AI Max: Google’s latest toy, should you be testing it?
I joined the accelerate with Google webinar to learn more about the latest addition, AI Max.
It’s not a new campaign, you opt in a current search campaign into expanding with AI Max. It’s relevant to all types of business, not specific to one industry. If you want to get more from search advertising, we recommend testing it (in a small and controlled campaign!).
It’s a way to expand your search campaign with AI. It’s combines broad match technology with keywordless technology, and many say it’s Google’s gateway campaign to moving search to not needing keywords.
Performance benefits from Google:
- Campaigns using Exact & Phrase match: 27% more uplift
- Broad match: 14% more uplift
- Case Study:
What control options are there?
Thankfully it’s not like Pmax when that launched, there’s plenty of ways to control it in line with normal search campaign controls:
- Negative keywords: you can continue to add negatives as normal on the campaign and AI Max should respect them.
- Location targeting at ad group level. This is important for context when targeting broader queries, for example if you only want users in London and normally rely on queries to include the London location, this may not work with AI Max – it may deem someone in Manchester who travels to London as relevant.
- Brand controls to fact check generated content (I would be sceptical of this, no evidence shown, except for excluding specific URL’s from targeting & copy generation).
- Brand inclusion or exclusion options so you can include or exclude your own and/or competitor brands. Note if you don’t exclude brand it will bid on it as deemed relevant.
- You can exclude specific URL’s from being targeted within the campaign (aka if you don’t want your privacy policy used to generate ad copy, exclude it).
- Ad copy generated from your copy plus generative AI (brands with any sensitivity be aware of this)
Reporting: what data can we see?
You can see all your normal search reports, plus the below:
- Keyword & search term performance by source will show where AI Max has driven the query.
- Landing page report: this is useful to see if the pages it’s using to target & land users on are relevant & performing well:
Should I switch it on an existing campaign or a new one?
- We recommend switching on an existing campaign, so it has data to work from. That said, don’t start with your top performing campaigns as that could be risky, start with a mid performance campaign with at least 30 conversions in the last 30 days to start testing.
Should I use AI Max if I use Pmax?
- AI Max is designed for search specifically, whereas Pmax goes across Google’s whole network (shopping, YouTube, Gmail, Display, Maps etc).
- Ai Max also has a lot more controls than Pmax (for now!)
- Both campaign types could target the same queries, but if this happens, the search campaign will always prioritised over Pmax, as long as the ad rank is higher. If you’re launching AI Max and already have Pmax live, we recommend monitoring how traffic changes via Pmax insights and comparing the two campaigns to ensure this is working how you’d prefer.
Should we test AI Max on a brand search campaign?
- Google says yes, I say no. Brand search is pretty simple to manage, and match types are advanced enough to expand outside of typical searches (e.g. “Hus of Perform” would match to “House of Performance”), so I don’t see the need to expand a brand campaign with AI. That said, there can be no harm in testing.
How should I test AI Max?
- Google don’t recommend an A/B test experiment process, but suggest switching it on and monitoring over time. Be sure to make a note of the date you switched it on to keep track of impact.
What’s next for AI Max:
Our initial results:
We’ve tested it over the last 6 weeks with these results:
| Impr. | Clicks | CTR | Avg. CPC | impr. share | Conversions | Conv. rate | CPA | |
| Pre AI Max | 129,984 | 5,588 | 4.30% | £3.77 | 26.76% | 278 | 4.97% | £75.80 |
| Post AI Max | 129,035 | 5,375 | 4.17% | £4.01 | 17.65% | 286 | 5.32% | £75.42 |
| % Change | -1% | -4% | -3% | 6% | -52% | 3% | 7% | -1% |
In a nutshell, we’ve opened up some more types of searches, but performance traffic hasn’t changed that drastically. What has improved is the conversion rate (up 7%) which is promising.
I’d highly recommend testing AI Max to keep evolving your campaigns. If you’ve any questions drop us a line.