It’s no secret that the wildly popular Performance Max campaign type is here to stay. Yet everyone can agree it’s certainly not without issues. 

While promising better audience targeting than ever, one long-standing point of contention is the campaign type strips advertisers of the control and transparency needed to fine-tune their performance. 

Of course, some have seen unprecedented success with the campaign type – yet others have watched helplessly as their ad budget evaporates, with very little visibility into where exactly the money went. 

For example, within PMax, Google provides no budget allocation breakdown across channels making it hard to know where the majority of ad spend is being funneled. Marketers have had to rely on third-party scripts from helpful PPC experts like Mike Rhodes, to gain information Google does not provide. 

Then there’s matchtype loosening - a worrying trend where advertisers are noticing their exact match keywords becoming much less… exact. This makes it harder than ever to precisely control where your ads are being shown. 

So, with limited campaign control and visibility, combined with further matchtype loosening, what should marketers be doing to ensure optimal ROAS and control over their PMax campaigns?

Over the next 5-or-so minutes, expect to learn: 

• Why exact match keywords are becoming ‘looser’ 
• How to optimize PMax in the ‘era of exclusion’
• What N-Grams are, and how they work
• The tools you can use to automatically exclude underperforming search terms
• How Opteo helps Lunio customers eliminate PMax waste

The end of exact match keywords?

Marketers have long suspected a worrying trend – match types are becoming ‘looser’. 

Many have noticed that Google seems to be increasingly taking liberties with regards to what they deem as relevant when it comes to matching search terms with advertiser keywords. 

The trend is especially noticeable for exact match, where an increasing number of matches are far from ‘exact’. Reddit users summarized their confusion in a recent post: 

Some even claim their exact match keywords are approaching broad match territory: 

‍‍Scott Carruthers, PPC analyst and Head of PPC at Journey Further, even predicted the death of exact match at the start of 2024 in a LinkedIn post:

In order to shed some light on match type loosening, ad campaign management tool Opteo conducted a study in February 2024 covering 940 million ad impressions from over 18k Google Ads accounts.

They uncovered a noticeable trend of phrase match keywords not containing the phrase keyword, which increased substantially around 2020-2021:

However, the findings for exact match shows far more apparent match loosening. Accelerating from 2021 onwards, the percentage of search terms matching to exact match keywords that don’t contain said keywords is almost at 50%: 

To clarify, that means that 50% of the search queries that would trigger an exact match keyword, such as “red nike shoes”, would not actually contain the keyword “red nike shoes”. 

This isn’t an accident. Due to the prevalence of largely automated campaign types that routinely favor broad match, it’s unlikely to change anytime soon. As such, marketers will need to get used to less accurate matching, and adapt their campaign setups to ensure optimal performance. 

Optimizing PMax campaigns in the era of exclusions

Automated bidding strategies, paired with increasing matchtype loosening, means that tight search term management has become an absolute necessity to ensure optimal campaign performance. 

This includes maintaining a fully up-to-date negative keyword list (something which can now be applied to PMax at a campaign-level) to ensure poor performing search terms aren’t hamstringing PMax campaigns. 

By properly excluding poor-performing keywords, marketers can focus their efforts where it matters most, and stop the PMax ‘black box’ from being too liberal with its keyword match placements.  

In order to thoroughly identify underperforming search terms and apply negative keywords to campaigns in bulk, N-Gram analysis is key. 

What are N-Grams?

N-Grams refer to an individual word within a certain query, as opposed to the whole phrase. N-Grams allow marketers to break queries down by the individual words, and understand how those words are performing. 

For example, the search terms “cheap airline tickets”, “cheap airline packages”, and “cheap airline locations” all contain the 1-gram “cheap”, and the 2-gram “cheap airline”. With N-Gram analysis, marketers can theoretically analyze these n-grams to determine their most effective campaign keywords. 

‍N-Gram analysis is the statistical method of trawling through search terms to discover the most profitable keywords for your ad campaigns. 

How to do N-Gram analysis for PMax

Getting the right data to perform an N-Gram analysis first requires exporting search term reports from Google Ads.

Unfortunately, given the length of most search term reports, it’s not possible to perform a proper N-Gram analysis just by reading through the report and splitting out themes manually. 

This is especially true for PMax search term results, which are structured in a way that means even the most spreadsheet-savvy marketer would spend hours - if not days - scouring through the report manually. 

Given that most marketers simply don’t have the spare time or bandwidth required to process these reports manually, an N-Gram analyzer tool is required to make the most of N-Gram data, and tap into their potential to exclude poor performing search terms that undermine campaign performance. 

This is where Opteo’s N-Gram Finder comes in. 

Opteo’s N-Gram Finder 

Powered by Opteo, the N-Gram Finder gives marketers instant search term insights that empower them to cut wasted ad spend and improve their Performance Max campaigns. 

The tool works by analyzing search term reports, and identifying underperforming terms and phrases across PMax campaigns (based on conversions per thousand impressions) automatically.

It highlights one, two, and three-word phrases that consistently underperform, letting you add them to your negative keyword lists in bulk. This means:

• You save time on performance analysis. Rather than wading through search term reports to identify and analyze N-Grams, use the N-Gram Finder to click a button and get the full analysis in your inbox. 
• Your wasted ad spend is reduced. The tool uncovers low-value search terms to add to your negative keyword list, allowing you to concentrate your efforts where it matters most. 
• Increased PMax ROAS. By excluding underperforming keywords and focusing on high-value search terms and phrases, you can easily prioritize where to invest in better creates and landing pages for greater ROAS. 

Since Opteo’s beta for its N-Gram Finder went live in April, select users have already eliminated over £1M in wasted ad spend through the tool. 

Many users are already championing the N-Gram Finder, with one beta tester having identified over $11k in wasted ad spend for a new client by using it. 

Lunio x Opteo

In an era of exclusions, how you optimize your ad campaigns makes all the difference. Ensuring exclusions are highly refined is crucial for ensuring optimal PMax ROAS. 

By combining Opteo’s N-Gram finder with Lunio’s AI-powered invalid traffic detection and prevention system, advertisers can significantly reduce ad spend waste from all angles, across all major ad platforms - and keep wasted PMax spend under control. 

We’ve partnered with Opteo to bring the N-Gram Finder tool to all Lunio users, who can find the tool under PMax tools in the Lunio workspace sidebar. 

Those looking to reclaim control of PMax spend and increase the ROAS of their campaigns can find out more here.