Google Ads Performance Planner: What It Does and How It Boosts Your PPC Campaigns

Google Ads Performance Planner helps you forecast your PPC campaign results before spending a dime. It lets you simulate budget changes, adjust bidding strategies, and estimate conversions, clicks, or CPA in real time. With this tool, you can discover high-performing keyword sets, distribute budgets smartly across campaigns, and ultimately boost ROAS (Return on Ad Spend) efficiently.

Introduction

In the fast-paced world of pay-per-click (PPC) advertising, having a crystal ball for your campaigns would be a game-changer. Google Ads Performance Planner is about as close as it gets – an AI-driven planning tool that helps marketers forecast Google Ads budget outcomes and optimize campaigns for better results. This tool is important because it takes the guesswork out of budgeting and strategy. Instead of relying on hunches, you can see data-driven predictions of how changes to your bids or budgets might impact clicks, conversions, cost-per-action (CPA), and return on ad spend (ROAS). In other words, Performance Planner shows you how to optimize PPC campaigns before you spend a dime.

From improving ROAS with Google planner insights to anticipating seasonal surges, Performance Planner acts like a helpful guide. It automatically crunches enormous amounts of campaign and auction data on your behalf. The end result? You get a clear plan for spending your budget in the smartest way possible. Marketers who use this tool wisely can gain a competitive edge – Google even noted that advertisers can drive 43% more conversions by using Performance Planner to plan their spend (Source -> Google Ads Help). That highlights how powerful its recommendations can be in boosting campaign performance.

How and Why We Researched This Guide

At SORTED FIRMS, we pride ourselves on providing well-researched, practical insights to help marketers succeed. To create this guide, we tapped into official Google resources (like Google Ads Help documentation and announcements) and trusted industry experts’ analyses. Our team reviewed Google’s own descriptions of Performance Planner’s features, ensuring we clearly define what the tool does automatically versus what still requires your input. We also explored real use cases shared by marketers and agencies to see how Performance Planner is applied in day-to-day campaign management.

Why go to these lengths? Because understanding a tool’s capabilities in detail allows you to get the maximum benefit. By compiling information from Google’s documentation (Source -> Google Ads Help) and comparing it with similar tools on the market, we can confidently guide you through Performance Planner’s advantages. Rest assured, every claim we make (from forecasting abilities to comparisons) is backed by research. This means you can trust this guide as you learn how Performance Planner works in Google Ads and how to leverage it to improve your campaigns.

What Is Google Ads Performance Planner (and What Does It Do)?

Google Ads Performance Planner is a planning tool built right into Google Ads that lets you create forecast scenarios for your ad campaigns. In simple terms, it automatically predicts how your current campaigns might perform in the future if you make certain changes. According to Google’s own description, “Performance Planner is a tool that lets you create plans for your advertising spend and assess how changes to campaigns might affect key metrics and overall performance.” (Source -> Google Ads Help). It’s like having Google’s AI as your personal assistant, running simulations and telling you what could happen before you actually commit your budget.

Here are some of the key automated functions and insights that Performance Planner provides:

Forecasting Future Performance:

The tool automatically forecasts spending and results for your campaigns. It looks at your account’s historical data and billions of search queries across Google’s network to predict future outcomes (support.google.com). For example, it can project how many clicks or conversions you’d get next month at your current budget, or how many more you could get if you increase spend by a certain amount. These forecasts are updated daily and factor in recent trends (last 7-10 days of data) for accuracy.

Simulating Ad Auctions:

Performance Planner uses Google’s advanced machine learning to simulate real ad auctions in aggregate. It crunches variables like seasonality (e.g., holiday search surges), competitor activity, and even your landing page experience. By “replaying” recent ad auctions with different budget levels or bid settings, it shows you what might have happened – and thus what could happen going forward. This simulation is all automatic; you just input the scenarios you want to test, and Google’s models do the heavy lifting behind the scenes.

Optimal Budget Recommendations:

One of the most valuable things the planner does is suggest how to allocate your budget for maximum growth. It identifies the ideal spend for each campaign in your plan to maximize your chosen metric (conversions, clicks, or conversion value). For instance, if you have multiple campaigns, Performance Planner might tell you to shift more budget into Campaign A (which has higher return potential) and a bit less into Campaign B, to achieve the best overall result. Essentially, it recommends the optimal distribution of your dollars across campaigns and even suggests an overall budget if you want to reach a particular goal (Source -> Google Ads Help).

