As an experienced Google Ads agency, we’ll be the first to expound on the versatility and usefulness of its many campaign types. The leading SEM platform offers a wide range of campaigns that each serve distinct purposes for brands of all sizes and industries. Lately, these offerings have expanded from straightforward, keyword- or audience-driven Search and Display campaigns to now include numerous multi-channel, AI-driven tools that deliver value based on distinct marketing goals.
In this blog, we’ll take a look at each of the most common campaign types and explain what it is, what it does best, and what it isn’t well-suited for. Because some campaigns have overlapping purposes and functionalities, we’ll also provide some of our insights on which to choose based on your business realities.
Standard Search Campaigns: Still As Essential As Ever
Search campaigns are at the original Google Ads: text-based ads campaigns on the search results page (SERP) driven by keyword queries. The advertiser tells the system which keywords and match types they want to target, allowing for a high degree of control. Search campaigns are perhaps the most direct and pull-based campaign type Google offers.
What Search Campaigns Do Best
Search remains the basis of most Google Ads strategies because it generally captures the most high-intent demand at the point when people are ready to purchase. Many other campaign types rely on a push strategy, helping to drive awareness and demand, but Search campaigns pull in users actively looking for a solution. Because of this, Search and Shopping campaigns usually offer the highest return on investment.
If you know exactly what your customers are searching for, have a very specific offering, and can pull in their interest with just text assets, Search campaigns work very well. They also offer a higher degree of control and transparency than many of the newer, more AI-reliant Google Ads campaign types.
What You Won’t Get Out of Search Campaigns
Search campaigns are not good at introducing new products or concepts. There’s very little real estate in a text ad, so you don’t have much opportunity to explain or pitch your product—those functions are best-served by visuals or videos. New products that require education or introduction to the market may be better served by Video, Display, Demand Gen, or social media channels.
Additionally, people need to be searching for your product or the solution that you are offering. If there is little search volume specific to your offering, then you won’t have specific keywords to target, and so will get no impressions from your search campaigns.
Performance Max: The Swiss Army Knife of Google Ads
Performance Max is a campaign type that serves across many of Google’s different advertising channels, including Shopping, Search, Display, Video, Maps, and others. It relies on learning algorithms to serve ads dynamically across these different channels in order to hit your goals.
While Performance Max provides a holistic and efficient way to scale, it’s also a “black box” in many respects—though that has changed somewhat in recent years.
What Performance Max is Best For
Performance Max is a conversion-focused campaign type. Its AI is designed to drive conversions or revenue at the efficiency you set, making it very good for eCommerce brands or other businesses that need to drive a lot of conversions efficiently. The system learns from each conversion and utilizes that data to optimize where it is putting ads and the audiences that it is catering to.
Performance Max is also a good campaign type for finding new audiences and driving omnichannel growth. Its versatility makes it an efficient channel for gaining new customers within a single campaign. It also tests new audiences beyond those that you provide, which is excellent for businesses looking to scale and find new growth opportunities.
What Not to Use Performance Max For
Performance Max offers less-granular reporting and fewer controls over channels and audiences than other campaign types. You lose the ability to target specific channels or elements, like keywords or specific audiences. You also lose many brand safety tools, so you may serve ads on irrelevant websites or show up for odd search queries. Brands in sensitive categories (like healthcare) may need to be careful with Performance Max campaigns.
Additionally, Performance Max needs a high volume of conversions to feed its machine learning and be successful. For this reason, small businesses or businesses with a low volume of leads or purchases may have a hard time utilizing this campaign type if they can’t generate the data needed for it to learn and identify new opportunities.
Avoiding Over-Reliance on Performance Max
While Performance Max is undeniably effective, it can be overused to diminishing returns. The best-run accounts will use Performance Max as a supplementary campaign, not a substitute. Carefully creating individual campaigns with individual purposes is still the best approach to running a Google Ads account.
Search vs. Performance Max
Because Performance Max can technically cover Search placements, there’s often a question if you need to be running both. This really depends on the type of business asking the question.
For many businesses, a hybrid approach works best. Performance Max is complementary to search, and usually won’t replace it. You’ll still want to maintain control over your Search campaigns to ensure that you have very targeted ad copy and are sending to the most appropriate landing pages for your top keywords. Running Performance Max alongside it, with the right controls, will drive additional volume through all of its various different channels, but usually at a lower efficiency. It becomes an extension for growth.
Shopping Campaigns: Product Visibility and Conversions
Shopping campaigns are visual, product-centered ads shown at the top of the search engine results page (SERP) when relevant searches are made, or on the Google Shopping tab and other Google properties. They are a powerful campaign type for eCommerce businesses to showcase their pricing and product images. They aren’t based on keywords, but instead on the information sellers provide in their product data feed from Google Merchant Center. Google’s system uses this data to automatically match seller’s products to relevant searches.
When to Use Shopping Campaigns
This one is pretty straightforward: Shopping campaigns are great for eCommerce businesses that have product pages and strong visuals.
What Shopping Campaigns Can’t Do
Shopping campaigns are not built for other types of businesses, like lead generation or service businesses. Similar to search, shopping campaigns can also be difficult to get off the ground if there is little to no search volume for your product or solution.
Shopping Campaigns vs. Performance Max
Because Performance Max can run in Shopping placements, there’s often confusion about whether traditional Shopping campaigns are still worth deploying. Google’s data and our own tests have shown that Performance Max campaigns with a product feed tend to be more efficient and scalable compared to Shopping campaigns.
