Google Said Performance Max Couldn’t Give You Channel Control — By Design
- 2022
- Ginny Marvin calls missing channel exclusion “by design”Google Ads liaison, on record
- 60–67%
- Share of combined Shopping + PMax spend now inside PMaxQ1→Q2 2026, dual-running advertisers
- ~30–37%
- Estimated ROAS gap, Search Partner Network vs Google SearchIndustry study, not Google-confirmed
- Jul 2026
- Google confirms the exclusion toggle exists, in alpha onlyNo rollout date given
What Google actually said, and when
In a public PPCChat Q&A in February 2022, Google Ads liaison Ginny Marvin stated that Performance Max’s inability to exclude the Google Display Network was “by design” — not a bug, not a gap on the roadmap, an intentional feature of how the campaign type works. Performance Max, she said, optimizes across all channels within your brand safety constraints, full stop. There was no way to exclude the Google Display Network, and that was the point.
For four-plus years, that position held with no channel-level opt-out at all. That changed in 2026 on the reporting side: Google Ads Help now states plainly that channel performance reporting is generally available in all Performance Max campaigns, breaking out impressions, clicks, interactions, conversions, conversion value and cost by Google Search, Display, YouTube, Discover, Maps, Gmail and Search partners. That’s real, it’s new, and it means the old complaint that PMax gives you zero channel visibility is no longer accurate. What Google’s own documentation is equally explicit about is what the report still doesn’t do: it’s reporting visibility, not control — there is still no way to enable or disable a channel, or set a channel-specific bid or budget, from inside Performance Max. The gap in 2026 isn’t seeing where your money went. It’s doing anything about it once you see it.
Until a broader fix arrives, the only levers are indirect: campaign-level negative keywords (up to 10,000 per campaign), account-level negative keywords (up to 1,000), brand exclusions, and Search themes — all of which shape what PMax is allowed to serve, none of which is a channel on/off switch.
Then, starting in April–May 2026, PPC practitioners began spotting something new inside live PMax accounts: a “Partners” section with independent toggles for Search Partner Network and Google Display Network — first flagged publicly by Adriaan Dekker and Thomas Eccel, corroborated by DigitalApplied, and the first whole-network opt-out control since PMax launched in November 2021. In July 2026, a Google spokesperson confirmed the toggle is real, calling it “a pilot with a limited group of advertisers,” and declined to give a wider-availability timeline.
Nobody at Google has used the word “hide” — and Google has directly pushed back on the “black box” framing altogether, calling it a misconception. What’s on record from Google Ads liaison Ginny Marvin is consistent across four years. In a public PPCChat Q&A in February 2022, she wrote: “PMax focuses on your goal & driving more convs towards that goal. By providing automation w/ the broadest set of options, PMax can see which channel & format can deliver the highest-value conversion at the best marginal ROI at auction time.” Speaking to PPC Land in early 2026, she said essentially the same thing in different words: “PMax is fundamentally built to prioritize the conversion over the channel. Rather than scaling Search or Shopping specifically, for example, it’s looking to find the next predicted conversion across all of Google’s inventory.” That’s Google’s stated design philosophy, not a confession — but the alpha toggle is Google quietly building the exact channel-level lever that philosophy was said to make unnecessary. That framing of “impossible by design” is this piece’s characterisation of the sequence, not a phrase Google has used.
Why this sits on top of your biggest line item, not a side one
This wouldn’t matter much if PMax were a minor campaign type. It isn’t. Among advertisers running both Shopping and PMax, PMax now accounts for 60–67% of their combined spend across Q1 and Q2 2026 — figures reported via a secondary summary of Tinuiti’s benchmark data, since the primary report sits behind a paywall, but directionally consistent with what most Indian D2C accounts show when you pull their own campaign split. The majority of your Google Shopping budget is now routed through the one campaign type where you have never had placement-level cost visibility.
What that costs, in rupees
Take a Mumbai skincare brand spending ₹8 lakh a month on PMax. Industry research from Intelligency Group, relayed through trade press, has flagged Search Partner Network placements converting at roughly 30–37% lower ROAS than Google Search proper — a single third-party study, not a Google-published figure, so treat it as a directional estimate rather than a precise number. If even 15% of that ₹8L monthly budget — ₹1.2L — sits in Search Partner Network placements converting at that discount, you’re looking at roughly ₹4.3L a year earning meaningfully worse returns than your core Search spend, with no line item telling you so.
Agency audit write-ups from 2026 describe recovering 10–25%+ of PMax budget once they gained partial placement visibility — self-reported, not independently verified, but repeated often enough across different agencies to treat as a plausible range rather than an outlier.
The timeline
-
2021–2024
PMax launches and scales with zero channel exclusion. Position: intentional design, not a missing feature.
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Feb 2022
Ginny Marvin, on record: no way to exclude GDN, “by design.”
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2025–2026
Channel performance report rolls out, then reaches general availability across all PMax campaigns — channel-level clicks, conversions and cost now visible; still no per-channel control.
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Apr–May 2026
Practitioners spot a new “Partners” toggle for Search Partner Network / Display exclusion inside live PMax accounts.
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Jul 2026
Google confirms: real, but limited alpha, no rollout date.
-
Next 6–12 months
Expect gradual, likely spend-tier-gated expansion — consistent with how Google staged asset-level reporting, then channel reporting, now partial channel control.