Bid and Targeting Suggestions:

Along with budget insights, the tool can advise on bid or target adjustments. If you set a specific goal like a target CPA or target ROAS, Performance Planner will project what bid or ROAS target you’d need to hit that goal, and how performance changes as you adjust that target. For example, it might simulate “what-if we lower CPA target from $20 to $15” and show the conversion trade-off. These recommendations for optimal bids and targets help ensure you’re not overspending for each acquisition.

Seasonality and Trend Insights:

Because it accounts for seasonal trends, Performance Planner can highlight opportunities in high-demand periods. It automatically shows if, say, searches in your industry are expected to spike next quarter, and thus suggests a higher budget to capture that surge. Conversely, it can prevent over-spending in slower periods. By simulating future conditions (like an upcoming holiday season), it helps you plan ahead with hard numbers rather than hunches.

“What-If” Scenario Planning:

Marketers can use Performance Planner to play out what-if scenarios easily. You can tweak inputs like budget, CPA/ROAS targets, or even add new keywords in the plan to see how those changes might impact performance. For instance, the tool lets you virtually add a set of new keywords and will estimate how many additional conversions they might bring (Source -> Google Ads Help). This is incredibly useful for trying strategies on paper (or rather, on screen) before implementing them in reality.

It’s important to note that while Performance Planner provides automatic forecasts and suggestions, it does not actually apply any changes to your campaigns on its own. Think of it as a navigation system: it charts the course for you, but you still decide to turn the wheel. After creating a plan, you have the option to download the changes (for example, as a file for Google Ads Editor) so you can apply the new budgets/bids with a few clicks. But nothing updates in your live campaigns until you choose to implement the plan. This is by design – you remain in full control, using the Planner’s intelligence as guidance.

How Does Performance Planner Work Its Magic?

You might be wondering how Google generates these eerily accurate forecasts. The Performance Planner runs on Google’s cutting-edge AI and vast dataset. Here’s a behind-the-scenes look at what’s happening automatically when you use this tool (in non-technical terms):

Data-Driven Modeling:

Performance Planner evaluates your campaign’s historical performance data (recent weeks’ stats) and combines it with Google’s massive pool of advertising data. In fact, Google says the planner takes into account “billions of search queries” that are updated every 24 hours (support.google.com). This means the tool isn’t guessing in the dark – it’s using patterns from huge numbers of similar auctions and keywords across the platform, as well as your own past results.

Auction Simulation:

The tool then simulates ad auctions for the last 7-10 days as if different budget or bid settings were in place (support.google.com). Essentially, it’s rewinding time and replaying those auctions in a virtual model to see how outcomes would differ. In doing so, it incorporates key factors like seasonal trends (e.g., overall increases in search volume), what competitors were doing (did others increase bids? launch new ads?), and landing page effects (a better landing page could improve conversion rate). By running these simulations, the planner can forecast how your campaigns would perform with higher/lower spend or different targets.

Machine Learning Forecasting:

Google’s machine learning algorithms are at the core of Performance Planner.

They don’t just simulate; they also learn and refine. The system actually checks its own predictions against actual outcomes over time to improve accuracysupport.google.com. For example, if the planner predicted 100 conversions for last month and you actually got 95, the model learns from that slight miss to calibrate future forecasts. This feedback loop means the more you run campaigns and plans, the smarter the forecasting gets. Google’s AI fine-tunes the forecasts continuously (Source -> Google Ads Help), so you’re getting the best possible estimate based on current conditions.

Considering Conversion Delays:

One clever thing the planner accounts for is conversion delay. Not everyone converts the same day they click your ad – some might convert days or weeks later. Performance Planner automatically includes conversion delay estimates (for Search and Performance Max campaigns) when forecasting. This means if your typical customer takes a week to make a purchase after clicking, the tool factors that in so it doesn’t undervalue your campaign’s potential. This helps in predicting more realistic ROAS and conversion totals, enabling you to better plan budgets with the full conversion window in mind.

In short, Performance Planner leverages Google’s unparalleled data and AI. It’s as if you had a team of data scientists modeling your campaign in every possible scenario, 24/7, and updating you with the findings. All of this happens automatically in the background – you just see the final projections and charts in an easy visual format. The takeaway for marketers is confidence: you can trust that these forecasts aren’t random but are backed by a vast analysis. While no forecast can be 100% perfect, Google’s tech gets it pretty close. (And you can always compare the planner’s forecast to your actual results later, to see how spot-on it was.)

