Remember the Power Pair from Google Marketing Live 2024? Well, that and several other items of discussion were found in internal emails at Google about the GML 2024 event. It discussed how advertisers were not excited about PMax, there is frustration amongst advertisers, being pushed into fully automated ads and they are just willing to go along with it.
With Google I/O and Google Marketing Live kicking off next week, it was interesting to see emails about how Google felt they did with their efforts to communicate what is new and what is working for Google Ads at the event last year.
The emails had Googlers and some former Googlers on it including:
- Omkar Muralidharan
- Michael Levinson
- Sylvanus Bent III - Power Pair guy
- Vivek Rao
Here is what the email said that was sent by Omkar Muralidharan the day after GML took place:
I'm not as convinced by this. Yes, we're pushing Pmax super hard, since that was our previous strategy. It's not at all clear to me that it's landing beyond the advertisers who have already bought in though (anecdotally, nobody was that excited about Pmax in my advertiser conversations on the day, at best it was like they were willing to go along). And there was some real frustration that Google isn't listening and pushing "full auto" solutions they don't want. I think we could absolutely tweak the messaging to evolve Pmax and have it land better.In any case, I think the UI and branding can be very flexible in our model. SearchMax or Pmax for search, I think it doesn't matter too much. The decision making structure is key, as you point out.
This was in response to Michael Levinson's email that was sent the day prior, the day GML took place:
Read this whole thing, and Pragh's summary. Yesterday we doubled down, unambiguously, that *all* our Al goodness is PMax. It was a consistent theme throughout the day. We said Pmax gets you 27% more conversions, and not just non-retail. Sylvanus led the audience in a Power Pair chant. DG was presented wholly separately, as part of the YouTube suite. Our sales force sees this and doesn't believe DG is going to be a thing. Rion was bummed at the end of the day—"we have a lot to dig out of".Pmax is how you buy performance on Google. I just don't see us walking that back, and anything that's not PMax is structurally disadvantaged from a positioning and sales perspective.
I spotted this via Thomasbcn on X - here is a s screenshot:
Here is a recording of GML from 2024:
Forum discussion at X.
