Performance Max in Microsoft Advertising

This guide is built from Microsoft Advertising Help, mainly About Performance Max campaigns, Create a Performance Max campaign and Best practices for Performance Max campaigns, plus the pages linked in each section, checked on 11 November 2026. The campaign type works much like Google's, which our Google Ads Performance Max guide covers; this page sticks to Microsoft's own rules and limits. Bringing existing Google campaigns across is in our Google Ads import guide.

What it is and where it serves

Microsoft describes Performance Max as an asset-focused campaign type that serves across the entire Microsoft Advertising Network. You add text, images and other assets to asset groups, and Microsoft's automation picks the combinations and audiences, guided by your campaign settings and audience signals. One campaign can serve search, audience and Product ads; Microsoft's DSA upgrade page names MSN, Outlook, and Search among the inventory. The search and audience parts of the network are described in our Microsoft Advertising basics guide.

A few limits from the help pages:

• It is available in all Microsoft Advertising markets, though Microsoft notes Dynamic Search and Performance Max ads are not available in Mainland China.
• An account can hold up to 300 Performance Max campaigns.
• Performance Max campaigns don't currently support video assets.
• Netflix inventory is not included, and the campaign does not run on Google or Facebook. Microsoft points to Smart campaigns for multi-channel management.

How it sits next to your Search campaigns

Microsoft says Performance Max is meant to complement Search campaigns and won't affect your keyword targeting. When a search query matches a keyword in your account, the Search campaign's ad takes priority. When no keyword matches, the ad with the best relevance and performance serves. A second answer on the same page is narrower: Search campaigns with exact match keywords are prioritised over Performance Max, and for all other campaign types the campaign with the highest ad rank serves. If you rely on the priority rule, check which match types your Search keywords use.

Creating the campaign

1. Select Create, choose Drive conversions or Sell products as the goal, then Performance Max.
2. Declare whether the campaign is intended for political advertising, then continue.
3. Optionally choose a Merchant Center store to serve Product ads. Microsoft warns that you can't change the store later, and that if you skip it and want to advertise products in future, you need a new campaign.
4. Fill in the product settings (if you chose a store), the asset group, targeting (location and language), campaign details, then budget and bid strategy, and review the summary before Go live.

New or edited asset groups go through editorial review. Microsoft says most reviews finish within 48 hours and suggests contacting support if the status still shows Under Review after two business days.

Asset groups and their limits

Microsoft suggests basing each asset group on the campaign's goal and naming it after that goal. Its best practices page adds that you could organise asset groups by market, promotion or target audience, and that you should add as many assets as possible. The limits from the creation page:

Microsoft generates text and downloads images from your Final URL. Text guidelines let you list up to 25 words or phrases that should not appear in its AI-generated assets. Microsoft says to enter these term exclusions before the Final URL, or its asset suggestions won't reflect them. In the campaign settings you can switch autogenerated Text assets, Image assets and Final URL expansion on or off, and you can delete autogenerated assets you don't want. Microsoft notes that a deleted asset can't be restored.

Microsoft's image advice is to use high-resolution JPG or PNG files and avoid text or logo overlays, which may look distorted or be cut off in other ratios. Put the messages in the headlines and descriptions instead.

Audience signals and search themes

An audience signal is a starting point for finding customers. It can combine interests (people with purchase intent in a category), your own audience lists (remarketing, dynamic remarketing and customer match), age and gender, and company, industry and job function from LinkedIn profiles. You add it in the asset group, or build it in the Audience library under Tools > Audiences and then attach it to an asset group. Microsoft is clear that ads may surface to audiences beyond those associated with your audience signal. A new or updated signal takes 24 hours to build, and its status reads Ready, Building the audience or Limited. Its best practices page says remarketing lists, custom audiences and customer match lists provide strong baseline signals. The lists themselves are covered in our Microsoft Ads audiences guide.

Performance Max does not use keywords. Search themes are words or phrases you add per asset group: up to 50, each 80 characters or less. Microsoft says they help shorten the learning period and decide who sees your ads, but they don't limit ad reach, and customers never see them. Its tips are to build asset groups around specific themes, refresh themes every few months, use them for event-specific campaigns such as sales, and mine a search term insights report for strong queries.

Products, listing groups and page feeds

With a Merchant Center store attached, all products in the store are available by default. You can filter by feed label or by country/region of sale, and turn on local inventory ads. Listing groups decide which products belong to each asset group, with up to 20,000 listing groups per asset group. They also show product-level metrics once you add the columns. Some Product ads use images, headlines and descriptions from Merchant Center. For how product feeds work in general, see our product feed guide.

For service and lead sites, page feeds tell the campaign which landing pages to use. A page feed is a CSV, TSV, XLS or XLSX file with a Page URL column and a Custom label column (up to 10 labels per row, separated by semicolons; the column must exist but can be empty). You upload it under Tools > Business data > Page feeds and attach it in the campaign settings. An account can have 100 feeds of all types and five million feed rows. Which URLs ads can use depends on two settings:

One trap Microsoft spells out: with a page feed attached and no URL rules, ads only use feed URLs that contain the asset group's Final URL. Its example is a Final URL of contoso.co.dk/teahouse with feed URLs under contoso.co.dk/tea/herbal, which don't match, so won't deliver any ads. URL rules use a contains operator on the URL, category, page title or page content, and custom labels pick groups of feed pages.