Real-World Use Cases: How Marketers Use Performance Planner

Theory is great, but how do real marketers use the Google Ads Performance Planner in practice? Let’s look at a couple of practical examples and use cases that show the tool’s value in improving campaign performance:

Seasonal Budget Planning:

Imagine you’re an e-commerce marketer heading into the holiday season. You know from experience that November and December bring a surge in searches and sales for your products. Instead of blindly guessing how much extra budget to allocate, you use Performance Planner to forecast your Google Ads budget needs for Q4. You plug in a 20% higher budget for November and ask the tool to simulate conversions.

The planner shows that with a 20% spend increase, you could gain, say, 15% more conversions while keeping CPA about the same – a net win. It also highlights that most of those extra conversions would come from Campaign A (your top performer), suggesting you funnel the majority of the budget boost there. Armed with these insights, you confidently present a plan to your boss or client: invest an extra $X in Q4 and expect Y more sales. When the holidays arrive, you already have the optimal budget in place, and you capture the surge in demand fully prepared. In this scenario, the Performance Planner acted as your data-driven advisor, ensuring you didn’t leave opportunity on the table during a critical season.

Optimizing for Better ROAS:

Consider a marketer managing a multi-campaign account with a strict ROAS (return on ad spend) goal. Some campaigns are hitting the goal, others not so much. By running a Performance Planner forecast, you discover that if you reallocate budget from two under-performing campaigns to a top performer, you could significantly improve ROAS with Google Planner recommendations. The tool shows, for example: reduce Campaign B’s budget by $500 and increase Campaign A’s by $500, and your overall conversion value would climb while cost stays nearly flat – effectively boosting ROAS. It also simulates what happens if you tighten your target CPA on one campaign: maybe you’d lose a few conversions but your cost drops more, improving ROAS there too. With these projections, you implement the changes knowing they are likely to pay off. Indeed, the next month you see more revenue per dollar spent. This use case illustrates how an online retailer or lead generation marketer can optimize PPC campaigns by trusting the planner’s data. Instead of spreading budget evenly or based on gut feeling, you make surgical adjustments that yield a better return, all guided by the planner’s scenario analysis.

Client Reporting and Goal Setting:

Performance Planner is also a lifesaver for marketing agencies or consultants when communicating with stakeholders. For example, if you’re an agency managing a client’s Google Ads, you can use the planner to set expectations and get buy-in. Let’s say the client wants to increase leads by 30% next quarter. You create a plan in the tool and find that to achieve that, the client’s spend would need to increase by 25% given current performance – and the planner shows the resulting CPA would still be within their comfort zone. You present this forecast to the client, showing them a graph of spend vs. conversions that clearly visualizes the trade-off. This not only educates the client but builds trust (“we’re using Google’s own data to plan your growth”). Many marketers use Performance Planner outputs in their slide decks or reports, since it lends credibility to proposals for budget changes. In sum, it helps you answer tough questions like “What might happen if we invest more (or less)?” with authority, strengthening your strategic recommendations.

These examples scratch the surface, but they all share a common theme: data-driven decision making. Whether it’s anticipating a seasonal spike, shifting funds to the best-performing tactics, or setting realistic goals, Google Ads Performance Planner gives marketers concrete numbers to plan with. The result is typically a more efficient campaign (higher conversions for the same or slightly higher spend) and happier stakeholders. It turns planning from a risky guessing game into a proactive strategy session. No more flying blind – you can move forward knowing “if I do X, I can likely expect Y”. That is incredibly empowering in the world of advertising where budgets are on the line.

Google Ads Performance Planner vs. Meta Ads Planner (Facebook/Meta’s Planning Tool)

When it comes to advertising platforms, Google isn’t the only one in town. Facebook (Meta) offers its own planning tools for ads – most notably the Meta Campaign Planner within the Meta Ads environment. Let’s compare Google’s Performance Planner with Meta’s planning capabilities to highlight differences and what each tool offers:

Google Ads Performance Planner:

As we’ve detailed, this tool is all about forecasting search and other Google network campaigns. Its focus is on conversions, clicks, and value driven through Google Ads. Performance Planner uses your actual account data combined with Google’s vast search data to predict outcomes. It excels at budget optimization across campaigns – for example, figuring out the ideal spend per campaign to maximize conversions within Google Ads. It also lets you simulate different bidding strategies and targets (like CPA or ROAS goals) and see the impact on performance metrics. Essentially, Google’s planner is conversion-centric and revenue-centric; it’s trying to show you how to squeeze more results (sales, leads, etc.) out of each dollar on Google’s ad platforms. All its recommendations – whether increasing budget or tweaking bids – are geared toward improving your key performance metrics within Google Ads. Another thing to note: Performance Planner can handle a huge scale (up to 10,000 campaigns in one plan) and is available for various Google campaign types (Search, Shopping, Display, App, and even Performance Max campaigns, provided they have enough data). It’s an integrated part of Google Ads, so it’s free to use for any advertiser and the data stays within your account. In summary, Google’s tool is like an intelligent financial advisor for your Google Ads campaigns, constantly asking: “How can we get you better results for your budget?” and using Google’s AI to answer that.

