How Attributer categorizes Performance Max campaigns

Performance Max campaigns are a relatively new type of advertising campaign from Google whereby you set a goal and a few other parameters, and Google will serve your ad across the entire Google Ad Network (including search ads, display ads on the Google Display Network, YouTube Ads, etc).

Given these ads can appear across a number of different places, it begs the question of how do you categorize leads from these campaigns. Should they be categorized as ‘Paid Search’ (because the ads could appear in search results) or ‘Paid Social’ (because they could appear in YouTube) or ‘Display’ (because they could appear on the Google Display Network)?

Ultimately, the choice is up to you. Depending on what UTM parameters you put behind these ads, Attributer can categorize them as any of the above 3 (I.e. if you put utm_medium=paidsearch it would categorise leads as ‘Paid Search’, if you put utm_medium=paidsocial it would categorize them as ‘Paid Social, or if you put utm_medium=display it would categorize them as ‘Display’).

In all of the above cases, Attributer will pull the utm_source, utm_campaign, utm_term and utm_content into the Channel Drilldown fields, so it’s really a case of which ‘Channel’ do you want these leads categorised into.

If I was making this decision, I would likely categorize them as ‘Display’ by putting utm_medium=display behind the ads. It’s likely the vast majority of leads coming from these campaigns will be from Display Ads as that is where most of the ad inventory is, and I would want to keep them separate from my ‘Paid Search’ ads as they will likely convert at a far worse rate than ads that appear on search results pages due to the fact that people clicking in ads in search results usually have a much higher propensity to buy than people clicking display ads (because they have likely just searched for the product/service you offer).

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If none of the above feel right to you, there is a third option. Attributer has a ‘catch-all’ Channel called Other Campaigns. Leads will get assigned to this Channel when there are UTM parameters present but they do not match the rules for assigning the lead into any of the other channels (I.e. Paid Search, Paid Social, Display, Email, etc).

So if you don’t feel like assigning these leads to the Paid Search, Paid Social or Display channels is right for how you wan tto look at the data in your reporting tool, then you could just use utm_medium=performancemax (or something similar) and this would cause Attributer to categorise leads as Channel = Other Campaigns. It would then pull the values from utm_source, utm_campaign, utm_term and utm_content into the Channel Drilldown fields.