If you watched Google’s Marketing Live event earlier in the year, you might have seen Google talk about the ‘Power Pair’ strategy. 

The phrase ‘talk about’ is perhaps an understatement - they were pushing the strategy as an exciting new narrative that'll change the marketing landscape forever.

And - for better or for worse - it will.

So what is Google’s Power Pair strategy, and what are the implications for marketers? Is this another step towards a future where marketers no longer have direct control over their ad campaigns?

Let’s talk about it. In the next 5 minutes, we’ll cover: 

• What Google’s Power Pair strategy is
• How Performance Max and Broad Match work together
• What marketers are saying 
• Why widespread adoption could result in less control over ad campaigns

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What is the Google Power Pair strategy?

Just to be clear, Google wasn't talking about David and Victoria Beckham, or Beyoncé and Jay-Z. 

Google's 'Power Pair' strategy refers to the combination of Performance Max campaigns with Broad Match keywords (+ smart bidding). In theory, it’s a potent solution for B2B marketers aiming to maximize their ROI. Google states that, when using these tools in tandem, your ad performance will be significantly better than just using PMax or Broad Match alone. 

Quick recap: 

• Performance Max is a highly automated campaign type that uses Google's machine learning to serve ads across multiple channels - including Search, Display, YouTube, Discover, and Gmail. 
• Broad Match keywords are a flexible matching option that allows Google to show your ads to users who search for terms related to your keywords. This helps marketers capture a wider range of relevant search queries and reach a larger audience.
• Smart Bidding is a suite of automated bidding strategies that use real-time signals to optimize bids for desired campaign goals. This includes maximizing conversions, clicks, or conversion value.

At a basic level, applying the Power Pair strategy is relatively straightforward:

1. Review your current keyword strategies, then implement broad match terms (with smart bidding) where applicable. 
2. Create a PMax campaign that compliments your existing campaigns, prioritizing conversions. 
3. Let Google do the rest!

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What Google says

Google claims that “The Ads Power Pair of Search and Performance Max uses the best of Google AI powered solutions to deliver performance at scale for your marketing campaigns.”

They claim the strategy can lead to a range of benefits, and that some users have already seen some outstanding results.

One highlighted success story shows Itaú Unibanco, a Brazilian multinational financial services corporation, increasing overall conversion volume by 29% - at a 29% lower CPA - a substantial improvement across the board. 

In order to get results from the strategy, Google has provided a number of resources on how to harness the best from the pairing - including a range of breakout sessions to give users actionable Power Pair insights and strategies.

They also have a written guide of Power Pair best practices - a must-read for anyone looking to test the strategy in their own campaigns. 

If you are looking to try the strategy for yourself, we’d also highly recommend checking out Discosloth’s in-depth guide on how to get the most from the Power Pair strategy. 

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The implications of Google’s Power Pair

There’s no doubt that adopting the strategy could lead to increased campaign efficiency and reach in the short term. Ultimately, the goal of the strategy is to make every dollar of your ad spend go further. 

Long term, the integration of PMax and broad match campaigns using the Power Pair strategy is likely to set a precedent for how campaigns are targeted and optimized. 

By moving to broad match, you’re naturally reducing the number of keywords in your account. You don’t need lots of keyword variations, as in theory, broad match finds them for you. When you have less keywords in your account, there’s less for Performance Max to exactly match with. 

Therefore, instead of prioritizing your search campaign, it will go for the campaign or ad with the highest ad rank - which is most likely to be Performance Max. 

It’s certainly been no secret that Google wants its Ads users to push more and more of their budget through PMax in recent years - and the Power Pair strategy is certainly one way to push marketers in that direction. 

We’ll go into more detail on this later - but first, let's take a look at what marketers are saying about the strategy.

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What marketers think

Opinions on the Power Pair strategy are fairly mixed. Some marketers are finding success with the model, whereas others remain skeptical.

This Reddit thread from u/FacepalmClient shows how mixed options are - with everyone having their own unique experience with the strategy. Here are some of the highlights from the thread:

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Some users responded positively, mentioning how broad match + smart bidding has come a long way in recent years. However, success with the pairing depends on how well Google understands your product and the context around it: 

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This user was particularly in favor of the strategy:

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One user stated that they saw a mind-blowing 250% increase in ROAS YoY - with the caveat that everything needs to be set up absolutely perfectly:

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Not everyone spoke positively about their experience, however. This user stated that, while broad match has improved in recent years, it still requires frequent pruning. Their experience with PMax over the last 36 months was… Less positive. 

