Performance Max Agency UK
Performance Max control, not Performance Max enthusiasm.
JudeLuxe manages Performance Max for UK ecommerce brands spending £15k–£500k+/month, with asset groups built by SKU commercial job rather than by product category.
Most agencies sell you more Performance Max. We will tell you where it earns its budget, where it is quietly buying demand you already owned, and where a Standard Shopping campaign would make you more money. Fixed fee from £2k/month fixed fee, never a percentage of media spend.
Trusted by leading brands
How should PMax asset groups be structured for a high-SKU catalogue?
By commercial job, not by product category. Category structure feels intuitive and is economically wrong: it puts a 60% margin bestseller and a 6% margin clearance line in the same asset group, under the same target, and asks the algorithm to average them. We assign every SKU one of five BOI® jobs and build asset groups around the jobs, so each group carries a target that matches the margin behaviour of the products inside it.
Asset group
Scale
Margin, stock and auction headroom. Its own asset group with a growth target and the widest budget headroom.
Asset group
Profit
The default group for healthy SKUs. Target set to maximise contribution margin per pound, not revenue.
Asset group
Protect
Contested, strategic products. Hold visibility without letting PMax chase incremental volume at a loss.
Asset group
Recovery
Compressed margin, low stock or high returns. Suppressed listing groups and reduced budget share.
Asset group
Gateway
Acquisition products. Lower per-unit margin accepted, measured on new customers rather than blended ROAS.
At catalogue scale this runs to 30–80+ asset groups on a single account, reassigned weekly as stock and margin move. Read the framework on the BOI® methodology page and how it applies to high-SKU catalogues.
How do you stop PMax cannibalising branded search?
Performance Max will take branded queries whenever it can, because they are the cheapest conversions in your account. That inflates reported ROAS, hides weak prospecting performance, and bills you for demand you already owned. The fix is structural, not a bid adjustment.
1. Account-level brand exclusions
Applied to PMax so branded terms cannot be absorbed, with the list maintained as new brand variants and misspellings appear.
2. A ring-fenced brand campaign
Exact-match branded search with its own budget and its own target, so brand performance is visible instead of blended into PMax.
3. Weekly search terms reconciliation
PMax search categories checked against total branded volume so leakage is caught in days, not at quarter end.
4. Brand-excluded reporting baseline
Every PMax number we report to you is quoted with brand stripped out, so growth claims are non-branded growth claims.
Related: how to fix PMax brand cannibalisation.
When should you replace Performance Max with Standard Shopping?
When you need per-product control that Performance Max will not give you. PMax is a good answer to a specific question: broad, well-signalled demand across a catalogue with reasonably consistent economics. It is a poor answer when the profitable action is to suppress named products quickly. These are the signals we look for:
- A small number of SKUs carry most of the contribution margin and need individual bid control
- Seasonal or clearance stock that has to be pulled within days, not after a learning period
- Spend below the level where PMax can gather signal, so it defaults to the cheapest available demand
- Catalogue-wide margin variance so wide that any shared target is wrong for most products
- A feed that cannot yet carry margin data, making automated value bidding structurally blind
In practice most accounts we take on run both: Standard Shopping holding the margin-critical SKUs where control matters, PMax carrying the long tail. See the full comparison in PMax versus Standard Shopping and our Google Shopping management service.
How do you prove Performance Max is incremental?
You test it, because the platform will not tell you. Reported PMax ROAS counts every conversion the campaign touched, including customers who were already coming. Three methods, in order of rigour:
Geo holdout
PMax paused in matched regions for a full purchase cycle. Compare total sales, not platform conversions.
Brand-excluded baseline
Rerun performance with brand stripped out. The gap between the two numbers is the size of the illusion.
New customer share
Track new-customer acquisition and contribution margin after ad spend rather than total conversions.
Further reading: measuring PMax when the data is missing and why we bid on POAS rather than ROAS.
"Show me a case where you reduced or paused PMax despite favourable platform reporting"
It is the right question to put to any Performance Max agency, and most cannot answer it, because reducing PMax spend cuts an agency's fee under a percentage-of-spend model. Ours is fixed, so it does not. Here is how the answer sounds when a method exists behind it.
Worked example
An inherited account showed PMax at a 7:1 reported ROAS, described by the previous agency as the best campaign in the account. With brand excluded, non-branded ROAS fell below 2:1. Loaded against contribution margin rather than order value, a third of PMax spend was sitting on clearance lines that lost money on every order once returns and shipping were counted. We cut the PMax budget, moved the margin-critical SKUs into Standard Shopping with per-product control, and reassigned the clearance lines to Recovery jobs. Reported ROAS went down. Profit went up.
Why your best-reported campaign can be your worst investmentA PMax-enthusiast agency
- More budget into PMax as the default answer
- Asset groups mirroring your website categories
- Platform-reported ROAS as the headline number
- Brand terms left inside PMax
- Percentage-of-spend fee
JudeLuxe
- PMax budget sized against tested incrementality
- Asset groups built by BOI® commercial job
- Contribution margin after ad spend as the headline number
- Account-level brand exclusions from day one
- Fixed fee from £2k/month fixed fee, independent of spend
Performance Max agency FAQs
What does a Performance Max agency actually do?
A Performance Max agency owns the inputs Google still lets you control: asset group structure, listing groups, feed quality, audience signals, exclusions, budget allocation between PMax and the campaigns around it, and the conversion values PMax bids against. The bidding itself is automated. Everything that decides what the automation optimises towards is not.
How should PMax asset groups be structured for a high-SKU catalogue?
By commercial job, not by product category. JudeLuxe assigns every SKU one of five BOI® jobs (Scale, Profit, Protect, Recovery, Gateway) and builds asset groups around those jobs, so each group carries a target that matches the margin behaviour of the products inside it. Category-based groups mix a 60% margin bestseller with a 6% margin clearance line and force them to share one target.
How do you stop Performance Max cannibalising branded search?
Account-level brand exclusions on PMax, a dedicated exact-match brand campaign with its own budget, and search terms reporting reconciled weekly. Without exclusions, PMax will absorb branded queries because they convert cheaply, inflate reported ROAS and quietly bill you for demand you already owned.
When should you replace Performance Max with Standard Shopping?
When you need per-product bid control that PMax will not give you: thin catalogues where a handful of SKUs carry the margin, heavily seasonal stock that must be pulled fast, low-volume accounts where PMax cannot gather enough signal, and any account where the profitable action is to suppress specific products rather than let the algorithm average across them.
How do you prove Performance Max is incremental?
Geo holdout tests, brand-excluded PMax versus brand-included baselines, and new-customer-acquisition reporting rather than total conversions. Platform-reported PMax ROAS includes demand that would have converted anyway; incrementality testing is the only way to size the difference.
How much does Performance Max management cost in the UK?
JudeLuxe charges a fixed monthly fee from £2k/month fixed fee, never a percentage of media spend, with a minimum of £15k/month on Google Ads. A percentage fee pays an agency to keep PMax budgets rising, which is exactly the wrong incentive on a campaign type that spends whatever you give it.
Find out what your Performance Max campaigns are really buying.
We will strip brand out of your PMax reporting, rebuild the last 90 days on contribution margin and show you which asset groups are funding the account and which are living off demand you already owned. Yours to keep either way.
Book a PMax Audit