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You cannot switch YouTube off inside a Performance Max campaign. What you can do is see exactly how much it is costing you, fix the signal that is sending it there, and decide whether to split the campaign.
On this page
- How do I see how much Performance Max spends on YouTube?
- Why does Performance Max drift into YouTube and Gmail?
- What happens when Performance Max runs on the wrong conversion goals?
- How do I check which conversion goals my campaign uses?
- What levers do I actually have over Performance Max delivery?
- Does changing the conversion goal reset learning?
How do I see how much Performance Max spends on YouTube?
A Performance Max campaign reports one blended cost per click and one conversion count, so YouTube, Gmail and Display spend is invisible at campaign level. Segment by ad network type.
Measured on a software affiliate account across 12 days, all 8 Performance Max campaigns:
| Network | Spend | Conversions |
|---|---|---|
| YouTube | $680.53 | 0.3 |
| Gmail | $269.13 | 1.0 |
| Display | $0.02 | 0 |
| Non-Search total | $949.68 | 1.3 |
Roughly $2,406 a month. Every other conversion in those campaigns came from the Search slice.
Why does Performance Max drift into YouTube and Gmail?
Two reasons, and the second is the one worth fixing.
1. You gave it the assets. Supply images and video and it will use them. Supply no video and Google will auto-generate one from your assets, which is worse.
2. The bid signal is cheap and easy to satisfy. This is the real cause. If the campaign's goals include micro-actions, the bidder will find the cheapest inventory that produces them, and that inventory is not Search.
What happens when Performance Max runs on the wrong conversion goals?
A leather-goods account's Performance Max campaign fell off hard over two weeks: cost per click collapsed $1.25 → $0.25, impressions rose about 10× from 5,000 to 53,000 a week, clicks rose about 5×, and purchases went from 12 a week to roughly zero.
Root cause: all three Performance Max campaigns were on account-default conversion goals. The default set had Purchase biddable — and also Page View, Add to Cart, Begin Checkout and Phone Call Lead. On Maximize Conversion Value, the bidder chased the cheap near-infinite micro actions instead of belt purchases.
The trigger was a Shopify channel app importing funnel conversions, which auto-joined the account-default goals. Nobody made a decision. Then budget increases and an asset-group rebuild scaled the corrupted signal.
Fix: switch to campaign-specific goals, Purchase only.
How do I check which conversion goals my campaign uses?
Read campaign_conversion_goal.biddable — not the presence of a DEFAULT category row. The DEFAULT row persists with biddable = false even under campaign-specific goals, so its presence proves nothing.
What levers do I actually have over Performance Max delivery?
- Campaign-specific conversion goals, purchase or booked-job only. Biggest lever by far.
- Withhold video and image assets if you want Search-weighted delivery. Accepting Google's auto-generated video is choosing YouTube by default.
- Split the campaign — run a feed-only campaign for Shopping-weighted delivery and keep asset-rich campaigns separate.
Does changing the conversion goal reset learning?
Changing the goal set restarts learning. Hold budgets flat for about a week before reading anything, and do not stack a budget change on top of it.
Related questions
Does a feed-only Performance Max campaign really only run on Shopping?
No. A feed-only campaign is weighted toward Shopping inventory, but it still serves across the Performance Max network — Google generates assets from your product data to fill the other placements. Read the full answer.
My Google Ads campaign isn't spending its daily budget — why, and what do I check first?
Check budget utilisation against impression share lost to rank before anything else. An underspending campaign is either strangled by its target, rank-locked by its bid ceiling, or genuinely out of demand — and the three have opposite fixes. Read the full answer.
How much can I increase my Google Ads budget at once without hurting performance?
Roughly 15% per step on a Smart Bidding campaign, gated on cost per acquisition at each rung, with no pre-set endpoint. Step up while the cost holds and stop the moment it degrades. Read the full answer.
Written by Usama Khan, who runs Google Ads for e-commerce brands and home-services companies at AdventurAds. Figures are from accounts under active management and are anonymised. Last reviewed 2026-08-26.