Conversion goals, UET and bidding

Conversions come from the UET tag, which our Microsoft Advertising basics guide explains. A campaign can either use the account's Include in "Conversions" goals or pick specific goals. The two bid strategies are Maximize conversions, with an optional target CPA, and Maximize conversion value, with an optional target ROAS. If the account has no conversion goal when you create the campaign, Microsoft switches it to maximize clicks. Once a goal exists and has gathered enough data, the campaign moves to the conversion-based strategy you picked.

Microsoft's best practices on targets:

• Start with a less restrictive target, based on other campaigns in the account, so the campaign learns faster.
• Wait two weeks after each target change before changing it again.
• Add a target ROAS once the campaign has at least 30 conversions in the last 30 days.
• Keep the daily budget higher than the target CPA. Microsoft also suggests giving Performance Max up to two to three times the budget of your earlier standalone campaigns, because it serves across many formats and placements.

Optimize for new customer acquisition is not in every account yet. Increase bids for new customers needs Maximize conversion value, a Purchase conversion goal at account level and at least one audience list. Bid only for new customers needs an audience list. Both also need a conversion value for new customers, set at account level under Conversion goals > Customer acquisition.

If a campaign records no conversions, Microsoft's troubleshooting page lists the usual causes: goals without the "Include in conversions" setting (they still show under All conversions), a UET tag that is "Unverified" or "Tag inactive", a tag missing from pages under the Final URL, outdated tag parameters, offline conversions that may not be attributed, and a daily budget set below the target CPA.

Exclusions

• Negative keywords can be added during setup or afterwards under Campaigns > Negative keywords. Phrase is the default match type and can be changed to exact. Account-level negative keyword lists also apply. How negatives work in general is in our search terms and negative keywords guide.
• Excluded content terms keep ads away from pages whose titles contain words you list. Microsoft says terms you add are applied to all campaigns in the account. Not every account has them yet, and you can describe your exclusions in a prompt to have negatives and terms suggested.
• Brand exclusions stop ads serving on branded searches from your brand lists. Microsoft notes not everyone can use them yet. The idea is the same as Google's, described in our brand exclusions guide.
• Website exclusions work only at account level for Performance Max, and Microsoft's own domains, including msn.com, outlook.com and bing.com, can't be excluded.

Learning period and reports

Microsoft expects a first impression within three days for campaigns serving Product ads and four days for others. After changes or new assets, the learning period runs two to four weeks or two to three conversion cycles, where a conversion cycle is the time from click to conversion. If it takes longer, Microsoft asks you to contact your account team or support.

The asset report covers Performance Max at account, campaign and asset group level. It keeps 30 days of data and can lag by 24 hours. Listing groups show product-level results. For website URL, publisher and search term data, Microsoft's advice is to judge campaign-level results first, focus on conversions, conversion value, CPA and ROAS rather than impressions, clicks and CPC, and avoid excluding sites based on low volume, no clicks or short periods. It calls placements with impressions and no clicks expected behavior, as the system tests widely to learn.

Upgrading Smart Shopping and DSA campaigns

Accounts that still have Smart Shopping campaigns can select one on the Campaigns page and choose Edit > Upgrade to Performance Max. Microsoft keeps the old performance data for reporting and expects a learning period of about two weeks or less.

Dynamic Search ads campaigns can be upgraded from the Recommendations page if they have up to 100 active DSA ad groups, a standard daily budget rather than a shared one, and at least one ad and one active auto target rule in each ad group. Microsoft fills the minimum assets from the old ads or your website. If those don't meet the requirements, the upgrade stops and the DSA campaign keeps running. Budget, bid target, locations, language, URL rules, page feed exclusions, account-level negatives and extensions carry over.

Performance Max campaigns can also come in through the Google Ads import, with a few changes noted in our import guide.

Our view: how we use it

This part is our own practice, not Microsoft's guidance. We set up Performance Max in Microsoft Advertising only after the UET tag records the goal we care about, so the campaign does not start on maximize clicks. We begin with one asset group per offer or audience, a page feed limited to the pages we want traffic on, and search themes taken from Search campaigns that already convert. Then we leave targets and budgets alone through the learning period Microsoft describes before judging the results.

Frequently asked questions

Do I need keywords for Performance Max in Microsoft Advertising?

No. Performance Max campaigns don't use keywords. You can add up to 50 search themes per asset group as signals, plus negative keywords to block queries.

Will Performance Max take traffic from my Search campaigns?

Microsoft says Search campaigns with matching keywords, and in particular exact match keywords, take priority over Performance Max. For other campaign types, the ad with the highest ad rank serves.

Can Microsoft Performance Max run video ads?

Not at the moment. Microsoft's creation page says Performance Max campaigns don't currently support video assets.

What happens if I have no conversion goal?

Microsoft sets the bid strategy to maximize clicks. Once you create a goal and it has enough data, the campaign switches to the conversion-based strategy you chose.

How long is the learning period?

Microsoft gives two to four weeks, or two to three conversion cycles, after setup or changes. First impressions should come within three days for campaigns with Product ads and four days for others.

For more on search advertising, see our guides to Microsoft Advertising basics, Microsoft Ads audiences, Google Ads Performance Max and Google Ads audience signals.