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Performance Max Brand Cannibalization Auditor

Audit how much of your Performance Max revenue is actually low-hanging brand search queries masquerading as incremental prospecting volume.

Your Performance Max numbers

Total monthly PMax spend
$
Total reported PMax revenue
$
Dedicated brand Search spend
$
Estimated monthly brand search volume in market
Brand exclusions applied to PMax?
Reported PMax ROAS
400%
True incremental non-brand ROAS
237%
A 163% overstatement from brand traffic inside the campaign.
Brand revenue cannibalized
$34,020
Per month, on roughly $4,050 of brand spend inside PMax.
Audit my real PMax search terms

90 days free, no credit card required.

What the leakage costs you

Estimated brand leakage
27%

Share of PMax spend estimated to be serving against branded queries rather than net-new prospecting demand.

Brand revenue cannibalized
$34,020

Monthly revenue credited to PMax that brand Search would very likely have captured anyway, at a lower cost.

Overpayment vs brand exact match
$1,620

Monthly premium paid for branded clicks inside PMax rather than exact match brand Search, about $19,440 per year.

Real prospecting performance
$25,980 / $10,950

Non-brand revenue over non-brand spend. This is the number your PMax target ROAS should be set against.

Your action plan

  1. 1

    Apply brand exclusions to every Performance Max campaign

    In the campaign settings, add your brand name and every misspelling variant to the brand exclusion list. This is the single change that stops PMax from buying searches your brand Search campaign already wins cheaper.

  2. 2

    Pull the raw PMax search terms and quantify the real leakage

    Run the GAQL query below, total the cost and conversion value of every query containing your brand tokens, and compare that share against the estimate above. This replaces the model with your actual numbers.

  3. 3

    Turn off Final URL expansion on every Performance Max campaign

    Expansion is a second cannibalization vector: it sends traffic to pages you did not choose, including brand and support pages that convert on existing intent.

  4. 4

    Make sure the brand Search campaign can absorb the returned volume

    Brand exclusions only pay off if brand Search is not budget constrained. Confirm search budget lost impression share is near zero on the brand campaign before you redirect roughly $4,050 of monthly brand demand back to it.

  5. 5

    Re-baseline your PMax target ROAS against the non-brand number

    Once brand traffic is out, judge PMax against 237%, not 400%. Targets built on the blended figure will always be too optimistic for prospecting traffic.

Copy-paste GAQL: raw Performance Max search terms with cost and value

Run this against the Google Ads API. Do not add a keyword segment to the SELECT list, or every Performance Max row is filtered out of the response.

SELECT
  campaign.name,
  campaign_search_term_view.search_term,
  metrics.cost_micros,
  metrics.conversions,
  metrics.conversions_value
FROM campaign_search_term_view
WHERE campaign.advertising_channel_type = 'PERFORMANCE_MAX'
  AND segments.date DURING LAST_30_DAYS
ORDER BY metrics.cost_micros DESC

Common questions

It happens when a Performance Max campaign serves against searches for your own brand name. Those users were already going to convert, often through a dedicated brand Search campaign at a much lower CPC, so PMax absorbs cheap revenue and reports an inflated ROAS while your true prospecting performance stays hidden.

Stop paying prospecting prices for brand clicks

PPC Tuner reads your real Performance Max search terms nightly, flags brand leakage and off-intent traffic, and stages the exclusions and asset fixes for your approval.

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