Google Ads Performance Targets

Google Ads Performance Targets is a way for advertisers to track metrics important to specific campaigns to see if they’re reaching their goals. In order to do this, you have to create a campaign group and a campaign group can either be one campaign or a variety of campaigns spread across a few different campaign types. So, this video will show you how performance targets work. We’ll show you how to create a campaign group and the settings of a campaign group and then we’ll show you which metrics can be tracked and where to find it within Google Ads to see if you are reaching the goals that you want within a given time frame.

Before we head into Google Ads, I wanted to give a pretty high-level description on how performance targets work. When creating a performance target, you have to create a campaign group. Now, one of the first things we do when we head into Google Ads will be to show you how to create a campaign group, and when you’re making these, you can either select one campaign or choose a combination of campaigns from a few different campaign types. Within Google Ads, you can create performance targets at any point and even after you have saved it, you can always go back in to your campaign groups and performance targets and edit them at any point. This makes perfect sense, because Google understands that your goals and the target metrics that you want to reach could change at any point and then, based on what you have set your performance targets at within the campaign group, Google Ads will estimate to see if you’re on track to meet your goals for that specific campaign group.

Now, these are very easy to set up but there’s a good amount of advertisers that don’t know that they exist because they’re kind of buried within the Google ads interface. So, let’s hop in the Google Ads and we’ll show you where to find performance targets, campaign groups, and how to set them up. We typically like to use the Paid Media Pros demo account when we’re making these videos but for this one, I can’t do it. Because we don’t run any campaigns, so I don’t have any metrics to use for performance targets. So, because I had to use a client account, there’s going to be a lot of stuff blurred out and I apologize for that. If you see in the navigation, I’m in the main campaigns overview and from this initial view, performance targets or campaign groups are not visible. In order to find it, you may to go within the navigation and click on Show More. Even from there, still not visible.

So, we need to scroll down and there we see Performance Targets as well as Campaign Groups and the first thing we need to do is to create a new campaign group. Since this is brand new within the account, we’re going to go and click on the blue plus button which is over here. After you’ve already created your first campaign group to create a new one, you’ll have to click on this second plus button. So, either/or within the new campaign group, you’ll have to name it. I already got it out of the way and the first thing would do would be to select the campaigns that you want to be in the campaign group. This particular client account is just very search heavy with some display, but a campaign group can be any combination of search, shopping video or display campaigns. So, one example would be holiday campaigns. You could have December holiday campaigns within search, shopping, display, video. You could group all those into one if collectively they need to reach some sort of goal.

In my case, I’m just going to select a few options here. I chose four campaigns in this account that are industry specific. The ones that I don’t have checked are very generic terms, hence why I name this campaign group industry specific. We typically see better return from these campaigns combined, both with Google ads metrics as well as the sale qualified lead metrics that we get within their CRM. One important thing to note about campaign groups and that is a campaign can only be in one campaign group at a time. So, going back to the holiday example if you already made a campaign for Christmas, put a bunch of campaigns in there already. Anyone of those campaigns within a Christmas campaign group will not be allowed to be added to just an overall holiday campaign group because you’ve already entered it within one. But as I said in the intro slides, campaign groups can be edited at any time. So, you see in the X buttons here, you can always remove a campaign from a group if you want to add it to a better categorization.

So, then let’s go down a little bit and really look at the performance targets for this campaign group. The performance target will track a single group of metrics. So, if I go up and click on this blue link, we will be able to choose which metrics we want to track and we get three to choose from. They’re going to default to conversions but if I click on the drop down, I can change the performance target metric to be clicks, conversion value, or unique users. Unique users is pretty straightforward. Let’s say you have a campaign group that’s really focused on brand awareness and reach. You might be interested in looking at unique users because we understand that it’s possible that users will see your ad multiple times. With conversion value, you’re going to get metrics that will look at the value generated from conversions alongside with specific cost information.

Now, it’s easy to say value is just associated with revenue, but we know we could set value within our goal setup. Whether you’re importing your goals from Google Analytics or within the conversion section up in the top navigation which will live under your tools and settings. With clicks, you’ll get metrics for tracking the number and the cost of clicks but for this client, I am going to stick with conversions. Metrics for tracking the number and cost of conversions.

Next, you will look at the date range you would want to select for tracking these metrics. Monthly was the default option but if we had to the drop-down menu again, you can change it to weekly, monthly, quarterly, or if you choose custom, you’ll get a calendar where you can select the date range. If I click out of that, then you have the option to tell Google if you want this to repeat. Just select your day and then tell Google how many days you would want this action to repeat. In my case, I’m going to look at this on a monthly basis. Pretty much just choosing the default options that Google had in place already. Then we need to choose a performance target. For the conversions option, we could set a performance target for spend, number of conversions, as well as average CPA.

