PMax workaround for Brand Activator

Brand Activator doesn't support PMax campaigns. However you CAN have PMax campaigns AND use Brand Activator on standard campaigns in the same account. If you're using PMax and are interested in Brand Activator, please familiarize yourself with the limitations, specifically with retail.

For PMax, you can’t manage negative keywords by assigning a campaign-level negative keyword list. You can:

• Use an account-level negative list (which isn’t currently compatible with Brand Activator).
• Ask your Google Account Manager to exclude the terms in the PMax campaign for you (which means they will be excluded completely, not dynamically through a list).
• Use brand exclusions (which means no brand activity will come through PMax).

Workarounds

Non-retail customer

1. Add Brand Activator terms as negatives to your PMax campaign through your Google Account Manager.
2. Pause Brand Activator for 7 days. This is important so we can calculate savings. See Pause or restart Brand Activator.

Retail customer 

Workaround 1

You're running Brand Activator and PMax. All shopping activity is going through PMax (no standard/smart shopping is live).

Action: Add Brand Activator terms as negatives to your PMax campaign through your Google Account Manager.

Limitations

1. Because Brand Activator terms have been excluded, Brand Activator will adjust the visibility on text ads but the term will never show on shopping, regardless of the Lone Ranger status.  
2. Additionally, savings need to be calculated manually, based on the time before PMax went live, as otherwise we don’t know what the spend at search term level looks like.

If you don't add the Brand Activator terms as negatives to the PMax campaign, it will allow you to show on shopping but will completely negate any effect Brand Activator has, as while we exclude the term from the search campaign, PMax will most likely serve a text ad against it anyway = no saving will be created.

If you want to proceed with this workaround, using non-product related brand terms like pure brand terms, brand+sale, brand+location or similar might be a good way to approach balancing the risk associated with lack of PLA visibility. 

Workaround 2

Exclude Brand Activator terms from PMax through your Google Account Manager or brand exclusions, and create a standard shopping campaign to capture any PLA traffic missed through having the PMax negatives. 

This will provide full coverage across search & shopping and will ensure that when a term is a Lone Ranger on text ads and the Brand Activator script blocks it from showing, it can still serve on shopping independently. 

Limitation

This kind of campaign structure isn't considered best practice and it’s impossible to tell how it might affect PPC performance versus having all shopping consolidated into PMax. Here, savings might also have to be calculated manually based on pre-PMax search term level spend. 

Summary

Both retail workarounds are limited by the fact that the longer PMax has been live, the more difficult it will be to estimate savings, as without seeing search term level spend we can only use historical data which won’t account for CPC inflation. 

Finally, if you're using PMax only for shopping onto Brand Activator, once the terms have been negatived out of PMax, it’s worth double checking if you're seeing any PLA traffic for these terms. Unfortunately, Google has been known to let advertisers down with actioning applying the negatives.