Alan Carroll is the Head of Paid Media at Acadia.
If you’ve spent any time in the digital ad space, you're very familiar with the Google Performance Max (PMax) love-hate relationship.
On one hand, it’s a fantastic tool that many marketers have found to be a great efficiency unlock (when used correctly). On the other hand, it’s historically been very opaque, maddeningly so at times, and occasionally makes interesting, questionable, or misguided decisions.
For years, media buyers have pleaded for additional control. And to Google's credit, they've been slowly answering the call, with ongoing product updates to enable more advanced control of PMax.
But one of the biggest restrictions has remained: treating audience targeting as suggestions rather than hard-and-fast targets. This creates real problems when executing a regimented media plan with clear targeting swim lanes.
Now, though, we're finally seeing movement on this front as well, in the form of campaign-level audience exclusions for PMax.
What’s New with Google Performance Max? (And Why You Should Care)
Until recently, if you wanted to keep your PMax campaign focused strictly on new customers, you had to rely on the "New Customer Acquisition" goal. It worked reasonably well, but it was far from a complete solution.
Now, however, the new Data Exclusions setting (found under Campaign Settings) is starting to appear in accounts. This feature allows you to upload specific Customer Match lists or Website Visitor segments and tell PMax: "Do not show an ad to these people. Period."
The Strategic Wins This Unlocks:
- True Funnel Integrity
Previously, PMax would often cannibalize your dedicated Remarketing campaigns, without the need for super creative workarounds. By excluding existing customers or recent site visitors from PMax, we can finally run a "Pure Prospecting" PMax campaign. This ensures your top-of-funnel budget is actually reaching new eyes, while your dedicated Display or Video remarketing handles the "Welcome Back" messaging.
- Cleaner Data for Scaling
When PMax mixes prospecting and retargeting, your ROAS looks amazing, but your "New Customer Growth" might be flat. With hard exclusions, the data you see in the dashboard is much closer to the truth. If a campaign is hitting a 4.0x ROAS with all existing customers excluded, you know you’ve found a scalable winner.
The Bigger Picture: The Evolution of Google Ads
This update isn't just a random feature drop; it’s a signal of where Google Ads is headed in 2026.
We are moving away from the era of "Blind Automation" and into the era of "Steerable AI." Google has realized that the "set it and forget it" approach doesn't work for sophisticated brands.
By adding brand exclusions, campaign-level negative keywords, and now audience exclusions, Google is positioning PMax not as a replacement for a media buyer but as a high-powered engine that still needs a driver.
What This Means for Your Strategy
If you're running PMax today, check your Campaign Settings to see if Data Exclusions has rolled out to your account. If it has, here's where to start:
- Audit your current setup: Identify where PMax might be overlapping with your remarketing efforts or hitting existing customers you'd rather exclude.
- Build your exclusion lists: Upload Customer Match lists of recent purchasers or high-value segments you want reserved for other campaigns.
- Test incrementally: Start with one campaign to measure the impact on performance before rolling out exclusions across your entire account.
This isn't a feature that requires an immediate overhaul of your strategy, but it is one that finally gives you the control to run PMax the way it should have worked from the start: as a powerful prospecting tool that respects your broader media plan.
For brands that have held back on PMax because of its lack of precision, this might be the update that finally makes it viable. For those already running it, this is your chance to clean up the mess and unlock growth.