Google has just added search themes as a new, optional signal in Performance Max. These search themes allow advertisers to provide information about their business or customers, which can lead to improved performance in advertising campaigns.
The impact on businesses and organizations can be significant. By adding search themes, you inform Google AI that you want to reach specific traffic sources in your Performance Max campaign, spread across all Google Ads inventory. Think of Search, YouTube, Gmail, Discover, Maps, and Display. Search themes also assist in finding audiences based on users' search behavior.
For search queries, exact match keywords that are identical to the queries will continue to take precedence over search themes and other keywords. Here are
some examples
from when it makes sense for advertisers to use search themes:
1. Your landing page does not contain all the details or the latest updates about the products and services you offer.
2. You have just extensively entered a new market or launched a new product or service for which your campaigns do not yet have a comprehensive performance history.
3. You are launching a new promotion or sale for the holiday season for which you do not yet have an extensive performance history.
4. You want to expand your reach within Performance Max, including in Search within Performance Max, and ensure that you have extensive coverage on key business themes.
5. You want to provide important information to scale your campaign faster and optimize performance.
How it works:
1. You can add 25 unique search themes per activity group (for example, "car" and "automobile" are considered the same audience).
2. Search themes respect brand exclusions in Performance Max and negative keywords at the account level.
3. Results achieved with search themes guide your customers to the landing pages you have specified through your final URL extension, page feeds, and URL contains settings.
4. Search themes have the same priority as your exact match and broad match keywords in your Search campaigns.
5. You can see the search categories that your ads have matched in your search term insights at both the campaign and account level, along with the corresponding conversion performance.
Do you want to learn more about how to add search themes to your campaigns? Then consult
the instructions and frequently asked questions from Google.