If you’ve been running Performance Max (PMax) campaigns and wondering where your ads are actually showing, you’re not alone.
One of the biggest limitations with PMax is that you can’t directly choose where your ads appear, like telling Google to show them only on Search or YouTube. However, you can still influence placements in a few smart ways.
First, the creative assets you upload play a big role. If you want your ads to lean more toward Search and Shopping, make sure to include strong headlines, descriptions, and a well-structured product feed.
For more YouTube or Display exposure, upload real video creatives — because if you don’t, Google will auto-generate a video that usually looks like a bad slideshow.
Another trick is turning off Final URL Expansion in the campaign settings. This prevents Google from sending traffic to irrelevant pages on your site (like blogs), giving you tighter control over where users land.
You can also break up your campaign into different asset groups based on user intent for example, one focused on Search-type messaging, another designed for video engagement. Adding smart audience signals, like custom segments based on search intent or past video viewers, helps nudge Google in the right direction as well.
While you can’t exclude placements directly within PMax, you can monitor where your ads actually showed by checking the “Placements” section under Assets > Insights.
If you see junk placements (like random mobile apps or irrelevant YouTube channels), you can exclude them at the account level to avoid wasting budget. And if you want more control over Search traffic specifically, you can run a separate Search campaign with exact match keywords alongside PMax.
That way, Search traffic gets directed to your manual campaign, while PMax fills in across other surfaces like YouTube, Gmail, and Discovery.