Behold the power of Performance Max and machine learning / AI

The above search term is a brand keyword before negative brand keywords were added.

The same click from a brand search campaign is more than 10 times cheaper!

At least now we can see (some) search terms in Pmax campaigns and have the ability to add negative keywords.

I wonder how many millions of dollars Google made from this in the early days of Pmax?

Google does have a lot of information on what converts and what doesn’t, but bear in mind one of those things is searches on your own brand and Google are more than happy to charge you megabucks for these clicks!

I wonder how long it took machine learning / AI to work that one out….

There is an argument that the conversion patch can be quite complex, and it is best to allow Performance Max to take everything into account. But I think this is thinly veiled profiteering by Google and nothing more.