Performance Max (PMax) has always been something of a “black box” for advertisers. While its AI-driven reach is undeniable, the lack of granular control—especially when it comes to who not to target—has been a long-standing pain point for performance marketers.
For a long time, if you wanted to ensure your PMax budget was strictly focused on finding new prospects rather than “renting” your existing customers, your options were limited.
That is finally changing.
The Shift Toward Transparency
Historically, excluding existing customers required account-level settings or complex workarounds. However, a recent update has introduced a more flexible way to manage your targeting: Campaign-level audience exclusions.
As first highlighted by the team at PPC Tools Online, Google is rolling out a feature titled “Your data exclusions” specifically for Performance Max. This allows advertisers to exclude specific remarketing and Customer Match lists at the campaign level, rather than applying a blanket rule across the entire account.
Why This Matters for Your ROI
In the world of Google Ads, efficiency is everything. Here is why this update is a “glow-up” for your campaign strategy:
- True Prospecting: You can now run a PMax campaign that is purely dedicated to “New Customer Acquisition” by excluding all your current customer lists.
- Budget Protection: Avoid spending your PMax budget on users who are already in your email flow or have recently purchased.
- Strategic Granularity: If you have multiple PMax campaigns for different product categories, you can now tailor exclusions specifically to those categories (e.g., excluding “Past Shoe Buyers” only from your “New Apparel” campaign).
How to Find the New Settings
If the feature has rolled out to your account, you’ll find it tucked into the campaign settings. Here is the path:
- Navigate to your specific Performance Max campaign.
- Go to Settings > Additional Settings.
- Look for the section labeled “Your data exclusions” (this is separate from the traditional date-based data exclusions used for bidding outages).
- From here, you can select your uploaded Customer Match lists or Remarketing lists to exclude them from the campaign’s reach.
A Note on “Data Exclusions” vs. “Audience Exclusions”
It is important to distinguish this from the “Data Exclusions” tool we’ve used in the past. Traditionally, Data Exclusions were used to tell Smart Bidding to ignore specific dates (like a tracking break or a site crash).
This new update uses similar terminology but focuses on people. It gives the advertiser the power to say, “I trust the AI to find the lead, but I don’t want it to look in this specific bucket of people.”
Final Thoughts
As Google continues to refine PMax, the trend is clear: they are providing the “power” of AI while slowly handing back the “steering wheel” to advertisers. By leveraging these campaign-level exclusions, you can ensure your automation is working toward your specific business goals, not just chasing the easiest conversions.
Special thanks to PPC Tools Online for their detailed breakdown of this feature rollout.
Need help auditing your PMax setup? At ADDEN, we specialize in making sense of the “black box.” If you’re looking to optimize your conversion tracking or scale your Google Ads sustainably, book a call with our team today.