A new year brings new opportunities, and in 2025, Google is bringing in some interesting new updates to PMax that gives us marketers more insight and control.
With multiple new tools, previous beta features becoming available to all and even more ideas under development, it will prove an exciting year anyone looking to optimise their campaigns.
Rein In AI With Negative Keyword Control
With the integration of campaign-level negative keywords becoming available to everyone, you can control what searches you don’t want to appear for. Selling glasses frames but don’t want to appear for people wanting to buy sunglasses? Now you can exclude it without the need to contact a Google representative to add a negative keyword list!
Find & Prioritise High-Value New Customers
High-value new customer mode is also rolling out. Allowing you to prioritise bidding through based off your own existing data.
- Google AI will find lookalikes of previous valuable customers
- You can set different bidding priorities, focusing on high-value new customers without missing out on low value or existing ones
- Analyse how many high-value new customers you’re getting with campaign-level reporting
Choose Where You Want to Exclude Brand
If you’re a retail advertiser and have a product feed, here’s some exciting news for you! You can now have more control over how brand exclusions apply to search and shopping ads.
While before it was an all-or-nothing situation, now you can choose to only exclude brands in search ads while keeping it for shopping- useful if you don’t want PMax eating up your branded traffic originally intended for your search campaigns!
Exclude Audiences with Upcoming Betas
Plus, there’s more to look forward to in the future. Two new betas are coming out, allowing you to exclude by:
- Age-based demographics
- Device type
Remember to reach out to your Google Ads account team or Google Ads support to try it out.
Discover How Effective Your Search Themes Are
Previously a beta feature, search terms are used to give Google AI a little nudge on what queries your customers search to find you (on top of your PMax assets and URL). From previous feedback, it is now being released in full with a few updates:
- New reporting functions: see if queries are coming from PMax’s keywordless targeting or from the search themes you’ve added.
- New indicators next to search terms: identify the effectiveness of your search themes at extending your reach beyond your existing assets.
- Bonus insights for search campaigns: currently in beta, you can now see search term insights for responsive search ads, similar to the newly released PMax feature.
Learn More & Share More From Asset Reports
Break down your results and analyse them easier with new downloadable asset group performance data. Now you can see your PMax asset performance broken down by device, time and more! You can even share this outside of the Google ads interface.
Google Grants Updates:
Are you a non-profit charity advertising on search campaigns? Well, now you can do even more with PMax finally rolling out to all Google Grants accounts! Now there’s another way to get over that $2 bid cap and more platforms for your ads to show up on! This means more reach, especially for those struggling with spend and ad management.
So, What Does This Mean?
As we gain more control over PMax, it is up to us marketers to help steer AI in the right direction to maximise performance. This means understanding what we are advertising and how we are performing with the assistance of new reporting tools has become more important than ever. By giving the algorithm the right nudge, we can put ourselves ahead of the competition using context that Google AI may not understand.
