01The three signals that matter
PMax's reporting interface is deliberately opaque — Google's incentives are not perfectly aligned with your visibility into spend allocation. But the data is there if you know where to look.
Three metrics that are available without API access and that consistently reveal misallocated budget: asset group impression share by channel, search term overlap with brand keywords, and Display impression share as a proportion of total PMax impressions.
- Asset group impression share by channel — signals which channel is eating budget inside a given group
- Search term overlap with brand keywords — the 4-minute diagnostic from the featured article applies here too
- Display impression share — anything above 25% of PMax budget on Display is usually a signal the algorithm is struggling to find converting search volume
Display spend above 25% of PMax total is almost never a healthy signal for DTC. It typically means the algorithm has run out of high-intent search volume and is filling the budget with cheaper impressions.
Ruslan co-founded Tegra in 2017. Runs the Google Ads practice — feed, PMax, search, attribution. Writes weekly about the parts of paid search operators are afraid to touch.