Service · BOI®
Performance Max Management for Ecommerce
Performance Max that knows which products to scale, which to protect, and which to harvest.
Most agencies hand Performance Max a budget and a goal. We hand it commercial intent - SKU by SKU. The result: an asset group structure that mirrors your catalogue's real economics, value rules that tell Google's bidder what each product is actually meant to do this week, and a weekly review cadence that catches drift before it costs you a quarter.
Trusted by 75+ ecommerce brands · JudeLuxe Q1 2026 benchmark
40%
Display waste identified per audit
Typical share of PMax spend going to low-intent Display placements.
67%
Avg. profitable conversion lift
Measured after asset group restructure and brand exclusion setup.
75+
Ecommerce brands managed
Cross-sector PMax accounts under active management.
£18k
Avg. monthly spend redirected to higher-job SKUs
Reallocated from low-margin to high-margin SKUs after BOI restructure.
Why PMax destroys margin by default
Performance Max doesn't know your commercial intent. By default, it optimises blind.
Google's Performance Max bidder takes the conversion value you feed it and scales spend toward whichever SKUs produce that value cheapest. If the conversion value is gross revenue, the bidder finds your loss-leaders. If you've never set value rules, every SKU is treated the same regardless of margin, stock position, or customer-acquisition role. That's the structural problem with PMax - not "it's a black box". It's that it's a black box optimising against the wrong commercial signal.
Failure 1
Over-scaling on loss-leaders
PMax sees high revenue per click on discount SKUs and scales spend toward them. Revenue grows. Contribution margin collapses. The account looks healthier on the surface and worse underneath. Without commercial intent at the bid layer, this is mathematically inevitable.
Failure 2
Under-investment in Gateway SKUs
The SKU that brings a customer in for the first time is often lower margin than the SKU they buy second. PMax can't see the second purchase, so it under-bids the first. You lose customer acquisition velocity to competitors who do see the full LTV picture.
Failure 3
Bidding hard on Recovery SKUs
A product running low on stock or with squeezed margins shouldn't be aggressively bid on - it should be carefully harvested. PMax keeps pushing budget at it because nothing tells the bidder to ease off. You burn spend on sales you can't ship profitably or at all.
BOI® - Bid On Intent
Every SKU has one commercial job. PMax bids against that job.
BOI® - Bid On Intent - is JudeLuxe's proprietary methodology. Every SKU in your catalogue is assigned one of five commercial jobs based on contribution margin, stock position, cash impact, and customer-acquisition role. PMax is then structured so the bidder receives commercial intent, not blended targets.
Job 1 of 5
Scale
SKU has healthy margin, full stock, and auction headroom. PMax is told to push aggressively. Asset group gets full creative variety, broad audience signals, scaling budget.
Job 2 of 5
Profit
Default state for healthy SKUs. PMax is told to optimise for contribution margin per pound, not volume. Tighter audience signals, controlled CPC ceiling, margin floor enforced via value rules.
Job 3 of 5
Protect
SKU operating in a contested auction. PMax is told to defend position without chasing growth. Hold impression share at a floor, hard CPC ceiling, intent-restricted audience signals.
Job 4 of 5
Recovery
Something has changed (stock low, margin compressed, returns climbing). PMax is told to pull back, tighten intent, protect cash. The SKU's job will be reassigned once the recovery condition clears.
Job 5 of 5
Gateway
Customer-acquisition SKU. PMax is told to accept lower per-unit margin in exchange for new-customer acquisition that the wider LTV economics justify. Bidding is calibrated to blended CAC, not the SKU's own margin.
Each job is implemented through PMax's actual controls: asset group segmentation by job type, value rules carrying the commercial intent into the bidder, brand exclusion preventing cannibalisation, custom labels in the feed for granular targeting, and weekly job reassignment as stock and margin shift. On complex platforms: especially Adobe Commerce PPC accounts with configurable variants and B2B price tiers: those custom labels have to be applied at the variant level, not the parent product.
It's not a layer on top of PMax. It's how PMax should have been structured in the first place.
Side by side
PMax vs Shopping - and why you almost certainly need both
Most agencies run one or the other and call it strategy. The honest answer: Standard Shopping and Performance Max do different jobs, and most ecommerce accounts need both, structured to complement rather than compete for the same auctions.
| Job | Standard Shopping | Performance Max | Why |
|---|---|---|---|
| High-intent purchase queries | ✓ | - | Direct control over bidding by query intent vs. limited query-level visibility in PMax. |
| Brand defence on Shopping placements | ✓ | - | Clean brand isolation possible; PMax can cannibalise without strict exclusions. |
| Specific SKU promotion / hero product push | ✓ | - | Granular SKU-level bidding control; PMax bidder may divert spend elsewhere. |
| Cross-network reach (Display + YouTube + Discovery) | - | ✓ | Multi-network in one campaign; Shopping is Shopping placements only. |
| Audience expansion to lookalike buyers | - | ✓ | Strong audience signal architecture; Shopping has a limited signal layer. |
| Holiday / peak demand coverage | - | ✓ | Adapts faster to demand surges; Shopping manageable but more manual. |
| New customer acquisition (Gateway SKUs) | - | ✓ | Better at finding new audiences; Shopping is slower at this. |
The right answer for most ecommerce accounts running £15k+/month is: Standard Shopping for high-intent + brand defence, Performance Max for cross-network expansion + new customer acquisition. Both structured under the BOI job framework so they're bidding against commercial intent, not duplicating effort.
