Now you can upgrade your Dynamic Search Ads (DSA) and Google Display Ads (GDN) directly to Performance Max (PMax)! This upgrade was launched and made available to all advertisers in 2023. However, only certain advertisers are eligible for this upgrade based on their current features and functionalities. You can complete the self-upgrade through your account by following the steps below.
How to self-upgrade?
- From Recommendations page: All eligible advertisers will receive a notification in their Google Ads accounts’ Recommendations page if they are given the option to self-upgrade.
- From a notification: You may also be notified on this upgrade through the “Notifications” icon in the top right corner.
Each upgraded DSA will be transformed into a new and separate PMax campaign, which may take up to one week to fully ramp up. You might be concerned whether this means Google will have to learn about my new campaign from scratch. No worries! Google utilizes a combination of settings and learnings from the existing DSA to maximize or maintain performance.
After the self-upgrade, the historical data of the original DSA campaign will still remain accessible in the ‘Campaigns’ table.
Why is this upgrade important?
DSA has been an essential campaign in helping advertisers augment their keyword-based Search campaigns by driving more conversions from search queries through landing page-based targeting.
Google mentioned that advertisers who upgrade DSA campaigns to PMax will see an average increase of more than 15% in conversions or conversion value at a similar cost per action (CPA) or return on ad spend (ROAS). Besides, advertisers see an average increase of more than 20% in conversions after upgrading GDN to PMax.
What is the eligibility for the self-upgrade?
- More than 10 enabled ad groups
- Campaigns without Smart Bidding enabled
- DSA ad groups in a Search campaign that also contain keywords
- No enabled DSA creative
- Campaign with running trial
Benefits of the upgrade
With automated bidding and optimizations, advertisers who decide to self-upgrade can expect to access a new range of tools to boost campaign performance.
- New features
The inventory-aware ad serving feature ensures all out-of-stock pages/products will not automatically appear in Search ads by factoring in product inventory. - More converting search queries
This tool works best with your campaign’s creative assets to help you find more converting search queries, particularly benefiting landing pages with sparse or minimal content. - Better control on automatically created assets
Advertisers will soon see their automatically created assets in the asset reporting table which allows advertisers with the option to remove text assets if needed. - Better insights
Google is rolling out more improvements on search categories, especially to review search term performance within selected date ranges as well as with the ability to download insights.
Currently, this option is completely voluntary and will continue to be fully available. However, it is believed that DSA will be deprecated eventually, and all campaigns will be replaced with PMax. This transition involves optimization moving towards a more algorithmic approach based on bid strategy and audience signals.