PMAX is the WORST (When You Let It Run The Show.)

EVERY $1 YOU PUT INTO GOOGLE ADS COMES BACK AS LESS THAN $1. THAT’S THE GOOD NEWS.

A typical brand – nonprofits very much included – puts about 40% of paid advertising budget into Paid Search. Of that, roughly 90% sits in Google Ads.

That’s a LOT of money in one place.

Here’s the sad part.

Most of the time, every single $1 invested in Paid Search delivers LESS THAN $1 in revenue.

I had a call recently with a nonprofit that raises hundreds of millions in private revenue every year. Their agency told them, at the latest QBR, that they’d improved Paid Search RoAS 5x over 12 months.

From 0.1 RoAS to 0.5 RoAS.

Very bad performance became LESS BAD.

Yes. This IS an extreme example.

And yet – Google Ads performance for mission-driven organizations is much, much too low.

Which is exactly why this is an OPPORTUNITY.

Because underperformance of 40% of your budget isn’t a loss. It’s UPSIDE few have claimed.

GOOGLE ADS STOPPED BEING ABOUT WORDS. NOBODY TOLD PAID SEARCH.

To understand why this is an opportunity, first – let’s go back in time.

When I started in digital back in 1999, Google ADWORDS wasn’t even around. The product was born October 23, 2000. And it took two more years – February 2002 – for Google to turn on the CPC model. Before that? You could buy text ads on a CPM only.

Then, in July 2018, Google rebranded Google AdWords to Google Ads.

Think about that for a second.

Why would Google rebrand a TEXT PRODUCT – people type keywords, aka TEXT, into a search window – and strip the word “AdWORDS” right out of the name?

Because Google AdWords was no longer just about text.

• 14 years before the rebrand – May 2004 – Google let advertisers buy standard IAB banner ads through what was then the Google Content Network. Rebranded to the Google Display Network (GDN) in 2009.
• 7 years before the rebrand – September 2011 – YouTube ads became buyable inside AdWords.

And today, 8 years AFTER the rebrand, here’s what I can buy inside “Google Ads”:

1. Text ads
2. Shopping
3. Display
4. YouTube
5. Discover
6. Gmail
7. Maps

Seven products. One login.

So why is this explosion of options an opportunity for brands?

a) Because Google Ads today is VERY complex. PMAX – launched almost 5 years ago – was sold as the algo that cuts through that complexity.

AND

b) Many nonprofits now allocate as much as 90% of their paid search budget – to PMAX.

AND

c) PMAX, and the machine learning that powers it, consistently LOWER RoAS and Revenue.

(Which is why, most typically, among nonprofits, every $1 invested in Google Ads delivers less than $1 back.)

Digital Fundraisers who learn how to work AROUND PMAX and WITH PMAX get rewarded. I’ve seen mission-driven organizations pull $2.00+ in revenue for every $1 invested in Google Ads.

TWO FIXES. BOTH OF THEM OLD SCHOOL. BOTH OF THEM WORK.

First, a disclaimer — I’m in my early 50s, so my solutions tend to be old school.

But let me point out that Claude C. Hopkins published Scientific Advertising in 1923. Every concept he laid out around a direct response analytical framework – testing, tracking, measuring – is as relevant today as it was 103 years ago.

So I choose to reframe ‘old school’ as TRIED AND TRUE.

In that spirit, two solutions.

SOLUTION 1: WORK AROUND PMAX.

Three rows in a report. That’s the whole fix.

Google Ads is STILL mostly about text ads. And yet, I talk with paid search professionals who are so addicted to PMAX that they FORGET Google.com is a text-based platform.

Reminder: roughly 60% of ad investment inside PMAX still lands on ‘old school’ text ads.

So what are text ads? I start with the classic separation – Brand and Non-Brand.

Obvious, right? And yet I almost NEVER see a Digital Fundraiser produce a report that looks like this:

What a basic Paid Search report SHOULD look like:

What a basic Paid Search report TYPICALLY looks like:

• BRAND is DEFENSE. Brand investment in paid search gets justified as “making sure a competitor doesn’t get the click.” Fine. But those dollars are hardly incremental. Most brand clicks would have happened anyway.
• NON-BRAND is OFFENSE. That’s where new donors – one-time and Sustainers – actually come from. Those dollars are mostly incremental. That donation likely would not have happened otherwise.

I suggest 90% of paid search investment sits in Brand and Non-Brand.

And PMAX? In my experience, PMAX is genuinely great at DISCOVERY – new keywords, new Gmail placements, URLs where banner ads are actually performing. PMAX is a great TEST budget.

I suggest 10% of paid search budget sits in PMAX.

Separating BRAND from NON-BRAND gives a charity the ability to MINIMIZE spend against people who already know you, and MAXIMIZE spend against people who are discovering a cause to give to.

That’s it. That’s the mechanic.

(You may ask — what about the NON-text formats PMAX is buying? If PMAX is serving video on YouTube, should I cut that out? Honestly, I think that’s the wrong question. If you want to buy YouTube… build a dedicated YouTube campaign in Google Ads. Don’t lump YouTube in with Maps and Shopping inside PMAX. What is the POINT??)

SOLUTION 2: HOW TO WORK WITH PMAX

PMAX finally has levers. PULL THEM.

Over the past year, Google finally caved to pressure from media buyers who HATED having zero control over their own budgets.

Starting in late 2025, Google began rolling out transparency reporting and real LEVERS – the ability to train, include and exclude inventory inside PMAX.

For instance, brands can now:

• View the hidden domains, app URLs and placements where PMAX has been serving your ads
• Pull advanced audience controls out of PMAX
• Exclude GDN inventory entirely via an explicit checkbox opt-out

You know how AI works BEST when you train it? How a long, specific prompt in Claude or Gemini or OpenAI beats a lazy one-liner?

The same approach works in PMAX. The more you train PMAX, the better it performs.

Google is now letting advertisers TRAIN PMAX. Humans get more control over what it does and does not do.

Which is Google quietly admitting the thing we’ve all been saying: PMAX performs better when a human trains it.

THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN )0.42 AND 2.81 ROAS IS A PERSON DOING THEIR JOB.

Why should you take more control over PMAX while pushing more budget into old-school Brand and Non-Brand text?

First – because digital fundraisers are paid to CREATE VALUE. When the media buying platform is on autopilot, and the media buyer is on autopilot, and 90% of the paid search budget is sitting inside an Untrained PMAX… what incremental value is that digital fundraiser generating while earning a salary? Zero. The algorithm got the job.

Second – Google is great, AND Google is a corporation focused on maximizing its stock price. Every product Google develops – and Meta, TikTok and Amazon Ads do this too – is designed to maximize the price advertisers pay per click or per CPM.

Do you think Google baked into PMAX a logic that makes sure your organization pays right up to its maximum threshold of pain for every ad served? I do.

Third – and this is the most important point – in my experience, organizations that look at Paid Search as a) text Brand, b) text Non-Brand and c) PMAX simply generate more revenue for their mission, through a higher RoAS.

Sample data I’m seeing, April–June 2026, across some of my larger clients (roughly $2 million invested in Google Ads per year):

Look at that last row. 2.81 versus 0.42.

Same organization. Same budget. Same quarter. SIX TIMES the return.

The biggest reason PMAX is “the worst” isn’t that it’s complicated, or opaque, or annoying.

It’s that it raises less money for your mission than ‘old school’ branded and non-branded text keywords.

That 40% of your budget sitting in Paid Search? It’s not a cost line.

It’s the easiest unclaimed upside on your entire media plan.