What changes in your account
Week 1, month 1, ongoing
Week 1
- →Full PMax audit (5–7 days, written report, walkthrough call - included free)
- →Map contribution margin to every SKU in the feed
- →Assign initial BOI job to each SKU (typical mix: 12% Scale, 51% Profit, 23% Protect, 11% Recovery, 3% Gateway - varies by catalogue)
- →Implement brand exclusions if missing
- →Set up cannibalisation monitoring
Month 1
- →Restructure asset groups by BOI job
- →Implement value rules carrying commercial intent into the bidder
- →Add custom labels to feed for granular targeting
- →Resolve Consent Mode v2 under-reporting if applicable (typical lift: 15–30% conversions recovered)
- →Weekly job reassignment cadence live
Ongoing
- →Weekly BOI job review based on stock, margin, and cash signals
- →Monthly deep-dive on SKU-level performance and margin drift
- →Quarterly audit of asset group performance and feed quality
- →Always-on cannibalisation monitoring
- →Quarterly platform update audit (e.g., new PMax controls, Consent Mode changes)
Proof
Real PMax results from named ecommerce brands
Pricing transparency
What it costs
PMax audits at JudeLuxe are free. Not a 30-minute call with a templated PowerPoint - a full 5–7 day audit by a senior practitioner, with a written PDF report and a 60-minute walkthrough. You keep the report whether you work with us afterwards or not.
Retained PMax management is on a fixed monthly fee, scoped to your catalogue complexity and spend level. No percentage of spend, so we have no financial reason to push your budget higher than your margins can support. When we recommend more spend, the SKU data backs it.
Book a free PMax Audit. 5–7 days. Written report and walkthrough call.
Book a Discovery CallFAQ
Common Performance Max questions
Performance Max is Google's most opaque campaign type. Here's what brands like yours typically ask.
March 2026 Update
Updated March 2026Latest platform changes and how we're adapting our approach:
- Asset-level performance reporting is now available across all PMax accounts. Our audits assess creative performance at individual asset level - not just asset group rollup.
- Brand exclusion capabilities now support negative keywords at asset group level. We use this for finer-grained brand isolation than account-level exclusions allow.
- Search themes (the campaign-level audience signal layer Google introduced in late 2025) are integrated into BOI job design - Scale jobs use broader themes, Protect jobs use tightly defined themes.
- Consent Mode v2 enforcement continues to under-report conversions by 15–30% on accounts that haven't fully implemented it. Every BOI rebuild includes a Consent Mode health check.
- Demand Gen integration with PMax campaigns - we treat Demand Gen as a separate Gateway-tier acquisition layer rather than a substitute for PMax. Different commercial job, different bid logic.
Our Proprietary Method
BOI®
Bid On Intent.
Every SKU has one commercial job at a time - Scale, Profit, Protect, Recovery or Gateway - and never more than one. That job is dynamic. It changes as inventory, cash position and demand change. BOI® is the discipline of bidding against the job each SKU is actually doing this week.
No blended targets. No SKU pulling in two directions. Just a commercially responsible bid against a single, named job.
Stands for
Bid
Every bid is a commercial decision. We bid against the one job a SKU is doing this week - never a blended target that quietly averages winners and leakers.
Stands for
On
On the single commercial job that SKU is carrying right now: Scale, Profit, Protect, Recovery or Gateway. One job. Never two. Reassigned as the business changes.
Stands for
Intent
Commercial intent - what the business actually needs from this SKU this week. Cash? Share? Clearance? New customers? The P&L sets the intent. We bid to it.
The signal we live by
One SKU. One job. Reassigned weekly.
Verified Case Study
Closure London
POAS-driven PMax: £6.19 per £1 spent
PMax rebuilt around SKU jobs and contribution margin rather than blended ROAS. Asset groups split by commercial intent, brand cannibalisation excluded, signals fed from the P&L.
£6.19
Net POAS
1 job
Per asset group
Profit
Signal, not ROAS
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Ready to take control?
30-minute discovery call. No pitch. No preparation required. If we're the right fit, we'll lay out the PMax audit timeline (free, 5–7 days). If we're not, we'll often recommend alternatives.
No lock-in: 3-month initial engagement, then month-to-month with 30-day notice.