How to Structure Performance Max Across a Multi-Brand Catalogue
Split Performance Max by margin band first and by brand only where a brand is big enough to justify its own budget. One catch all campaign across 40 brands will spend nearly all of its budget on the handful of products that already sell, because that is the cheapest route to the conversion target you gave it.
The controls that matter are custom labels in the feed, campaign level budgets and target returns, brand exclusions, and honest product exclusions for lines that cannot pay for a click.
Why does one catch all campaign underperform?
Because a single target return applied to a mixed margin catalogue is arithmetic that cannot work. A 40 percent margin bundle and a 6 percent margin appliance need completely different returns to break even, and an average target overpays for one while starving the other.
Performance Max also concentrates spend where conversion probability is highest, which on a reseller catalogue means best known brands, best sellers and anyone already familiar with you. Left alone it becomes an expensive way to buy sales you had.
How do we decide the margin bands?
Take your cost of goods, subtract fulfilment and returns, then group products into three or four bands that share a realistic break even return.
Worked example on a 40 brand catalogue with £15,000 a month. Around 2,000 SKUs split into four custom label bands: band A at 35 percent margin or better covering bundles and own service add-ons, band B at 20 to 35 percent, band C at 10 to 20 percent, and band D below 10 percent. Bands A and B take one campaign each, band C runs capped at a lower budget, and band D is excluded from the feed for paid entirely and left to organic and email.
Budget across the three live bands might sit at £3,500, £2,800 and £1,200, with the rest of the account spend in search and remarketing.
When does a brand deserve its own campaign?
When it can support its own budget and produces enough conversions to learn from, or when its commercial terms are genuinely different from everything else you sell.
- The brand accounts for a meaningful share of revenue on its own.
- It generates roughly 30 or more conversions a month.
- It carries co-op funding that has to be reported separately.
- It has supplier rules on bidding or ad copy that the rest of the catalogue does not.
Everything else belongs in a margin band campaign with its own asset group.
How should asset groups be organised inside each campaign?
One asset group per brand or per coherent product family, so the imagery, headlines and landing page match what the listing shows.
Give every asset group real brand imagery rather than generic stock, use the brand and product family in the headlines, and point the final URL at the brand or category page rather than the homepage. Weak asset groups are the most common reason a well structured campaign still underdelivers.
Turn off automatically created assets on brands with strict guidelines, and add search theme signals sparingly, mostly for model number families the campaign is not picking up.
What exclusions should be in place from day one?
Brand exclusions, account level negatives and product exclusions, set before launch rather than after the first bad month.
- Your own retailer name excluded from every prospecting campaign.
- Supplier brands you are not permitted to bid on excluded at campaign level.
- Out of stock and low margin products filtered out of the feed.
- Existing customer audiences excluded where you are paying for new customers.
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Part of our guide to Google Ads for branded resellers.
Frequently asked questions
How many Performance Max campaigns should a multi brand retailer run?
Enough that each campaign has a distinct commercial job and enough conversions to learn, usually three to five on a mid sized catalogue. More campaigns than your conversion volume can support just starves each one of data.
Should we split Performance Max by brand or by margin?
By margin first, brand second. Two brands with the same margin can share a campaign happily. Two brands with very different margins cannot share a target return without one funding the other.
Do asset groups replace campaign splits?
No. Budget and bidding sit at campaign level, so asset groups control creative relevance but cannot stop one brand consuming another brand's budget. Split at campaign level when the money needs separating.
How long before we judge a new Performance Max campaign?
Give it at least two full conversion cycles and around 30 conversions before changing targets. Judging in the first fortnight usually means reacting to the learning period rather than to performance.
Should we run standard Shopping alongside Performance Max?
It can be useful for products that need tight control or that Performance Max keeps ignoring, and it gives you a search terms view you would otherwise lose. Keep the product sets separate so the two are not bidding against each other.
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