Performance Planner in Google Ads

This guide is built from Google Ads Help: About Performance Planner, Create and edit a plan with Performance Planner, Viewing your Performance Planner forecasts and How to review and implement your performance planner budget. For a single campaign's bid or budget what-if, see our guide to the bid simulator; how budgets and bid strategies work in general is in our budgets and bidding guide.

What Performance Planner does

Google calls it "a tool that lets you create plans for your advertising spend" and see how changes to campaigns "might affect key metrics and overall performance". In practice you pick a group of campaigns, a date range and a metric, and the planner suggests how to split budget and bid targets between them. Google lists four uses:

• forecasts for your campaigns;
• exploring outcomes by changing campaign settings;
• spotting opportunities in seasonal periods;
• managing budgets across accounts and campaigns.

It works in manager accounts too, and a plan can hold up to 10,000 campaigns. Open it under the Tools menu, Planning, Performance Planner. For new YouTube and video campaigns without history, Google's tool is Reach Planner.

How the forecasts are made

According to Google, the planner "simulates relevant ad auctions over the last 7 to 10 days", taking in seasonality, competitor activity and landing pages, and uses search query data "usually updated every 24 hours". Forecasts are refreshed daily. Google then checks forecasts against how campaigns actually performed and uses that to fine-tune them.

Conversions in a forecast are the ones in your Conversions column, or the conversion goal you choose for the plan. That goal only appears in the planner if its conversion actions are set to primary and used by forecastable campaigns; our conversion tracking guide explains primary and secondary actions. For Search and Performance Max, forecasts include conversion delay, so they count conversions expected within your conversion window, not only those that have already arrived.

Because the base is the last 7 to 10 days, Google's advice when markets are shifting is to plan "weekly rather than monthly or quarterly until markets stabilize".

Which campaigns it covers

Performance Planner is available for Search, Shopping, App, Demand Gen, Local and Performance Max campaigns. Google's notice: "Effective March 9, 2026, Performance Planner no longer supports planning for Display and Video campaigns", nor plans whose key metric is impression share, top impression share or absolute top impression share. Older plans of those kinds can no longer be viewed or edited.

Eligibility requirements

A campaign that doesn't meet the requirements is "unforecastable". For Search, standard Shopping and Performance Max campaigns, Google's table asks for:

• no change of bid strategy in the last 10 days;
• at least 3 clicks and 10 impressions;
• at least 1 conversion or some conversion value;
• more than zero spend in the last 17 days;
• for portfolio bid strategies, all campaigns in the portfolio on one shared budget (see our shared budgets guide).

Demand Gen has its own rules: no bid strategy change in 7 days, at least 14 impressions in 7 days (target CPA, maximise conversions, maximise clicks), at least 5 conversions in 7 days for target ROAS or maximise conversion value, and no experiments, product feeds or flighted campaigns. App campaigns need 10 days of running time and 10 conversions in the last 10 days, and must not be limited by budget. Campaigns that are part of an experiment can't be planned at all.

When you create a plan you can leave unforecastable campaigns out, or include them by entering their cost and conversions for a past date range.

Creating a plan

1. Open Performance Planner and select the plus icon.
2. Enter the date range, the channel and the key metric: clicks, conversions or conversion value.
3. Optionally choose conversion goals, so the plan uses only that data.
4. Optionally enter a target, such as total spend or a cost per acquisition. The planner then moves spend around to reach it.
5. Select the campaigns and select Create.

Google recommends picking campaigns that work toward the same goal, because the planner "works best by shifting budgets between multiple campaigns". Mixing a lead campaign with a brand awareness campaign gives it nothing sensible to trade off. Google also shows suggested plans at the top of the Performance Planner page, ready-made campaign groups you can open as a plan.

For Demand Gen campaigns, Google's table adds a restriction on the key metric: with target CPA, maximise conversions, target ROAS or maximise conversion value you can't plan for clicks, and with maximise clicks you can't plan for conversions or value. Shopping plans can include several Merchant Center accounts, unless one of them takes part in Comparison Shopping Services.

Reading the forecast

The plan page has a forecast graph for all selected campaigns together: click along the curve to see what more or less spend would bring. Below it, a table per campaign shows three columns for each metric:

• Planned: the forecast if you apply the plan's suggested settings.
• Existing: the forecast if you keep current settings.
• Diff.: the difference.

The table also shows the suggested budget and bid target changes. You can add secondary metrics such as conversion value, ROAS and store visits, change single campaigns in a side panel, and use Compare to set the forecast against past periods. Two notes from Google: you can't adjust conversion rates, and the planner may propose a budget of zero for a campaign it sees as not contributing to the most efficient spend, which amounts to advice to pause it.

Applying the plan

Google's draft plan page says the planner changes nothing by itself: "no changes will take place in your Google Ads account unless you make those changes yourself". There are three ways to make them:

• Apply suggested changes: Google's overview page describes a button at the top right that applies the plan's budget and bid changes to live campaigns at once. You can deselect campaigns, and undo changes in Bulk actions.
• Google Ads Editor: download the plan as an Ads Editor file (.csv) and import it (our Google Ads Editor guide covers imports).
• By hand: change the daily budgets and targets yourself.

Plans save automatically when you edit them, and you can remove a plan from the list when you no longer need it.

Limits and when not to trust it

Some of these follow from Google's description; others are our experience.

• Short history: the forecast rests on the last 7 to 10 days. A promotion, outage or tracking fault in that window carries straight into the plan.
• Conversion tracking: forecasts are only as good as the conversion data; double counting or a broken tag skews every number.
• Seasonality: Google says forecasts are adjusted for seasonality, but a short, unusual event that you know about and Google doesn't is better handled with a seasonality adjustment.
• Diminishing returns: the curve usually flattens; extra spend near the top of it buys little.
• Small accounts: campaigns with a handful of conversions are hard to forecast, and may not qualify at all.

How we use it

This is our own practice, not Google's guidance:

• We use it for budget conversations, such as what an extra amount per month would bring, and present the range, not a single number.
• We plan only campaigns with the same conversion goal and check conversion tracking first.
• We apply big changes in steps rather than all at once, because large jumps in budget or targets can unsettle automated bid strategies.
• Before seasonal peaks we compare the plan with last year's results for the same weeks.

If you want help planning a Google Ads budget, see our services.

Frequently asked questions

Can I use Performance Planner in a manager account?

Yes. Google says it is available for manager accounts, and a plan can include up to 10,000 campaigns.

Why is my campaign unforecastable in Performance Planner?

Usually because it changed bid strategy in the last 10 days, has too few clicks, impressions or conversions, had no spend in the last 17 days, or is part of an experiment.

Can I use Performance Planner for Display or YouTube campaigns?

No. Since 9 March 2026 Google no longer supports Display and Video campaigns in Performance Planner.

Does Performance Planner change my campaigns automatically?

No. Changes only happen when you apply them, with the Apply suggested changes button, through Google Ads Editor or by hand.

How accurate is Performance Planner?

Google bases forecasts on auction simulations over the last 7 to 10 days and checks them against actual results. Treat them as estimates, and recheck often when the market is changing.

For more on Google Ads bidding, see our guides to target CPA and value-based bidding.