve probably noticed that the platform’s evolving — fast. What began as a black-box solution with limited levers is now one of Google’s most powerful tools for scalable growth. And with the latest updates, it’s also becoming a lot more transparent and flexible — which is great news for marketers who want to stay in control while getting the best out of automation. Why does this matter, and how can you adjust your strategy to stay ahead?

1. Search Themes: Steer the Machine in the Right Direction

One of the most welcome updates is Search Themes. These let you give PMax helpful nudges — essentially telling it, “Hey, these are the kinds of things we care about.” Instead of relying purely on your landing pages or ad copy, you can now suggest high-value topics (like “luxury skincare” or “sustainable travel”) that help shape the intent signals Google uses to match your ads.

They’re not quite keywords, but they do influence the types of queries your campaigns show up for. When combined with strong audience signals, this gives you a more strategic way to guide targeting — especially when your product range or positioning is nuanced. But while the feature looks simple on the surface, the real value comes from how you operationalise it. Here’s where we’re seeing the biggest gains:

1. Use themes to fill query gaps across brand, category, and competitor clusters.
Search Themes are especially powerful when layered over intent categories where Broad Match or asset-driven matching has historically underperformed. For example:

• Brand protection: Add branded misspellings or phonetic variations you can’t include in exact match campaigns.
• Category depth: Use long-tail themes to capture early-research queries you don’t want in standard Search (e.g. “how to choose a running watch”).
• Competitor overlaps: Carefully tested themes like “alternatives to [competitor]” can uncover incremental traffic — while maintaining distance from direct bidding.

2. Align themes with actual conversion categories, not just product names.
We’ve seen stronger performance when themes map to user problems or goals rather than product labels. For instance, “home gym setup” outperforms “adjustable dumbbells” as a theme because it opens up broader intent surfaces across YouTube, Discover, and Search.

3. Treat themes like testable variables — rotate, benchmark, and refine.
Don’t just set and forget. We recommend managing Search Themes like you would ad copy: introduce new sets monthly, monitor impression share and conversion metrics, and rotate out underperforming concepts. A quarterly theme refresh tied to seasonal or campaign-level objectives works well.

4. Be cautious with volume-based overloading.
More isn’t always better. Loading in dozens of themes without structure can dilute intent signals and confuse PMax. Aim for concise, themed groupings aligned to specific campaign goals (e.g. acquisition vs upsell, low vs high AOV).

5. Combine themes with audience signals for deeper segmentation.
This pairing unlocks smarter targeting. For example:

• “Cloud migration tools” + In-Market: IT decision makers
• “Affordable family holidays” + Custom: recent hotel bookers

When themes and audiences reinforce each other, we typically see stronger conversion rates and more relevant asset rotation.

2. Targeting the Right People with More Value: NCA + Value Mode

We’ve also seen a big step forward in customer acquisition capabilities. The New Customer Acquisition (NCA) goal now includes Value Mode, which means you can assign higher value to new customers compared to returning ones — perfect if you care about lifetime value, not just lead count.

Here’s how it works: you upload a list of your existing customers, then tell Google how much more a new customer is worth to your business. For example, if your average new customer brings in £100 over time, you can signal that to Smart Bidding — and let it optimise towards those outcomes.

This is a smart move for subscription businesses, high-repeat eCommerce brands, or anyone thinking beyond first-click conversions. It turns PMax into a tool not just for traffic, but for building long-term value.

3. Creative Coverage Gets Smarter (and Easier)

Creative automation in PMax has taken a leap forward with Automatically Created Assets (ACA). These dynamically build ad headlines and descriptions based on your site content, feeds, and existing copy. And now, Google is generating video assets in all key formats — vertical, square, and horizontal — unlocking more inventory across YouTube and Discover.

If you’ve struggled to keep up with creative formats, this is a big win. Campaigns with all three video orientations typically see up to 20% more conversions on YouTube compared to horizontal-only setups.

That said, ACA isn’t a replacement for good creative — it’s a complement. The best performance still comes from layering automation on top of strong brand-led assets.

4. Final URL Expansion: Smarter Routing for Smarter Users

PMax’s Final URL Expansion feature is one of its quiet power moves. When turned on, Google can override your ad’s landing page and send users to a more relevant destination on your site, based on their query.

This works by using Google’s own crawl data and understanding of your site structure. So instead of always pushing traffic to, say, your general category page, a user searching for “men’s trail running shoes” might go straight to a filtered product list page — even if you didn’t manually set that up. Here’s what we’re seeing work well — and where things can go off track.

1. Use Landing Page Reports to surface performance blind spots.
Once FUE is live, the Landing Page Report becomes your best friend. We recommend analysing it weekly for:

• High-volume URLs with weak conversion rates → candidates for page exclusion or CRO work
• Low-volume, high-ROAS pages → signal opportunities to build into your feed or prioritise manually
• Pages being served that weren’t part of your core funnel → flag for brand/UX review

2. Tighten the experience with page feeds (even in PMax).
While FUE is designed to be dynamic, we’ve seen more stable performance when pairing it with Page Feeds that whitelist only the URLs you want PMax to consider. Think of it as a guided sandbox — you still get automation, but with smarter boundaries.

(Note: For advertisers using GMC feeds, page feeds and URL expansion may conflict — be sure to segment campaigns appropriately.)

3. Exclude "support" and "low-intent" pages that bleed spend.
We often see FUE directing traffic to help centres, FAQs, blog posts, or product support pages — all of which attract users post-purchase or out-of-funnel. Proactively exclude these via rules (e.g. URL contains /support, /help, /terms, etc) to preserve intent alignment.

4. Structure site content with FUE in mind.
FUE relies heavily on page semantics, hierarchy, and crawlability. That means:

• Pages with vague titles, poor metadata, or bloated layouts tend to underperform
• Structured landing pages (single CTA, clear offer, focused copy) tend to get favoured and convert better

If your site wasn’t built with FUE in mind, even strong campaigns will see mixed results. We recommend collaborating with SEO and CRO teams to align on structure, especially across category and promo landing pages.

5. Create exclusion templates for launches and high-stakes campaigns.
When launching seasonal campaigns, product drops, or high-ROAS initiatives, we create exclusion rule templates in advance — blocking outdated sale pages, archived content, or misaligned landing paths. This ensures the campaign’s momentum isn’t undercut by poor routing.

5. More Transparency, Finally

For a while, PMax felt like flying blind. Not anymore. Google has added several new reports to make it easier to see what’s actually working:

• The Search Term Insight Report helps you understand the themes and queries triggering your ads — even when keywordless.
• The Landing Page Report shows you which URLs are being served, and how they’re performing.
• You can now see how ACA is performing in the Asset Performance Report.
• And a new Match Type view reveals whether conversions came from broad match, exact match, or AI-driven keywordless targeting.

These updates make it easier to make informed decisions, instead of guessing what the machine is doing under the hood.

Final Thoughts

Performance Max isn’t just evolving — it’s maturing. What started as a hands-off, one-size-fits-all approach is becoming a precision tool for marketers who know how to work with it.

The brands seeing the best results aren’t those relying on automation alone — they’re the ones feeding the system with the right data, creative, and intent signals, then using the new insights to iterate.

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