5 Critical Performance Max Optimizations You Need to Make Before Black Friday

Why These Optimisations Matter

After managing over $15M in ad spend, I've learned to distinguish between what truly impacts performance and what's just noise. With Black Friday approaching rapidly, these optimisations aren't just suggestions - they're essential for maximising your holiday season performance.

1. Optimize Your Bidding Strategy

One of the most common mistakes I see brands make is getting overly ambitious with their ROAS targets during Black Friday. Here's what you should do instead:

-> Start with max conversions for single-product campaigns or max conversion value for multiple products
-> Only transition to tROAS after collecting 30 days of solid data
-> Keep your targets conservative to maintain volume

​Pro Tip: Lower your tROAS by 20% during Black Friday week. This helps capture more traffic when competition is at its peak.

2. Clean Up Your URL Settings

You might be surprised how much money you're losing to irrelevant traffic. The key culprit? Final URL expansion sending traffic to non-converting pages. Here's how to fix it:

• Disable final URL expansion if you're running traffic to a limited number of SKUs

• Add URL exclusions for About, FAQ, and Contact pages if keeping expansion enabled

• Regularly monitor your landing page report to ensure spend is directed to revenue-generating URLs

3. Optimise Your Asset Groups

While everyone's focused on audience-based asset groups, the real winner is product category segmentation.

It's simple logic: someone searching for "winter boots" needs different creative than someone looking for "summer sandals" - regardless of their audience segment.

Quick Win: Before Black Friday hits, separate your best-selling categories into dedicated asset groups.

4. Rethink Your Audience Signals

Here's something surprising: according to an Optmyzr study analyzing 9,200 accounts, adding audience signals and search themes to Performance Max campaigns often decreased performance. The solution? Go broad and trust the algorithm.

• If your campaign is performing well, maintain current settings

• For new asset groups, consider leaving audience signals empty

• Let Performance Max optimize based on actual performance data

5. Rethink Your Audience Signals

This might sound counterintuitive, but Performance Max excels at remarketing. During the Black Friday period, let it focus on what it does best. Save your new customer acquisition efforts for dedicated demand generation campaigns.

5. Ready To Implement?

While these optimisations are proven to work across multiple accounts, every store is unique. If you want to ensure your Performance Max campaigns are fully optimized for Black Friday:

• Book a Black Friday PMax audit

• Get a personalised optimisation plan

• Implement changes before the holiday rush

And remember - if we don't find ways to make your brand more money, your next coffee's on me.

Want to learn how this strategy could work for your brand? Book a free strategy session where we'll create a custom implementation plan for your business.