What Performance Max reports show about where your budget goes

A Performance Max campaign runs on one budget across Google's whole inventory. Advertisers cannot set a budget per channel, and Google's documentation says advertisers can't directly control budget allocation per channel.

What advertisers can do is read where the money went. Over 2025 Google added channel reporting, full search terms reporting and search theme diagnostics. Together they show which channels carry spend, which queries trigger ads and which inputs are worth adjusting.

What the channel performance report breaks out

Google announced the channel performance page on April 30, 2025, and said an open beta would start a few weeks later. Its Help Center documentation says it covers Performance Max and Demand Gen campaigns.

The report lists seven channels: Google Search, the Google Display Network, YouTube, Discover, Maps, Gmail and Search partners. For each it shows impressions, clicks, interactions, conversions, conversion value and cost. It also shows results and results value, which cover primary conversion actions across all goals, including goals the campaign is not optimizing for.

The page has three sections. A performance summary gives campaign totals for actual and target ROAS or CPA. A channels-to-goals chart filters by channel, by format (product-data ads, video ads or all ads) and by conversions versus results. A time series chart shows when the mix shifted, for example after a campaign change. A channel distribution table carries every available metric, accepts extra segments and can be downloaded.

Segments include channel, ads using product data, ads using video, conversion category and conversion action, and ad event type such as engaged-view, click, interaction or impression.

Reading a channel that shows no spend

A channel with no spend is not necessarily broken. Google's documentation says that when a channel isn't showing ads and no issues are present, this likely indicates the campaign is bidding on channels with a higher return on investment at that moment.

A status column separates that case from real problems. It labels each channel Not eligible, Eligible (Limited), Eligible or Missing required assets. Diagnostics cover asset group policy issues, product feed problems, missing or disapproved assets, Final URL expansion, missing video assets and budget constraints.

Google's launch post gave examples of what diagnostics can flag: missing store locations for Maps, or landing pages that are not relevant enough for Search.

What the search terms report adds

Channel data says where ads ran. The Performance Max search terms report says which queries triggered them. Google began rolling out full search terms reporting in 2025, giving Performance Max the same search-level detail as Search and Standard Shopping campaigns on top of the existing search terms insights.

The report is under the Campaigns menu, using the option labeled "Search terms and landing pages for Performance Max." It also shows how combinations of search terms, headlines and landing pages perform. It can be segmented by ad format, such as Shopping ads versus text ads, which matters when brand exclusions are applied to one format only.

Data starts in March 2023, and earlier data is not shown. Store visits and store sales conversions are not included.

Google's guidance is to weigh conversions above clicks and impressions. Some conversions may occur without direct clicks or impressions, which can distort click-through rate and CPM.

How search themes and the source column work together

Search themes are optional hints about the topics a business wants to reach. Each asset group takes up to 50 unique themes of up to 80 characters. Google's documentation treats a theme as the equivalent of a phrase or broad match keyword identical to the search query.

Themes do not limit Performance Max traffic. They are added to the queries the system already predicts will perform. Because similar terms reach the same audience, Google advises against listing synonyms such as "car" and "automobile."

Search themes left beta in January 2025. Google added two diagnostics that month: a usefulness indicator showing whether themes drive incremental traffic beyond what Performance Max finds on its own, and a source column in search terms insights showing whether a query came from keywordless targeting or from a theme.

To judge a theme change, Google's guidance is to compare campaign-level performance before and after it was added, and to use the search term insights report to see the new queries reached.

A channel with no spend is not necessarily broken: the system may simply be favoring channels with better predicted return.

The controls that shape which queries and channels show up

Several settings narrow where ads appear even without a channel budget. Search themes respect brand exclusion rules. Campaign-level negative keywords, which Google said in January 2025 were rolling out to all advertisers, let a campaign exclude queries for brand suitability or other reasons. Account-level negative keywords also apply.

For retailers with product feeds, Google said in January 2025 that brand exclusions could be limited to Search text ads, keeping branded Shopping traffic. The search terms documentation says negative keywords cover Search and Shopping, while Display and Video exclusions go through excluded content keywords in the Content Suitability center.

The channel report documentation lists what advertisers can influence: the quality and variety of assets, audience signals such as Customer Match and website visitor lists, accurate conversion tracking with sensible values, search themes, content suitability settings and account-level placement exclusions, and negative keywords.

Other January 2025 additions included asset group segmentation, for example conversions by device and time, and downloadable asset group performance. Google also described a high value new customer mode, now rolling out to all advertisers, where Customer Match defines high-value customers and bidding favors new users likely to maximize lifetime value.

Gaps to account for before acting on the data

Product-data segmentation covers Shopping ads on Search, YouTube Search, Maps and Search partners, plus dynamic remarketing on Display. Gmail and product-based video ads on YouTube and Discover are not included yet, per Google's documentation.

Offline store conversions are summed into one total column, so channel-level conversions for individual stores are not available. The documentation says date ranges after June 6, 2025 can be viewed with the date picker.

After a significant change, Google recommends giving the campaign one to two weeks to stabilize before judging the channel mix.

The first checks for a founder or marketing lead are the channel distribution table, to see whether spend sits where the goal sits, and the status column, to confirm that a quiet channel is a choice and not a missing asset. The search terms report, segmented by format, comes next to see which search terms led to conversions.