That said, however, companies might still consider using a standard Shopping campaign when:
- They have a limited budget or low conversion volume
- They need very granular control over messaging, bids, etc. or when brand safety is a big concern
- They need very specific insights on product performance
Demand Gen: A Smarter Approach to Brand Awareness
Demand Gen is a very visual, audience-first campaign type. It’s similar to Performance Max in that it runs across multiple channels, including video, Gmail, and Discovery ads. However, where Performance Max is a conversion-focused engine, Demand Gen is a top-to-mid-funnel strategy. It is meant to drive brand awareness and nurture prospective customers, explicitly for generating interest and driving new, qualified traffic.
When to Deploy Demand Gen
Demand Gen is great for companies that need to reach new audiences and drive brand awareness. It is a very visual campaign type, so it is great for companies that have a strong visual identity and quality visual assets that they can utilize. It requires specific audience inputs, so companies will also need a good understanding of who their customers are and what they are doing online.
What Demand Gen Can’t Do
Demand Gen is not a bottom-of-funnel campaign meant to drive direct revenue. It also works best when you have strong visuals, so companies without a strong creative department and visual identity might struggle on Demand Gen.
Video Campaigns: Reaching Huge Audiences on YouTube
Video campaigns are a great way to reach a broad audience across YouTube and Google’s network of video partners. They offer an impressive range of formats—from unskippable 6-second bumper ads to in-stream videos. There are also numerous targeting options, including demographics, interests, YouTube channels, the types of websites audiences visit, even their search history on Google.
Who Video Campaigns Are Made For
Successful video campaigns require high-quality creative that showcases the company well and engages the audience. Companies with strong video creative and a visual product often do well, such as eCommerce and entertainment companies.
Who Video Campaigns Won’t Work Well For
Companies with offerings that can’t be well captured in a short, visual video ad might struggle with video campaigns. Also, companies with a limited budget might find it difficult to both pay for quality assets and provide enough investment in YouTube for the campaign to perform at its best. Those brands would likely get a better return from Search or Shopping/Performance Max campaigns.
Display Campaigns: Good Old-Fashioned Retargeting
Display campaigns serve visual ads across Google’s network of display partners, which includes over two million websites and apps. Display campaigns are based on audience targeting, allowing you to serve based on interests, demographics, in-market behaviors, and more. With so many advanced multi-channel and video campaign types available now, however, Display campaigns have lost much of their popularity in recent years.
What Display Campaigns Are Still Good For
In most accounts, we don’t run many standard Display campaigns. When there is a need for awareness or remarketing to customers, we typically see better results from Demand Gen or Video campaigns.
They can, however, be beneficial for remarketing to recent site visitors or for building brand awareness. Display campaigns may still have their place in the same way that standard Shopping might be used:
- Brands that have a limited budget or low conversion volume
- Brands that need very granular control over messaging, bids, etc.
- When brand safety is a big concern and placements must be tightly controlled
What Display Campaigns Aren’t Good For
Outside of remarketing, Display campaigns are very high-funnel. Prospecting audiences in display campaigns will not drive many direct sales, but may drive new, interested traffic to your website, building brand awareness and increasing your top-of-funnel audiences.
AI Max: Google’s Latest Addition to Search
AI Max is the newest Google Ads campaign type, announced at Google Marketing Live 2025. These are a form of search campaign that utilizes your on-site content, existing ads, and other contextual information to explore beyond your keyword list. It’s similar to Dynamic Search, but uses many different signals to expand your reach even further.
Currently, AI Max presents as a good option as a growth tool, but we don’t see it replacing well-structured Search campaigns with specific copy, strong landing pages, and hyper-relevant keywords.
What AI Max Will Do Best
Because this campaign type is so new, it’s hard to definitively say where it will best fit into your marketing strategy. They’ll likely be good for finding new ideas and experimenting, but not a replacement for a well-structured search account. AI Max seems best-equipped to help brands with large budgets to expand beyond their current keyword set.
What AI Max Won’t Do Well
AI Max would not be a good fit for industries that require tight control over their targeting and messaging. Brands that are just starting out and have a limited budget may also want to launch with keywords that they are confident will drive quality traffic.
AI Max is a data-driven campaign type that requires conversion volume to inform the AI system on how to run effectively. Similar to Performance Max, companies that have a low conversion volume or that have low budgets may struggle to utilize AI Max.
App Campaigns: Just for Apps
App campaigns are fully-automated campaigns made to promote mobile apps across search, Google Play, YouTube, and the display network. This campaign type doesn’t have individual ads, keywords, or placements. Similar to Performance Max, advertisers provide creative assets like ad copy, images, and videos, along with a budget, audience, and campaign goal, like driving new app installs or completing in-app actions.
What they’re good for:
Companies with apps that have high engagement rates, like games or transactional apps (eCommerce, food delivery, etc.), tend to do quite well with these campaigns.
What they’re NOT good for:
Very niche and/or B2B apps tend to do poorly, since the campaign type is made to capture a large audience. Like other automated campaigns, App campaigns need to process a lot of conversions to run effectively, so smaller budgets and audiences don’t tend to generate the necessary volume to optimize for strong performance.
Choosing the Right Mix
At the end of the day, you’ll want to be deploying a range of campaigns based on your budget and achievable goals. At different times, this may mean running a different mix: eCommerce brands on narrower budgets might spend much of the year focusing on awareness before increasing budgets on lower-funnel campaigns during peak sales periods, like Q4. For brands with larger budgets, it might mean experimenting with previously-unused campaigns while maintaining a sturdy investment in their core campaigns.
No matter your goals, a smart Google Ads agency can help you find the right mix to achieve them. If you’re on the hunt for one of those, don’t hesitate to reach out to the ADM team below:
