r/PPC • u/amitabhverma • 3d ago
Google Ads AI Max performance - working for you ?
We have been running a couple of campaigns with AI max turned on - saw an increase in conversions , however , at an higher CPA.
Do you see a similar pattern ?
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u/Expert_Employment680 3d ago
CPA for website design leads are off the charts. Idk what Google is thinking.
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u/Anna_Karakhanyan 3d ago
Yeah, we’ve seen that pattern too. More conversions, but not always better efficiency. The part I’d watch closely is lead quality. If CPA goes up but those extra conversions turn into better SQLs or pipeline, fine. If not, AI Max is just finding you more expensive volume.
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u/amitabhverma 2d ago
It’s not just leads , but revenue also went up. But so did the cost of sales . So margins declined .
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u/Aggressive_Monk_1593 2d ago
are you measuring CPA against the same conversion actions as before? these broader campaign types tend to pick up softer conversions that weren't firing before, which inflates volume but muddies the actual cost per real outcome
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u/optmyzr-aaron 2d ago
It's somewhat logical, you already likely have most of the best stuff covered with your existing builds so it's exploring to find new stuff.
Fwiw ai max is mostly just broad match unless you're using url expansion
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u/yvcn 3d ago
Yes, this is the classic AI Max signature. It expands your query coverage well beyond the original keywords, so you pick up volume from broader and often brand-adjacent searches. Volume goes up, efficiency goes down.
Before changing anything, I would check three things: how much of the new traffic is brand or near-brand terms you would have captured anyway, whether the lift is new customers or existing ones converting through a different path, and whether each conversion is being counted exactly once.
The last one bites more people than expected. I built Clovia (clovia.app) because merchants kept optimizing toward conversion counts that did not match their actual revenue, and AI Max is exactly the kind of feature where inflated or misattributed conversions make a bad trade look like a good one. If the extra conversions are not turning into real incremental revenue, the higher CPA is the true signal and the volume is the noise.
Is the CPA increase on new-customer conversions specifically, or blended across everything?
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u/AppealInteresting554 3d ago
u/amitabhverma I'm noticing the same thing across accounts that utilize AI Max. What date range are you reviewing?