Blog Post

Google Ads Performance Planner Feature Is Out!

Sim Wan Yong • June 10, 2019

On the 13th of May, Google released an article explaining the impact of using Performance Planner as tested during its beta phase.

As it turns out, advertisers were able to increase their conversions by 43% after optimizing their ad spend with this new feature!

If you remember the old Google Ads interface, there was a feature that this new planner was probably built upon - the Google AdWords Budget Planner.

Here's What the Google Ads Performance Planner Does

You can use this feature to:

  • Create an ad spend plan to view Google Ad's forecasts for how well your campaigns will perform
  • Adjust different settings in the planner to see how your forecast will change
  • Implement the changes into your Google Ads account based on your plan

What Else Can Google Ads Performance Planner Do?

Even in normal campaign settings, you can already have an idea of whether or not your campaign budget is sufficient for your range of keywords and text ads. As a general idea, you might see the text 'Limited by Budget' when you're in your campaign page if the budget is insufficient.

However, the performance planner does more than just that. It also allows you to:

  • View your campaigns' projected monthly and quarterly performance
  • Obtain campaign settings suggestions to improve its performance for the same ad spend
  • Explore how your ad spend and performance goals might be affected if you change the campaign settings

How Does Google Ads Performance Planner Work?

To find out if your selection of keywords are viable or performing well, the Performance planner will process the performance of billions of search queries, and these performances are updated everyday. It then runs simulations of ad auctions with different factors including:

  • Seasonality
  • Competitor activity
  • Landing page relevance
  • ... and others
After running these simulations with several factors accounted for, the Performance Planner will then show you the forecast for the conversions based on the conversion types that you have set in the "Conversions" column of your Google Ads performance reports.

Don't have enough conversions in your history to generate a forecast? Don't worry - as long as it has enough clicks - along with several other requirements that we will discuss in the section below, you can manually enter a conversion rate to see the forecast for your campaign.

The forecasts and simulations do not stop there - the Performance Planner will continue to use machine learning to fine-tune your forecasts, and so you can expect this advanced algorithm to measure its own accuracy across periods of 1-, 7-, 30-, and 90-day periods as well.

What are the Requirements for My Google Ads Account to be Eligible to use Performance Planner?

Your campaign is eligible to use Google Ads Performance Planner if it:

  • Has been running for at least 72 hours (3 full days)
  • Has received at least 3 clicks in the past 7 days
  • Has received at least 1 conversion in the past 7 days (if your campaign goal is steered towards conversions)
  • Are Search campaigns using either manual cost-per-click (CPC), enhanced CPC, or target cost-per-action (CPA) bidding strategies.
Your campaign is not eligible to use the Google Ads Performance Planner if it:
  • Has been deleted
  • Is using shared budget with another campaign in the same account
  • Has just been adjusted to fit the eligibility criteria, but has been running on the new settings for less than 7 days.
There is no better way to understand a Google Ad feature more than by testing it out yourself - so why not go check it out and see how it can help your campaign to get more conversions?

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