PERFORMANCE MAX 2026: WHAT HAS CHANGED

Anyone who has started using Performance Max 2026 without having followed it from the beginning encounters a product that is very different from the one launched in 2021. As a campaign type within Google Ads campaigns, a Performance Max PMax campaign was almost a black box in its original version: no search terms report, no negative keywords configurable without support, no brand control, zero transparency on budget distribution across channels.

Over the past few years Google has progressively added control tools that the advertiser community had been insistently requesting. Not all of these tools work as expected, some are genuinely useful, others are compromises relative to the original requests. Understanding the difference between what has changed on paper and what changes in practice is the starting point for managing PMax 2026 Google Ads effectively.

This article, designed as a complete guide to PMax 2026 updates, reviews all the relevant updates to Performance Max campaigns, distinguishing what Google has officially communicated from what emerges from direct use on real accounts.

The main updates of the 2024-2025 cycle

The 2024-2025 period represented the phase of greatest Performance Max evolution: Google responded to the most frequent criticisms from the community with a package of substantial updates. At the centre of every update is always the same architecture, a system of artificial intelligence that uses smart bidding to optimise bids in real time on every auction. Here they are in order of operational impact:

Native negative keywords in the interface

According to the official Google documentation, after rolling out to all advertisers in 2024, it became possible to add negative keywords directly to the PMax campaign from the Google Ads interface, without having to go through support or use scripts. This was one of the most anticipated updates among professional advertisers.

The negative keywords PMax update has concretely changed day-to-day campaign management: brand keyword protection, irrelevant query exclusions and cannibalization prevention with Search campaigns are now operations that take just a few minutes. Adding a campaign level negative keyword directly from the interface means you no longer depend on support response times. This applies whether you are using the maximise conversions bid strategy or working with a target ROAS, regardless of the strategy, negative keywords are always applicable.

What experience reveals: native negative keywords in PMax work as promised for the Search network. The limitation, not emphasised in the documentation, is that they only apply to Search: they do not exclude Display or YouTube placements. Those who had started without historical data and had built workarounds with account-level negative keywords lists found the campaign-level negative keywords more granular and controllable.

Search terms report accessible without support

Also in 2024, Google made the PMax search terms report accessible directly from the interface, without the need for access via support or API. The report shows the main queries, each search query for which the campaign was triggered on the Search network, with the limitation that it only shows queries with sufficient volume, not all of them.

What experience reveals: the PMax search terms report has become the most useful operational tool for day-to-day management. Checking it every 2–3 weeks allows brand queries to be systematically identified for exclusion, unexpected queries to be monitored and intent patterns that inform asset group structure to be spotted. The minimum volume threshold means the long tail remains invisible, but high-volume, high-frequency queries are now accessible and actionable.

More granular asset report

The asset report was updated with more detail on the title, description and image combinations being served. As already analysed in the article on the PMax asset report, the improvement made clearer which type of asset receives the most impressions, although conversion data for individual combinations remains aggregated and not fully transparent.

Brand controls Performance Max: what they are and how they really work

According to the official Google documentation on brand controls, brand controls Performance Max allow two distinct operations: excluding the brand from PMax targeting on Search (to prevent PMax from capturing branded terms covered by a dedicated Search campaign) and including the brand as a priority (for PMax campaigns focused exclusively on the brand audience).

Brand exclusion via brand controls is simpler to configure than adding manual negative keywords, Google automatically builds the list of brand variants to exclude based on the brand name registered in the account. Configuration requires indicating the brand in the dedicated brand controls section and selecting "exclude" as the mode.

The advantage over manual negative keywords is simplicity: there is no need to manually build the list of all spelling variants, abbreviations and combinations of the brand name. Google manages them automatically.

The limitations that emerge from practical use:

• Very distal variants are not always covered: brands with common names (a generic word used as a brand) or with many widely-used abbreviations may not be fully covered by automatic exclusion. In these cases manual negative keywords remain more precise.
• They do not apply to non-Search channels: like negative keywords, brand controls act on the Search network. Display and YouTube are not bound by brand controls on the query, they can show ads to users who visited the brand's landing page or searched for the brand in previous sessions through remarketing.
• An application lag exists: changes to brand controls can take 24–48 hours to come fully into effect. It is not an instant exclusion.

