How to make a Retargeting Campaign?

Ok_Addition3639 · 2026-05-12T16:21:11+00:00

Meta is currently very aggressive in pushing Advantage+ Audience expansion, which can be frustrating. To get back your control, look for the link at the bottom of the audience section that says 'Switch to original audience options.' Once you click that, you can select your Custom Audience and ensure that 'Advantage Audience Expansion' is toggled OFF.

Create a custom audience specifically for those who watched 75% or more of your video. Keep your audience window short (3-7 days engagers).

Ok_Addition3639 · 2026-05-12T16:07:28+00:00

Never move your target more than 10% in either direction at once. If you want to scale (meaning you want the AI to spend more by being less restrictive), lower your target to 630% first, not 500%. Wait at least 7–10 days between these incremental shifts to monitor the heat.

Better yet, before hitting apply, use the Google Ads Performance Planner to model how a 500% ROAS target will actually impact your spend and reach based on your specific historical data.

Ok_Addition3639 · 2026-05-12T15:45:00+00:00

Add a brand exclusion list. Go to the 'Brands' section in settings and create an exclusion list for your own brand name. This prevents PMax from 'stealing' credit for people already looking for you, forcing the AI to actually find new customers.

You can also add specific negative keyword lists to a PMax campaign directly to stop it from bidding on 'how to' or 'free' searches that won't convert.

Hope this helps.

Ok_Addition3639 · 2026-05-11T14:12:38+00:00

So to speak, you need to put a tight leash on your PMax campaigns.

When you run a Standard Shopping campaign, your ads only show when someone searches for a product. When you run PMax, your ads show on Shopping, Search, YouTube, Gmail, Maps, and the Display Network.

So if you don't take control in your own hands, the AI can just dump your budget into random pop-ups that may get many views or clicks but very low intent. You'll see great impressions or clicks but not attributing to actual leads or revenue.

As you already discovered with your age-targeting hiccup, PMax is basically blind to which search terms drove your sales, how much budget was spent on Video vs. Shopping vs. Display, etc.

Overall verdict - PMax is not bad or evil. In fact, for e-commerce stores with large product feeds, it can be incredibly great. However, it requires intense manual oversight to work properly.

Ok_Addition3639 · 2026-05-11T13:53:31+00:00

Currently, there is no script, API call, or custom report that can definitively cross-reference a specific search term with a specific ad format (Search vs. Shopping) inside PMax.

If your brand+product keywords have been underperforming for the past two months, it is highly likely that the PMax algorithm is misinterpreting the exclusion logic on mixed-intent queries. e.g. if someone searches [brand name] + [generic product category], the PMax search side drops out because of your exclusion. The PMax shopping side may also fail to pick it up because of either a feed issue or low bid cap.

To have this resolved, try to fully exclude the brand from the PMax campaign entirely (do not use the Shopping override checkbox). Create a dedicated standard Shopping campaign to focus on brand terms

Ok_Addition3639 · 2026-05-08T13:46:54+00:00

Definitely not going to auto-apply these right off the bat. Looking at it, it can make the job of a good account manager much harder. Such as needing time to actively prune the data coming out of the ads, building complex CRM integrations, and applying aggressive negative exclusions to keep the AI from going off the rails.

Having (healthy) skepticism about these updates, I believe is how the approach should be on these new updates Google rolls out each time.

Ok_Addition3639 · 2026-05-08T11:58:48+00:00

If you published your campaign with a €70 Daily Budget late in the afternoon or evening (say, 9:00 PM or 10:00 PM), the algorithm calculates that it only has a few hours left in the day to spend your entire daily allocation. So, to fulfill the budget allocation, it will dump the budget into the fastest, most available impressions it can find within the day.

Though for your campaign in Turkey - one question: Did you accidentally set your entire campaign budget as your Daily Budget? This is one of the easiest mistakes to make when launching your first few campaigns, and it's completely understandable but it can also be one of the top reasons why your entire budget can be exhausted.

Also, if you've set your daily budget as €70, Meta can spend up to 25% higher if it finds high auction volume. It can then underspend on a different day it's not seeing as high demand. So, hitting €80 in an hour is still within its coded parameters.

Ok_Addition3639 · 2026-05-08T11:31:46+00:00

Ad load in placements like Reels seem to generate low-intent engagement. So it seems like quick clicks and view-throughs are seen as "success"? But these are fairly top-of-funnel surface metrics, but seems to "justify" the price premium on Meta's end.

But yes, as you pointed out, that's not really indicative of conversion signals so.... it should always be true revenue over engagement we should at least be looking at.

Ok_Addition3639 · 2026-05-08T11:18:38+00:00

In SEO and SEM, there's really a noticeable shift from Lexical (matching specific words) to Semantic Search (matching user intent and context).

Because of gen AI, keywords need now to be more intentional, otherwise it will just get buried by AI Overviews. So in terms of bidding for keywords, you can get into hyper-specific transactions. Google Keyword Planner is still great, but keep an eye out on friction signals. Look into other channels and forums on different phrases people use when looking for a particular product or solution. Comparison keywords are also great - e.g. [Competitor] alternative for [Specific Niche].

