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Google is giving advertisers a little more control over where their Performance Max ads appear.
The tech giant rolled out a series of updates on July 30 to ensure greater brand safety and more transparency into ad buys bought using Performance Max, Google’s big AI-driven buying tool that is both popular and at times controversial with advertisers.
Three-year-old Performance Max uses artificial intelligence to determine the best placement for an ad across Google’s swath of inventory, including search, YouTube and display. While Google executives have said the product has driven growth, buyers have complained that Performance Max is a black box. Specifically, advertisers say there’s no sufficient controls on where ads go or reporting data on where ads actually ended up, ADWEEK has previously reported.
Google’s latest announcement addresses some of these concerns. “We heard you!” Google Ads Product Liaison Ginny Marvin wrote in a LinkedIn post detailing the updates.
Ad buyers will now be able to see which YouTube videos their ads appear against. Buyers could previously see other URLs that Performance Max ads appeared on, including open web and Google Video Partner inventory, but not on specific YouTube videos.
This lack of visibility into which YouTube videos Performance Max ads ran on became a point of contention when independent research outfit Adalytics found large brands like BMO and Intuit inadvertently advertising on child-oriented YouTube channels when buying via Performance Max.
Brands can now use Google’s own content suitability filters to control which videos their Performance Max ads appear against. The filters vary based on a brand’s appetite for risk. Brands can choose to advertise on expanded content — or all content — or standard inventory, which excludes content with strong profanity, strong sexual content and graphic violence. For brands with strict guidelines around inappropriate language and sexual content, there is an option to advertise on limited inventory.
Also, advertisers can work with third-party brand safety companies including Integral Ad Science, DoubleVerify and Zefr to evaluate YouTube and display inventory in Performance Max buys. Previously, advertisers could only use these third parties to vet other types of Google campaigns.