Inference on brand controls: on accounts where brand controls were implemented as an alternative to manual negative keywords, the results in terms of protecting branded traffic from being absorbed by PMax were equivalent in the vast majority of cases, with a significant saving in setup time. The only recurring exception was for brands with compound names or non-standard variants, where manual negative keywords provided more comprehensive coverage.

Search themes PMax: signals, not keywords

Search themes PMax are one of the most misunderstood features among the Performance Max updates. According to the official Google documentation on search themes, search themes are "topic suggestions that help Google understand where to find new customers on the Search network". Google explicitly specifies that they do not work like keywords in standard Search campaigns. It is worth noting that PMax operates across Search, YouTube Display, Gmail and other channels simultaneously, search themes act only on the Search channel within this ecosystem, while YouTube, Display and Gmail placements are governed by other signals.

The distinction is fundamental and is often ignored: search themes do not control query matching as a main keyword in a traditional search campaign with exact, phrase or broad match would. There are no match types for search themes. They are semantic signals that communicate to the algorithm which thematic areas are relevant to the business, similar in logic to audience signals, but applied to the Search channel rather than audience targeting.

What search themes concretely do in PMax:

• They guide the algorithm's initial exploration on Search: in the first weeks of a PMax campaign's life, search themes help the algorithm understand which queries to focus exploration on, reducing the time needed to identify the most relevant queries.
• They do not guarantee coverage of specific queries: entering "men's running shoes" as a search theme does not guarantee that PMax will be triggered for that query, and does not prevent it from being triggered for different but semantically related queries.
• Their weight decreases over time: like audience signals, search themes influence the algorithm primarily in the initial phase. As conversion data accumulates, the model built on historical data progressively outweighs the original search themes.

What experience reveals about search themes: on accounts where search themes were configured with specific and business-relevant topics (not generic ones), the learning phase showed slightly greater stability compared to accounts without search themes, especially in the first 2–3 weeks. The long-term impact is harder to isolate, after 8 weeks, campaigns with and without search themes show similar query patterns in the main categories. Search themes appear to be useful primarily as learning accelerators, not as targeting control tools in the traditional sense.

Trends and expected updates in 2026

Analysing the trajectory of PMax 2026 updates allows some trends that are taking shape to be identified, some already documented by Google, others inferred from the pattern of updates over recent years and from professional community feedback.

Greater transparency on budget distribution by channel

The most frequent and most unsatisfied request among the new PMax features still missing is the budget breakdown by channel: how much spend went to Search, how much to Display, how much to YouTube. Google has so far resisted providing this data in the standard interface, arguing that showing it would lead advertisers to intervene in a counterproductive way on the optimal distribution the algorithm calculates.

The signal that something might change is the progressive introduction of other breakdown data (search terms report, improved asset report), suggesting that Google is expanding transparency gradually. A spend report by channel , even aggregated weekly, would significantly change the diagnostic capability of professional advertisers.

Deeper integration with first-party data

The clearest direction for Performance Max 2026 is integration with the advertiser's first-party data: customer match lists, CRM data, purchase history, custom in-market segments and creative assets uploaded directly by the advertiser. Google is pushing towards a model where PMax uses proprietary data, not just Google's behavioural data, to build the profile of the ideal converter aligned with customer acquisition goals, improving conversion rates and reducing the effective minimum budget needed to stabilise performance.

Expansion of brand controls

The brand controls introduced in 2024 were the first step towards more sophisticated brand management inside PMax. The expected trend is towards more granular controls: the ability to specify different brand messages per asset group for different product lines, brand priority rules by time period (e.g. during a product launch), and integration with brand creative guidelines.

What is still missing

There are features that professional advertisers have been awaiting for years that are still not available in Performance Max 2026. Channel budget distribution control is the most cited, but it is not the only one. The ability to set bid caps per auction (not just aggregate efficiency targets) would allow more precise management of specific segments. Visibility on long-tail queries, not just those with sufficient volume in the search terms report, is another gap that limits advanced diagnostics.

Inference on Google's direction: the pattern of PMax updates over recent years suggests that Google adds transparency and control when professional community pressure is strong enough and when the requested feature does not compromise the algorithm's ability to optimise autonomously. Every feature introduced so far has followed this logic: negative keywords yes (they do not interfere with optimisation), channel budget breakdown no (it could lead to counterproductive interference). The boundary between "useful control" and "unwanted interference", according to Google, will continue to guide which features are added and which are not.