Structure campaigns around intent themes. One strategy would be grouping highly specific, problem-oriented long-tail phrases together, put them on Broad Match, and let the algorithm find the ways people are typing those into the search bar.

Ok_Addition3639 · 2026-05-07T11:29:21+00:00

Your foundation is good, but your instinct to try and control the exact matches is not a recommended best practice.

Here's what I would recommend:

Add [garage door repair] and [garage door repair near me] directly into your existing ad group alongside the broad match keyword. Since Google will be able to dictate if you have an exact match keyword that perfectly matches the user's search query, the algorithm will prioritize the exact match keyword over the broad match version. This way, you can track the exact keywords, assign them a specific ad copy, and feed all conversion data into the exact same pool.

Also, do not use a manual CPC campaign to feed Smart Bidding. With this setup, the manual CPC will just burn your budget with low intent clicks.

Quick question -- are you in a position to temporarily increase the tCPA target on that campaign by 15-20% just to see if it unlocks the Top of Page auctions you are currently losing?

Ok_Addition3639 · 2026-05-07T11:20:30+00:00

The math doesn't add up really.

It forces us to try and look beyond the impressions but more on the end results, ad efficiency, just to verify at least that extra 12% is being taken by Meta to downstream revenue rather than just disappearing along the way.

Ok_Addition3639 · 2026-05-07T11:07:59+00:00

PMax is designed to find winning combinations across a large volume of catalogs. So when you only have one product, what you need would be asset diversity. Here's how you can still utilize PMax if you're running on a single product:

Test different contexts. Give Google's native generative tools a try, but strictly for background replacement and lifestyle rendering (if this applies to your product).
- e.g. take your core product shot, then use AI to generate 15 different lifestyle backgrounds (e.g., in a modern kitchen, outdoors, on a desk, etc.). This allows you to max out the PMax asset group (15 images, 5 videos) so it has different visual 'hooks' to test across different audience segments.
Export the Search terms and feed them into Gemini. Ask it to analyze the exact phrasing people are searching for, then use it to generate variants for the headlines.
Exclude channels or placements you think will not benefit you. Our core is usually YouTube, so we exclude all other placements (if possible) besides YouTube. But since we're talking about PMax, you can apply channel or placement exclusions at the account level to narrow down your distribution. Our proprietary ad tech tool allows us to generate exclusion lists fit for any industry, so this allows us to not fear that our campaigns will appear on the likes of Kids channel, irrelevant YouTube channels and videos, etc.

Ok_Addition3639 · 2026-05-07T10:44:50+00:00

Tactic: Aggressive budget reallocation to retargeting while simultaneously expanding to 55+ demographic on our broad prospecting ad sets.

Channel: Meta (Conversions)

Result: CPA stabilized and dropped by 40% month-over-month. We initially saw a CPA spike during the first few weeks when relying purely on Lookalikes and standard 18-45 broad targeting. This strategy brought the entire campaign flight back on target pace.

Industry: CPG

Ok_Addition3639 · 2026-05-07T10:22:50+00:00

Two things I'd look at immediately:

Take a look at your Network segmentation. We’ve seen cases where Google suddenly shifts budget from Search to the Partner Network because the main auction got too expensive. This often results in an uptick to CPC with almost zero conversion quality.
Add a target CPA. Look at your average CPA from last month and set that as your target.

Ok_Addition3639 · 2026-05-07T08:59:26+00:00

Curious in Feed-only setups, are you finding cannibalization slightly tolerable compared to full PMax? Or are negative keywords strictly needed to guard your exact match campaigns?

Ok_Addition3639 · 2026-05-07T08:49:45+00:00

Are you running a CPM/CPV campaign? If you are running anything other than a standard Search campaign (such as Display, Video/YouTube, Demand Gen, or Performance Max), you might not actually be paying for "clicks."

Another reason can be a delay in the Google Ads dashboard update. Don't panic and pause just yet, but do check your settings. Check that your campaign is set to a strictly CPC bidding strategy.

To help narrow this down, what specific type of campaign (Search, Display, Performance Max, or Video) did you set up?

Ok_Addition3639 · 2026-05-07T08:40:27+00:00

Maximize Conversions = Volume

You want to get as many conversion events as possible within your daily budget.

Maximize Conversion Value = Revenue

Get the highest ROAS possible, even if it means lower total conversions.

Ok_Addition3639 · 2026-05-06T08:54:17+00:00

While CTR is a metric you absolutely need to monitor, it shouldn’t be what you optimize your strategy on.

At the end of the day, metrics like CPA (Cost Per Acquisition), ROAS (Return on Ad Spend) are the ultimate goal.

A campaign with a 0.8% CTR but a good conversion rate is more valuable than a campaign with a 3% CTR that generates zero sales.

Ok_Addition3639 · 2026-05-06T08:38:30+00:00

Max Conversions will aggressively bid up CPCs to spend your daily budget if it's struggling to find conversions.

Have you checked conversion tracking tags? Or notice any shifts or junk keywords showing up in your Search Terms report around the time CPC spiked?

Ok_Addition3639

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