As I said earlier, this client knows that the industry-specific campaigns provide the best return. So, we want to make sure that collectively, these campaigns are getting a certain percentage of their monthly budget. We could easily control this with shared budgets. If you want to know what that is, you can watch this video right here. But I still like to have more control with individual daily budgets, because performance between the four campaigns I’ve selected still fluctuates. So, since I’m not using shared budgets, I still want to track performance targets to make sure that these four are still spending a certain amount. So, in this case, I’m going to select between and then add in my minimum and maximum. For number of conversions, we could choose greater than or equal to or between. I’m not looking for a range here. We’re looking to grow and scale these campaigns a little bit. So, I’m going to choose greater than or equal to. They’re telling me we had 25 conversions within October.

For now, I’m going to leave it as the same. Yes, I said we’re looking to scale and grow here normally say, shouldn’t you put more? Because that is our goal, that is our target. However, I understand once we get into the later half of Q4, performance slows down for this lead gen client. 25 years over year would be better performance and as I’ve already said multiple times, I can always go back in and edit our performance targets. If seasonality is really in play. Now, we see there’s a variety of average CPA less than I equal to or between, this particular client doesn’t care so I don’t need to include it. If I’m happy with the performance targets that I have set up for campaigns that I’ve made within this campaign group, I can click done but first, I’m just going to look at what other performance targets are available depending on the other metrics that are available to select.

Let me open up another window. Okay, in this window, I am measuring by clicks and there we see we could set performance targets for spend again and instead of conversions in CPA, we get average CPC as well as number of clicks. Time frame will remain the same. If I change clicks to conversion value, spend is included again, I can add performance targets for value of conversions and then I can also add for average ROAS. If you’re fairly new to the Paid Media industry, that is return on ad spend and then if we change the target to unique users, spend is again the default and then the only other option would be number of unique users. So, those are the other options but I have already saved the industry specific campaign group. So, once everything is saved so then we can head back into the main campaign group section within Google Ads to show you what it looks like.

It’s wonderful get the Google Ads mobile app notifications. It’s kind of locking a little bit but we went back to the campaign group section, the very bottom of the left-hand navigation and there we see our campaign group. All the metrics within here, I haven’t customized the columns or anything. It’s all looking at the date range that I have set here. This is just looking at current performance. This is not the performance targets that we created. We would have to go back into the performance target section, and here we see different columns that we cannot change or edit. You see, the column information is pretty much what I set up within the campaign group and the metrics I chose for this particular performance target. I want this running every month. I’m focused on conversions. For now, I want at least 25 conversions and I want to make sure that the campaigns within this group spend between this amount.

If I head on over and click on the campaign group, we see the current month that we’re in is active and Google’s already prepping for next month with the scheduled status for December. So, since I set up to be recurring monthly, we’ll just have to come back later on and see if we’re meeting our performance for December. Clearly, we have to wait until December actually happens for anything active the current month. The performance data right now is still being collected. We see actual numbers that are blank right now, that is because I just created it. I can come back fairly soon and start to see the actual numbers in there based upon performance and then your status could also say Passed. So, once we do hit December, my November status will say Passed and then we can come back and review if we met our performance target goals for the month of November.

Performance target stats are calculated day to day and any changes that you make to a current campaign group will not affect the metrics of any past performance. So, it could be something that you may need to note separately if you’re moving or adding specific campaign groups. Might not be fair apples to apples comparison and of course, to edit this specific campaign group, you just need to click on the blue pencil. If you want to, you can choose a different metric to target, change your numbers or in my case, if I do want to start looking at average CPA, I could add that last target for the specific metric.

Now, again, since I just created this, I’m not getting all the information that you will see within your performance targets. So, for this last piece, we’re going to jump to a Google Ad Support page to look at the final status information that we will get from our performance targets overview. When reviewing your performance targets, Google will also give you a status to see if you’re on track to meet your goals. So, Google can let you know if you’re on track, pretty much see where you are in the month and if you’re on pace to meet the goals that you have set within your performance target metrics, you can get a status report to see if any of your metrics need attention. This is during the time frame of the current performance target, pretty it’s the nice way to say you’re not on track.

You could have a status of target met. This is going to happen for past status performance targets or if you’ve quickly met your target within the current time frame. And then the last is target not met and this is definitely just for past time frame. In my case, I set my performance target up to be monthly. So, let’s say November we don’t hit 25 conversions in the month. In December, I can come back and look and they will let me know for that specific metric. If I didn’t hit at least twenty-five conversions it’ll say that with status column, and that is pretty much what we can do with Google Ads performance targets. We may not get a ton of different metrics to review, but for something as simple as tracking a group of search campaigns or a theme of campaigns like the holiday option I mentioned earlier it’s really easy to get simple reporting straight to the point to see if you’re meeting the main metric goals for the month.

Hopefully, we can get some additional features in the future. I’m a big video guy, so I would like some video specific metrics to track for those campaigns. But who knows? We have to deal with what we have currently. If you have any additional on Google Ads performance targets, how it works, how to edit them, how to set them up? Please let us know in the comments below.

Written by Joe Martinez