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Is Performance Max spending your budget on YouTube and Display?

Updated

What Performance Max does with your budget

Performance Max is a campaign type where Google decides where your ads show. One campaign can run on Google Search, YouTube, the Display Network (websites and apps that show Google ads), Discover, Gmail, Maps and search partners (other sites that show Google search ads).

You give it a budget, a goal and some text, images and video. Google picks the channels. That is handy, but it also means you may not know where your money goes.

Why the channel mix matters

For many small businesses, people searching on Google are the most ready to buy. People watching a video or reading a website were not looking for you. Those channels can still bring results. But if they cost much more per conversion (a sale, call or form you count as a result), they pull your average up.

Be fair to the campaign, though. Google says Performance Max aims for the best result across the whole campaign. It warns that judging one channel alone can mislead you. A video view today may lead to a search next week. Also, some conversions come in days after the click, so a channel can look worse than it is for a while.

So use the channel numbers as a guide, not a final verdict.

How to see spend by channel

Google Ads now has a Channel performance report for Performance Max.

  1. Go to Campaigns and click your Performance Max campaign.
  2. Open Insights and reports.
  3. Select Channel performance.

(If you can’t find it, search for “channel performance” in the Google Ads search bar.)

The page has a summary at the top, a chart that shows how each channel feeds your goals, a chart over time, and a table at the bottom. The table is the most useful part. It lists each channel, such as Google Search, search partners, YouTube, Display, Discover, Gmail and Maps, with cost, clicks and conversions.

How to read it

  • Pick a date range of at least 30 days. Data is available from June 2025 onward.
  • For each channel, divide cost by conversions to get cost per conversion.
  • Compare each channel with Google Search.
  • Look at the share of cost, not just the cost per conversion. A costly channel with tiny spend matters less.
  • Check the Status column. It can tell you if a channel is limited or missing assets.

Google notes that a channel with no spend is not always a problem. It may just mean Google expects better results elsewhere right now. After big changes to budget, bids or assets, Google suggests giving the campaign one to two weeks to settle.

What you can do about it

You cannot switch off YouTube or Display in Performance Max with one checkbox. But you do have levers.

Exclude bad placements. Go to Tools, then Content suitability, then Advanced settings, and add sites, apps or YouTube channels under Excluded placements. These account-level exclusions apply to all your Performance Max campaigns. Google does not let you exclude all of youtube.com this way. (If you can’t find it, search for “excluded placements” in the Google Ads search bar.)

Use brand exclusions. If many Search conversions come from people typing your business name, Search will look great. That may hide how the other channels really compare. A brand exclusion list on the campaign keeps Performance Max off searches for your own name. Google says brand exclusions also catch misspellings, which negative keywords do not.

Choose your assets with care. If you do not upload a video, Google says Performance Max will make videos for you from your text and images. So leaving out video does not keep you off YouTube. Uploading your own video at least means you control what people see.

Try channel priorities. In October 2026, Google began rolling out Channel prioritization. For Performance Max, Google’s own channels are grouped together, but you can set the Display Network and search partners to Low priority and cap their share of budget. It is rolling out slowly, so you may not have it yet.

Move budget to a Search campaign. If Search clearly brings your results, a separate Search campaign gives you more control over keywords and networks. Google says Search campaigns win over Performance Max when a search exactly matches an exact match keyword.

When to leave it alone

If the other channels convert at a cost you accept, keep going. If your conversion tracking is weak or new, fix that first. The channel numbers are only as good as the conversions behind them.

SpendCanary flags this when more than half of a Performance Max campaign’s cost outside Search costs at least twice as much per conversion as Search.