What you can and can’t control today
| Control | Status today | Source |
|---|---|---|
| See blended ROAS across all channels | ✓ Yes | Standard PMax reporting |
| See channel-level clicks, conversions and cost (Search, Display, YouTube, Discover, Maps, Gmail, Search partners) | ✓ Yes, GA across all PMax campaigns | Google Ads Help |
| See cost-to-conversion at the individual placement level | ✗ No | Google Ads Help |
| Enable/disable a channel, or set a channel-specific bid or budget, inside PMax | ✗ No, reporting only | Google Ads Help |
| Exclude Search Partner Network independently | Alpha only, most accounts: no | ppc.land |
| Exclude Google Display Network independently | Alpha only, most accounts: no | ppc.land |
| Set brand safety / placement exclusions | ✓ Yes, always has been | Google Ads Help |
| Directly control budget allocation by channel | ✗ No, explicitly stated by Google | Google Ads Help |
Should you wait for the alpha, or audit now?
The copy’s own decision framework is a click-through below — answer three questions about your own account and land on exactly one recommendation.
Does your account show a “Partners” exclusion toggle inside PMax settings today?
Is more than 50% of your Google Shopping spend routed through PMax?
Can you pull the channel performance report and placement report for the last 90 days?
✓ You’re in the alpha
Turn off Search Partner Network first, measure blended ROAS for 2 weeks, then test Display.
✗ Get access first
Request access from your Google Ads rep or agency before doing anything else — you cannot estimate exposure blind.
→ Audit now
Run the 5-step audit below this week. Decision rule: if the channel report shows Search Partner Network or Display absorbing more than 20% of impressions with a conversion rate visibly below your Search average, tighten brand safety exclusions and cap budget outside PMax for that share. Do not wait for the alpha — Google has given no rollout date.
Three ways to see inside PMax right now
Shows impressions, clicks, conversions, conversion value and cost by channel (Search, Display, YouTube, Discover, Maps, Gmail, Search partners) — generally available across all PMax campaigns since 2026. Still sums offline conversions rather than splitting them, and gives you no way to act on what you see: no per-channel toggle, bid or budget. Good for spotting a channel with real spend and weak returns before you go looking for a lever to pull.
Shows individual Display and video placements PMax served on. No cost data at placement level, but lets you flag obviously low-quality sites/apps for exclusion via brand safety settings.
Your only current levers for actually shaping traffic, all indirect: content and sensitive-category exclusions, account-level negative placements, campaign-level negative keywords (up to 10,000 per campaign), account-level negative keywords (up to 1,000), brand exclusions, and Search themes. None of them is a channel on/off switch — they shape what PMax can serve, not which channel it serves on.
The PMax Channel-Risk Audit
Run this before your next budget review.
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- Ginny Marvin (Google Ads liaison), PPCChat Q&A: PMax optimizes across channels/formats for the highest-value conversion at auction time (Feb 2022) — officialppcchat.com
- Ginny Marvin, quoted in PPC Land: “PMax is fundamentally built to prioritize the conversion over the channel” (early 2026) — ppc.land
- Google pushes back on the “black box” framing for PMax transparency — ppc.land
- Channel performance reporting is generally available in all Performance Max campaigns — support.google.com
- Channel performance report is reporting visibility only, not channel-level control — support.google.com
- Channel performance report: no per-placement cost attribution, offline conversions summed — support.google.com
- Negative keyword limits (10,000 per campaign, 1,000 per account) and Search themes as indirect PMax levers — support.google.com
- Search Partner/Display exclusion toggle spotted in live PMax accounts (May 2026) — ppcnewsfeed.com
- Alpha network controls corroborated independently (Jul 2026) — digitalapplied.com
- Google spokesperson confirms toggle is real, limited pilot, no rollout date (Jul 2026) — ppc.land
- PMax’s 60–67% share of combined Shopping+PMax spend, Q1–Q2 2026 — karooya.com
- Search Partner Network ~30–37% lower ROAS estimate vs Google Search — clixtell.com
- Agency-reported 10–25%+ recoverable PMax spend after partial placement visibility — digitalmarketingagencyfor.com
Almost certainly not. As of the most recent confirmation in July 2026, Google described it as a limited alpha with no announced rollout date. Check Settings → Networks inside your PMax campaign — if you don’t see a Partners exclusion option, you’re not in the test, and there’s no signup list to join. Run the audit checklist above instead of waiting.
No, and the piece doesn’t claim that. What’s on record is narrower: Ginny Marvin called the lack of exclusion “by design” in 2022. What changed is that Google began building the exact control it called impossible, four years later, without public explanation. Draw your own conclusion from the sequence.
You can’t know precisely without placement-level cost data, which Google doesn’t provide. The estimates in this piece (30–37% lower ROAS on Search Partner Network, 10–25%+ recoverable spend) come from third-party agency studies, not Google, so treat them as planning ranges, not your account’s actual numbers. The channel performance report plus placement report gets you closest to a real estimate.
Not on this evidence alone. PMax’s blended performance is often genuinely strong; the issue is visibility, not necessarily waste. The reasonable move is testing 10–15% of spend as a standalone Search campaign to get a comparison point, not abandoning the format.
Partially, and more than it used to. Since Google made channel performance reporting generally available across all Performance Max campaigns, it shows impressions, clicks, conversions, conversion value and cost broken out by Search, Display, YouTube, Discover, Maps, Gmail and Search partners — real visibility that didn’t exist before 2026. What it still doesn’t do is let you act on that data: no toggle to turn a channel off, no channel-specific bid or budget, inside PMax itself. Google’s own documentation calls this reporting visibility only. The gap today is control, not visibility.
Set the expectation correctly: Google has given no timeline, and the toggle is not something a client can request. The honest answer is to run the audit with today’s tools — channel performance report, placement report, brand safety exclusions — and revisit when (if) the toggle expands beyond alpha.
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