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This user was *slightly* skeptical of the pairing:

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And now, returning to the elephant in the room…

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The Power Pair conspiracy

It’s fairly obvious that Google is actively pushing marketers away from traditional campaign types and towards automated campaigns (PMax). 

While some prefer the largely automated, creatives in > results out approach to ad campaigns that PMax provides, many performance marketers prefer complete control and visibility over individual aspects of their campaigns. Those in the latter group worry that Google is taking away campaign controls bit-by-bit, leading us towards a largely automated - even keywordless future. 

Shortly after GML2024, this post from PPC expert Scott Carruthers gained traction amongst the PPC community. We’d recommend reading the post in full, but here’s the key point:

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“By moving to Broad match, by nature, you reduce the number of keywords in your account. You don’t need to have a lot of different variations of terms built out into search, because “broad match will pick them up”.

(see where this is going…?)

When you have less keywords in your account, there is less for Performance Max to “exactly match” with - so instead of prioritizing your search campaign, it will go for the campaign/ad with the highest Ad Rank…

Which is most likely to be... Performance Max...

It has been no secret that Google have been trying to get users to spend more of their budget through Performance Max (whether for admirable or nefarious reasons), and this would certainly aid that cause - with less keywords, PMax would be eligible to show more often, so likely would - taking more of your budget.

Rumours have also abounded for years that “the keyword is dead”, and this would certainly take us further along that path, but with users killing the keywords themselves, rather than Google forcing our hand.

TLDR? The Power Pair is Google’s way of making you complicit in the death of the keyword.

Dramatic? Maybe. True? Maybe not. But I’m struggling to see any other reasons behind the Power Pair push…”

‍Scott Carruthers, Head of PPC at Journey Further

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Andy Cooney, Co-founder of Marcode, agreed - commenting that the Power Pair is a way of speeding up the move towards full ad automation:

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Google Ads Freelancer Andy Black echoed the sentiment, saying what a lot of PPC professionals are thinking - Google is taking steps towards making a keywordless future a reality (plus a very scary potential future where Google Ads becomes a complete blackbox):

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We spoke about Scott’s theory with two of the most influential voices in the PPC landscape - Bob Meijer and Miles McNair - in our recent webinar. Here’s what Bob had to say: 

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"I fully agree with Scott, I think he wrote an excellent post. And I think it isn’t a conspiracy theory at all - it really makes sense what Google is trying to do. A lot of people are just going with this new tactic, because it’s the new narrative. 

So yeah, I think a lot of advertisers are going to go with this new tactic, and I think a lot of advertisers do not know the potential impact of this. 

If you are already on full broad match within search, you haven’t really added a lot of broad match keywords, and you’re just going to throw in a full asset PMax campaign besides that, you’re going to have a lot of internal cannibalization and a lot of keyword hierarchy issues favoring your PMax campaign. 

The longer that goes on, the more it will look like your search campaigns aren’t as effective as PMax anymore - potentially enabling Google advertisers to pause their search campaigns. I think that’s what Google is after in the end, I think they’re steering towards a keywordless future in the end. 

By going down this route, they’re essentially preparing us advertisers for the eventual keywordless future, in an indirect way"

‍Bob Meijer, Google Ads Specialist & Co-founder of PPC Mastery

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Watch the clip in full:

(You can catch the full webinar on-demand here - it’s full of insightful takeaways from two of the best PPC experts in the business)

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Final thoughts 

At the end of the day, if the Power Pair strategy is driving results - which it looks like it is for a number of campaigns - Google Ads users will flock to it. However, by clearly prioritizing PMax, Google is taking a very clear step towards a future dominated by automated campaign types. 

Maybe that’s their end goal, or maybe they’re just trying to simplify things for users - ultimately that’s something only Google has the answers to. But, as PMax is notorious for being a “black box” (ad creatives go in, something happens, results come out), it’s more important than ever for professionals to take the reins on what they can control as automated campaigns become the norm.

Some have seen exceptional results with automated campaign types such as PMax, yet many others have watched their ad budgets drain with little in the way of results. In both cases, it's hard to get much visibility into exactly why.

Lunio works to analyze every click across your ad campaigns. It uncovers what’s real, and what’s invalid traffic - aka bots, click farms, and other bad actors that’ll never convert. It helps your PMax budget go further by blocking invalid users and automatically excluding spam placements - driving higher ROAS and more impactful campaigns.

Automatic account-level IP blocking prevents invalid traffic from skewing your ad campaigns, meaning your ad budget is being spent exactly where it’s needed - on real humans with the potential to convert. 

Learn more about Lunio here and get a free insight into how much you’re spending on invalid traffic. 

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