Google Ads just unlocked 7 hidden Performance Max upgrades - are you ready?

Google Ads expanded Performance Max controls and reporting on 24 August 2025, adding new audience settings, creative-transparency tools, and customer-acquisition diagnostics to the platform.

Key updates

In a support post announced on 24 August, Google outlined three groups of new features:

• Shared negative keyword lists can now cover multiple Performance Max campaigns.
• The cap on search themes rises from 25 to 50 per asset group.
• Advertisers can target or exclude devices and age ranges; gender targeting is in closed beta.
• Conversion reports now tag every sale as new or returning, eliminating the “Unknown” bucket.
• Goal diagnostics flag missing tags and other setup errors.
• Asset-level metrics appear for creatives generated through Final URL Expansion, and unwanted assets can be removed.
• An AI image editor provides image-specific improvement suggestions within the interface.

Most features are rolling out globally, though accurate new-customer reporting requires updated conversion tags.

Background

Introduced worldwide in November 2021, Performance Max is Google Ads’ automation-first campaign type spanning Search, Display, YouTube, Discover, Gmail, and Maps. Advertisers have long sought more granular targeting and clearer insight into auto-generated creative. Google started addressing these requests in 2023 with brand exclusions and search themes. The latest release continues that progression, bringing Performance Max closer to the manual controls available in standard Search and Display campaigns.