Plan a Performance Max test against the rules Google publishes

Common belief: Adding a Performance Max campaign is how the account finally spends the full $10,000 a month.

The correction: The $10,000 is a monthly cap, and nothing published promises the account will spend it

Google limits your account to $10,000 USD per month, equivalent to $329 USD per day, and states that as a cap rather than a guarantee of spend. No published budget guidance ties a spend outcome to a campaign type. To see where the limit sits in your own account, read Find the budget settings throttling your Ad Grants account.

Spend is the wrong reason to run this test and the wrong measure of it. Judge the test on measurable activity: the searches the campaign matched, and the conversion actions you can verify afterwards.

Common belief: Performance Max is exempt from the 5% CTR rule, so it is the safe place to experiment.

The correction: No current Google page publishes a Performance Max exemption from the 5% CTR rule

Your account has to hold 5% CTR per month under Google's Ad Grants policy compliance guide, which says failing to meet it for two consecutive months can result in temporary deactivation. A Performance Max test runs inside that account-level measurement.

Practitioners on Google's support forums often say Performance Max is exempt from that requirement, and no current primary Google Help page says so. Nothing published says it counts either, so the exemption is unverified rather than contradicted. Size the test so your account-level CTR stays defensible if the carve-out does not exist, and read the current policy compliance guide in the month you launch.

Common belief: Google publishes a fixed Search and Maps inventory list for Ad Grants Performance Max, so I know exactly what the campaign buys.

The correction: Google publishes no list of where Ad Grants Performance Max can run

Google's Ad Grants campaign setup guide and the general Performance Max Help page say the same thing: a Performance Max campaign run through Ad Grants "may not be eligible to serve on all inventory", and new channels and inventory may become available over time. Neither page names the inventory the campaign does serve, and neither lists Maps as an Ad Grants placement.

So there is no whitelist to plan against. The Search-and-Maps-only list operators repeat appears on no current primary Google page. Read placement off your own reports after the campaign has run instead of stating it in advance.

Common belief: The account needs 30 conversions before Performance Max or Maximize conversions can be turned on.

The correction: Conversion-based Smart Bidding is required, so a conversion count cannot be the thing standing in the way

If your account was created on or after April 22, 2019, Google requires conversion-based Smart Bidding on your campaigns: Maximize conversions, Maximize conversion value, Target CPA, or Target ROAS, unless you are using Smart campaigns. Waiting for conversion volume is not an option, because the strategies you would be waiting to qualify for are the ones the policy already requires.

The 30 comes from elsewhere. Google's Smart Bidding documentation says Smart Bidding can be turned on without prior data and recommends at least 30 conversions over a longer period for evaluating performance. Read it as a baseline for judging results, never as an Ad Grants policy number, and check the current page before you quote it.

The requirement you can check today sits in the account management policy: accounts created on or after Jan. 1, 2018, or any account using conversion-based Smart Bidding, need valid conversion tracking and at least 1 conversion per month. Confirm yours has recorded one this month.

Common belief: The audience signal I set on the asset group is who the campaign shows the ads to.

The correction: Audience signals feed the prediction and do not confine the serving

Google's Ad Grants setup guide says Performance Max campaigns "may show ads to relevant audiences outside of your signals" when those audiences have a strong likelihood of converting. The signal sits inside the asset group on your screen, and what you enter there feeds a prediction rather than drawing a boundary. Read who the campaign actually reached after it runs instead of assuming the signal decided it.

Common belief: The page feed keeps the campaign on the landing pages I chose.

The correction: Final URL expansion is on by default, and a page feed only narrows serving once it is off

Final URL expansion is on by default in Performance Max campaigns. With it on, your campaign can replace the final URL you set with a more relevant landing page from the same final URL domain, based on user intent.

While expansion is on, Google's Final URL expansion page says a page feed "doesn't restrict ads to serve only URLs from the provided feed". Turn expansion off and the campaign sends users only to the URLs in the feed and the asset groups. To see which landing pages and ad combinations a campaign used, read Reading the Search terms and ad combinations view on a grant account.

This week, open the campaign's URL settings and read whether Final URL expansion is on. Decide that setting rather than inherit it. Then check which conversion actions sit in the Conversions column: primary actions sit there and Google uses them for bidding when the campaign uses the associated goal, while secondary actions are observation-only and report in All conversions, and are used for bidding only when they are part of a custom goal. For marking one action Primary and keeping the rest Secondary, read Mark one action Primary and keep the rest Secondary.

Run the test against the rules you can open and read

No current Google page exempts a Performance Max campaign in an Ad Grants account from the 5% CTR requirement, and none publishes a fixed placement list for it, so planning on either means planning on something you cannot check. Two things you can check: whether Final URL expansion is on, and which conversion actions sit in the Conversions column. Read each cited page again the week you launch, because Google's live documentation controls over anything written here.

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