Welcome to this week’s PPC Pulse.
This week’s updates focus on Performance Max visibility improvements, new budget planning tools in Google Analytics, and generative video now built directly into Google Ads.
Here’s what was announced this week and why they matter for your campaigns.
Google Adds More Visibility and Control To Performance Max
Google rolled out several updates to Performance Max aimed at two ongoing gaps: control and reporting.
Advertisers can now exclude first-party customer lists. This gives teams running acquisition-focused campaigns a cleaner way to avoid spending on existing users.
On the reporting side, Google added:
- Budget report
- Expanded audience insights, including demographic breakdowns
- Placement reporting segmented by network
Why This Matters For Advertisers
Audience exclusions help reduce overlap between prospecting and retention, assuming your customer lists are accurate. The reporting updates are more practical. Advertisers get better visibility into spend pacing, who campaigns are reaching, and where ads are showing.
For teams already using Performance Max, this improves day-to-day oversight. It does not turn it into a fully controllable campaign type.
What PPC Professionals Are Saying
Anthony Simonetti is “very excited for more insight” for PMax campaigns, while the company Optifeed shared its support for the update by saying “Love seeing PMax get more transparent!”
Google Analytics Introduces Scenario Planner and Projections
Google Analytics launched two new tools as part of its cross-channel budgeting feature:
- Scenario Planner for building forward-looking budget models
- Projections for tracking whether live campaigns are pacing toward goals
Both tools use historical data to estimate conversions, revenue, and spend across channels, including non-Google platforms if cost data is imported.
Right now access is limited due to it being a beta feature. Advertisers need at least one year of data across multiple channels, as well as a few other eligibility requirements.
Why This Matters For Advertisers
Planning and performance have traditionally lived in separate places. These tools bring them closer together, especially to those marketers who manage more than just Google Ads.
Advertisers can now model budgets and monitor pacing in the same platform used for reporting. That can help teams managing multiple channels make faster adjustments during a campaign.
The tradeoff is reliability. Outputs depend entirely on data quality and historical consistency. For many accounts, that will limit how actionable these projections actually are.
Veo Brings AI Video Creation Into Google Ads
Google introduced Veo, its generative video model, inside Asset Studio in Google Ads.
Advertisers can start by uploading just three static images and generate short-form videos, then package them into ads for formats like Demand Gen.
Each uploaded image can generate a video by Veo that’s up to 10 seconds long.
Google is positioning this around speed and creative variation, and can be used in conjunction with the rollout of Nano Banana Pro. The goal is to make it easier to produce multiple video assets without traditional production.
Why This Matters For Advertisers
Creative production has been a bottleneck for many teams, especially for video.
Veo lowers that barrier immensely for brands. Advertisers can generate variations faster and test more creative without additional resources.
The bigger shift is volume. Google continues to push toward having multiple creative variations in-market at all times. This gives advertisers another way to keep up with that expectation, even if the output still needs review and refinement.
What PPC Professionals Are Saying
This got a lot of traction from advertisers, including 70 comments and over 340 reposts from its LinkedIn announcement.
André Felizol shared:
The key here will be the brands that could create something different. With AI facilitating the creation of videos based on images, everything will be similar. So, the companies that will invest more in creativity with different and creative approaches to show their products will win in the long run.
Brooke Hess is “looking forward to testing” for her agency’s clients while Thomas Eccel has already dug in and created a live demo test of Veo 3.
Personally, I’m excited to test it out after being introduced to the first version of Veo at the 2025 Google Marketing Live event last year:
Theme of the Week: More Ways To Plan, Steer, And Build
This week’s updates all support a more hands-on role for advertisers.
Google added more steering and reporting inside Performance Max, more planning functionality inside Analytics, and more creative production tools inside Google Ads.
Advertisers are getting more ways to shape performance instead of just reacting to it after the fact.
More Resources:
Featured Image: Djile/Shutterstock; Paulo Bobita/Search Engine Journal
