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The short answer
Left alone, Performance Max can serve on searches for your own brand, win them cheaply and record those sales as its own, while your brand Search campaign shrinks. Check its search categories for your name, keep a brand Search campaign with keywords identical to your brand searches, add a brand exclusion list to Performance Max, then judge it on new demand, not on total conversions.
What cannibalisation means here
Performance Max can show on Search, Shopping, YouTube, Display, Discover, Gmail and Maps from one budget. On Search, it can match searches for your brand name unless you tell it not to.
People who search your name have already chosen you. Their sale was likely to happen anyway. When Performance Max takes those searches, it adds little real business, but it books the conversions, so its ROAS looks excellent.
Meanwhile your brand Search campaign loses impressions it used to win. Its numbers fall, someone trims its budget, and the account quietly moves its best demand into the campaign type with the least control.
Four signs it is happening
- Your brand Search campaign lost impressions around the time Performance Max started, while brand searches overall did not fall.
- Performance Max's search categories include your brand name, or the names of your products people only know through you.
- Performance Max shows a ROAS far above every other campaign, and most of its conversions come from returning customers.
- Total conversions barely moved after Performance Max launched, even though it reports many of its own.
Read the search categories
In the Performance Max campaign, open Insights to see search term categories. Look for your brand, your domain and your best-known product names.
How Google decides between Search and Performance Max
When a Search campaign has a keyword identical to the search, Google uses the Search campaign before Performance Max. That is the most reliable way to keep your brand searches in a campaign you control.
When no Search keyword matches the search exactly, Google picks between them by Ad Rank. That is where Performance Max wins brand searches, often cheaply, because the ad is relevant.
The fix, in order
Keep a brand Search campaign
Exact keywords for your brand name and its common spellings, in their own campaign, with manual bids or a modest target. It answers your brand searches before Performance Max can.
Add a brand exclusion list to Performance Max
Create a brand list for your own brand and apply it to the Performance Max campaign. It keeps the campaign off searches for your brand on Search and Shopping.
Do not block your brand account-wide
An account-level negative for your brand also blocks your brand Search campaign. Use the brand exclusion on Performance Max instead.
Point it at new customers
Where the account can tell new customers from returning ones, the customer acquisition setting lets Performance Max bid more for, or only for, new customers.
Check the pages it sends people to
With final URL expansion on, Performance Max may send traffic to your homepage or brand pages. Exclude the URLs you do not want it to use.
Judge it on new demand
After the fix, Performance Max's ROAS will usually fall. That is expected: it no longer collects sales that were coming anyway. Judge the account on its total, and the brand campaign on its own numbers.
| Number | What you expect |
|---|---|
| Brand Search impressions | Back up to where they were before Performance Max |
| Performance Max ROAS | Lower, now that it buys mostly non-brand demand |
| Total conversions | Flat or up. A fall means Performance Max was doing more than collecting brand |
| New customer share | Up, where the account can measure it |
How Oppy checks it
The audit reads where each Performance Max budget went by network, the searches it bought by category, whether a brand exclusion is set, and whether it buys queries your Search campaigns were built for.
When Search already covers your brand, Oppy can add the brand exclusion to Performance Max once you approve. It never excludes a brand that no live Search campaign buys, because that would leave your name uncovered.
