Google Ads added a new brand control override for Performance Max campaigns that lets you override the exclusion for Shopping Ads. The check box is under the brand exclusions section and reads, “Allow Shopping ads on searches that mention excluded brands.”

This is for when you Exclude brands so that your ads won’t show on searches that mention those brands but want to allow those for Shopping Ads.

This was spotted by Mike Ryan who wrote about this in detail on LinkedIn. He said, “Google is testing a new checkbox in the brand exclusions setup. When selected, this option excludes brand traffic from the PMax campaign but NOT from the Shopping ad inventory.”

He shared this screenshot of it:

Mike really broke this down, here is what he wrote:

Spotted in an account, Google is testing a powerful new brand control feature in PMax. Let’s have a closer look!

𝗕𝗮𝗰𝗸𝗴𝗿𝗼𝘂𝗻𝗱

Soon after PMax launched, there was a groundswell of complaints that this new campaign type seemed to be cannibalizing brand traffic from dedicated brand Search campaigns.

The concern was that many businesses are very particular about their brand traffic, because it behaves so differently from non-brand. It needs to be isolated so that it can be bid & budgeted correctly, and monitored accordingly. Mixing it into PMax also inflates performance, since brand traffic is typically a lot warmer and converts more efficiently.

Google listened and took action. They created a new feature specifically designed to exclude brand traffic from PMax.

𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗽𝗿𝗼𝗯𝗹𝗲𝗺

Brand exclusions are too blunt an instrument, and they smother brand traffic not only in the typically small Search portion of PMax, but also the much larger Shopping portion.

This caused advertisers to use awkward tactics to hack their way to the desired outcome, most commonly building fallback brand-catcher Shopping campaigns.

A couple of months back, Google changed the priority mechanics between Shopping and PMax, causing this hack to break, or at least become “leaky”

𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝘀𝗼𝗹𝘂𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻

Google is testing a new checkbox in the brand exclusions setup. When selected, this option excludes brand traffic from the PMax campaign but NOT from the Shopping ad inventory.

It’s a clean solution that eliminates the need for fallbacks and other workarounds.

This feature also allows for new testing possibilities and potentially new setups. There are more than a few clever people in this business, and I’m sure we’ll see some creative use cases presented.

Forum discussion at LinkedIn.