Hiring a Performance Max agency is not the same as hiring someone to “turn on Google automation.” The campaign type already automates bidding, placement and combinations of creative. The agency’s job is to improve the inputs, controls, measurement and decisions around that automation.
That work is easy to overstate in a pitch. A confident answer about AI is less useful than a specific answer about conversion quality, product data, brand traffic, landing pages and what the team does when the numbers look good but the business does not.
Use these ten questions to separate real operating depth from a polished deck.
What does a Performance Max agency actually manage?
Performance Max can serve across Google inventory, including Search, Shopping, YouTube, Display, Discover, Gmail and Maps. Google combines goals, conversion data, product feeds, creative assets, landing pages, audience signals and campaign controls to decide where and how to serve.
An agency cannot manually choose every impression. It can make sure the system is learning from the right outcomes, using accurate product and creative inputs, and operating within deliberate controls.
That is the standard these questions test.
1. Which business outcome will the campaign optimize toward?
Listen for an answer more precise than “revenue” or “leads.”
For ecommerce, the agency should understand whether all purchases have similar value, whether new customers matter more, how returns affect the picture and when profit differs by product. For lead generation, it should know the difference between a form fill and a qualified opportunity.
If every conversion is treated as equally valuable, Google will optimize toward the easiest recorded conversion—not necessarily the one your business wants most.
Score 0: No conversion audit.
Score 1: Platform conversions reviewed.
Score 2: Conversion actions, values and business quality are reconciled before scaling.
2. How will you separate brand demand from incremental demand?
Performance Max can serve on branded searches. Google provides campaign-level brand exclusions and negative-keyword controls, and retail advertisers can apply brand exclusions to Search text ads while retaining branded Shopping traffic.
The right setup depends on the account. The agency should be able to explain when it would include brand, exclude it or report it separately—and how that decision changes the interpretation of ROAS.
This is also why branded and nonbranded paid-search performance should not be blended without context.
Score 0: Brand traffic is ignored.
Score 1: Brand is discussed but not measured separately.
Score 2: Controls and reporting are tied to a clear incrementality hypothesis.
3. Who owns Merchant Center and the product feed?
For retail, product data is a targeting and merchandising input. Titles, attributes, categorization, images, availability and disapprovals affect what Google understands and where products can appear.
Ask whether the agency only monitors campaign results or also owns feed diagnostics and prioritization. If another partner owns the feed, define how issues move between teams.
See our Google Shopping feed optimization checklist for the work this question should uncover.
Score 0: Feed work is out of scope and unassigned.
Score 1: Diagnostics are monitored.
Score 2: Product-data changes have an owner, priority and verification loop.
4. How will you structure asset groups?
Asset groups should reflect a useful business distinction: product category, customer problem, margin profile, season, market or landing-page experience. They should not be created merely to make the account look busy.
Ask how the agency decides which products and messages belong together, and what evidence would cause it to split or consolidate a group.
Score 0: One generic asset group or excessive segmentation without a reason.
Score 1: Groups follow the catalog.
Score 2: Structure follows a testable product, audience and message hypothesis.
5. What creative will you supply—and refresh?
Performance Max uses text, image, logo and video assets. Google may also create additional text or video assets depending on campaign settings. The agency should explain who supplies the originals, who checks automated assets and what performance or fatigue signal triggers a refresh.
“The platform makes the ads” is not a creative plan.
Score 0: Creative responsibility is unclear.
Score 1: Required assets are collected at launch.
Score 2: The team maintains an asset pipeline tied to product and message tests.
6. How will you control landing pages and search intent?
Google’s Final URL expansion can send traffic to a different page on the advertiser’s domain when the system predicts it is more relevant. Search themes provide optional guidance; negative keywords, brand exclusions and URL exclusions provide additional controls.
Ask which pages are eligible, which should be excluded and how the team reviews the search categories and landing-page experience. A blog post or support page may be useful organically and still be a poor paid destination.
Score 0: Default settings remain unexplained.
Score 1: Basic exclusions are configured.
Score 2: Themes, URLs and exclusions reflect an explicit acquisition strategy.
7. What reporting will show where performance came from?
Performance Max reporting has improved, including channel performance and diagnostics. The agency should use available channel, search-term category, asset, audience and product reporting without pretending it has perfect impression-level transparency.
Ask what the team can know, what it can infer and what remains unavailable. Honest uncertainty is a better sign than false precision.
Score 0: One blended ROAS number.
Score 1: Campaign and product reporting.
Score 2: Channel and product context are paired with business outcomes and stated limitations.
8. How do you decide whether Performance Max is the right campaign type?
Performance Max is not an automatic replacement for Search, Shopping or other campaign types. Exact-match Search keywords can take priority over Performance Max for identical queries. Different campaign types may be useful when the account needs tighter query control, a separate budget or a clearer experiment.
An agency should be willing to recommend less Performance Max when another structure better fits the problem.
Score 0: Performance Max is the default answer.
Score 1: Other campaign types are acknowledged.
Score 2: Campaign choice follows the goal, data, control and test requirements.
9. What happens in the first 30 days?
A good answer includes measurement validation, feed and policy diagnostics, campaign and exclusion review, asset inventory, baseline reporting and a prioritized change plan. It should also explain which changes need enough data before a conclusion is drawn.
Beware of a launch plan made entirely of rapid edits. Automated bidding needs stable, trustworthy signals more than it needs constant interference.
Score 0: “Launch and optimize.”
Score 1: A list of setup tasks.
Score 2: A sequenced plan with owners, baselines and decision dates.
10. Who owns the account, data and work product?
Your company should retain appropriate access to Google Ads, Merchant Center, analytics, product feeds, conversion actions and creative. Ask what happens to campaigns, scripts, audiences and reports if the relationship ends.
The cleanest handoff is the one planned before launch.
Score 0: Ownership is unclear.
Score 1: Access is promised.
Score 2: Ownership and offboarding are written into the scope.
Performance Max agency scorecard
Add the ten scores. The total is not a scientific rating; it forces the conversation into the areas that affect the work.
| Total | Interpretation |
|---|---|
| 0–7 | The proposal focuses on campaign access more than operating depth. |
| 8–14 | The fundamentals are present; clarify the zero- and one-point answers in writing. |
| 15–20 | The agency has described a credible system. Validate the named team, examples and scope. |
Do not award points for a guaranteed result, a proprietary-sounding acronym or a dashboard you cannot inspect. Award them for clear ownership, defensible decisions and honest tradeoffs.
The best Performance Max agency fit
The right partner can manage the work that surrounds the automation: accurate measurement, useful product data, creative supply, deliberate controls and business-level reporting. The wrong partner simply reports what Google already did.
If your ecommerce account needs that broader operating view, talk with Best Practice Media. We can review the current structure and tell you where Performance Max fits alongside the rest of your paid-search program.
