Performance Max campaigns have become an essential tool for advertisers looking to maximise their reach across Microsoft’s entire network. By leveraging AI-driven automation, Performance Max helps businesses streamline campaign management while delivering optimised results.

In this article, we’ll walk you through the step-by-step process of setting up a Performance Max campaign in Microsoft Advertising, ensuring you make the most of this powerful ad format.

What is a Performance Max Campaign?

Performance Max is an all-in-one campaign type that allows advertisers to display ads across multiple Microsoft platforms and channels. It uses AI to optimise performance and reduce manual work, enabling you to:

• Reach high-performing audiences effortlessly
• Utilise cross-channel, multi-format ads
• Maximise results with automated bid strategies

Performance Max campaigns give you access to Microsoft’s vast inventory, including Edge, Bing, Yahoo, Outlook, MSN, and audience partner sites, utilising formats such as search ads, shopping ads, and visual ads.

How to Create a Performance Max Campaign

Step 1: Navigate to Performance Max in Microsoft Advertising

To begin, log into the Microsoft Advertising platform, then:

1. Click on “Campaigns” in the navigation menu.
2. Press the blue “Create” button.
3. Choose Performance Max from the campaign options.
4. Either create a new campaign from scratch or import from Google Ads.

Step 2: Define Your Campaign Goal

Selecting the right goal ensures your campaign is optimised for the desired outcome:

• Drive conversions – Ideal for lead generation, sign-ups, or other direct actions.
• Sell products – Designed for e-commerce businesses running shopping ads.

Once you’ve set your goal, continue with the Performance Max setup.

Step 3: Connect a Merchant Centre Account (For Shopping Ads)

If you’re selling products and want to run shopping ads within your campaign, you’ll need to connect a Microsoft Merchant Centre account.

• If you don’t have a product catalogue (e.g., for B2B lead generation), you can skip this step.

Step 4: Add Your Ad Assets

Your ad performance heavily depends on the assets you provide. To ensure strong results, add multiple variations of:

• Images – High-quality visuals to attract engagement.
• Ad copy – Headlines and descriptions with clear USPs and strong CTAs.
• Extensions – Additional information such as price, promotion, or sitelinks to enhance visibility.

Microsoft’s AI will test different ad combinations across various placements, selecting the highest-performing ones.

Step 5: Set Audience Targeting & Locations

Performance Max relies on audience signals and conversion data to identify high-value customers. To enhance performance, provide relevant audience signals such as:

• Interest-based audiences (in-market)
• Remarketing audiences (past website visitors, previous converters)
• Customer match lists (emails of existing customers)
• Custom audiences (user interests and search behaviours)
• LinkedIn targeting (job titles, industries, company data)
• Demographics (age, gender, location)

Search Themes

Search themes help refine who sees your ads by aligning with relevant search queries. You can add up to 25 search themes per asset group to improve targeting.

Both audience signals and search themes play a crucial role in reducing the learning period and accelerating campaign optimisation.

Step 6: Configure Other Campaign Settings

Once you’ve defined your audience, set the following campaign details:

• Ad scheduling – Choose days and times for your ads to run.
• Conversion actions – Either:
  • Use “Include in conversions” for all relevant conversion events.
  • Specify conversion types (e.g., contact forms, phone calls, product sales).
• Enable auto-generated text and image assets (recommended for better ad variations).
• Allow URL expansion, but exclude specific pages if necessary (e.g., blog pages).

Keeping these enhancements on is recommended to maximise performance.

Step 7: Select Bid Strategies & Budgets

Performance Max campaigns optimise towards conversions, so it’s essential to have conversion tracking set up via a UET tag and defined conversion goals.

• Available Bidding Strategies:
  • Maximise Conversions or Target CPA
  • Maximise Conversion Value or Target ROAS
• Budget Recommendations: To ensure optimal performance across multiple ad placements, allocate 2-3x the budget of a typical standalone campaign.

Step 8: Add Negative Keywords & Website Exclusions

Since Performance Max campaigns are highly automated, they can sometimes appear on irrelevant searches or websites. To maintain control, use:

• Account-level negative keywords to exclude irrelevant search queries.
• Website exclusion lists to prevent ads from appearing on unwanted placements.

Step 9: Import from Google Ads (Optional)

If you already run a Performance Max campaign in Google Ads, you can import it into Microsoft Advertising to save time.

How to Import:

1. Select Google Import during campaign creation.
2. Sign in to your Google Ads account.
3. Choose the campaigns you want to import.
4. Adjust import settings and start the process.

Important: Ensure Microsoft conversion tracking is properly configured before importing.

Final Thoughts

Performance Max campaigns are a powerful way to automate and scale your advertising across Microsoft’s network. By setting clear goals, using high-quality assets, refining audience signals, and applying strategic bid strategies, you can maximise efficiency and drive better results.

Once your campaigns are live, take them to the next level with Adzooma’s Performance Max Opportunities. Adzooma provides an intelligent campaign audit, delivering personalised recommendations to eliminate errors, cut unnecessary costs, and enhance overall performance.

Why Use Adzooma?

• Address Common Gaps – Identify and fix missing assets, budget shortfalls, or weak targeting.
• Save Time – Automate optimisation suggestions, reducing manual workload.
• Boost Performance – Unlock the full potential of Performance Max campaigns with precise, AI-powered insights.
• Increase ROI – Deliver more effective, cost-efficient ads tailored to your target audience.

Get Started Today

To maximise the success of your Performance Max campaigns with Adzooma, follow these steps to start optimising:

1. Sign up for Adzooma or login to your account.
2. Connect your ad accounts to receive tailored insights.
3. Explore your Opportunities and implement key Performance Max improvements.

Start smarter, faster optimisations today and unlock the full potential of your campaigns!