Meta’s Campaign Planner:

Meta’s equivalent is a bit different in scope and purpose. The Meta Campaign Planner is a standalone tool for Facebook/Instagram ads that allows media planners to draft and simulate campaign outcomes on Meta’s platforms. However, Meta’s planner is typically more geared towards forecasting reach and frequency for awareness campaigns (especially using the Reach & Frequency buying type). For example, you can use Meta’s planner to estimate how many people you’d reach if you spend $10,000 on a two-week campaign targeting women 25-54, and what frequency of ad exposure you’d achieve. It’s very useful for branding campaigns where reach is the key metric. Meta’s planner will let you test different budgets, schedules, and audience settings and then automatically show projected results like reach, impressions, CPM (cost per thousand impressions), and frequency.

Thanks to machine learning, it does incorporate historical audience data and behaviors to improve these predictions. For instance, it can predict reach based on actual platform data from similar audiences (Source -> Strike Social). Where it differs from Google’s tool is focus: Meta’s planner is not primarily conversion-focused. While Facebook’s system can estimate outcomes for conversion campaigns to some extent, the planner shines for media planning – drafting scenarios to maximize exposure within a target audience for a given budget. It’s also a collaborative tool; planners can share a draft plan with team members or clients easily, since it’s a standalone planning interface. Another key difference is that Meta’s planning insights often inform how you structure campaigns upfront (audience size, duration, budget split) rather than adjusting existing campaigns. And of course, it’s limited to Meta’s ecosystem (Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, etc.), whereas Google’s is for Google networks.

Key Differences: In summary, Google’s Performance Planner vs Meta’s planner can be seen as conversion optimization vs reach optimization.

Google’s tool automatically recommends budget and bid tweaks to hit conversion or revenue targets on Search/Display campaigns. Meta’s tool automatically forecasts audience reach and helps optimize how you’ll spread budget in a Facebook/Instagram campaign to achieve a certain impression goal or exposure level. If you’re a marketer focused on lead generation or e-commerce sales, Google’s planner gives you concrete conversion and cost forecasts to improve ROAS. If you’re planning a big brand awareness blitz on social media, Meta’s planner gives you clarity on how many eyeballs you’ll get for the budget and how to maximize that reach. Many savvy advertisers actually use both: for instance, use Google’s planner to perfect your search ad spend, and use Meta’s planner to map out your social ads strategy – each tool guiding you on its respective platform. The tone of each is also worth noting: Google’s feels like an analyst optimizing for efficiency, while Meta’s feels like a media strategist optimizing for coverage. Both leverage AI and machine learning, but in service of different ends.

Google Ads Performance Planner vs. SEMrush PPC Tools (Third-Party PPC Planning)

Besides the native platform tools, there are third-party solutions like SEMrush’s PPC toolkit that help with planning and optimizing campaigns. SEMrush is an all-in-one marketing suite popular among marketers for competitive research and SEO/PPC analysis. How does Google’s Performance Planner compare to what SEMrush offers in the pay-per-click realm? Let’s break it down:

Google Ads Performance Planner:

As discussed, this is an in-platform tool and uses your own campaign data directly from Google Ads. Its strength lies in precision forecasting for your specific account. It knows your keywords, your performance, and uses Google’s internal data to simulate changes. The planner automatically gives recommendations specific to your campaigns (e.g., “Campaign X can get +50 conversions with +$Y spend”). It’s very much focused on Google Ads only – optimizing within that universe – and it assumes you’ve already got campaigns running with conversion tracking. The output is highly actionable for immediate changes in Google Ads (budgets, bids, etc.). Performance Planner doesn’t look at competitors or suggest keywords; it optimizes what you already have running (although it can simulate adding a keyword if you input it). Essentially, it’s a specialist tool, and it’s free for any Google Ads user.

SEMrush PPC Tools:

SEMrush, on the other hand, provides a broader external toolkit for PPC planning and research. It’s not tied to your Google Ads account data (unless you import some), but rather it draws on SEMrush’s own databases and competitive intelligence. Key features of SEMrush’s Advertising toolkit include: keyword research for PPC, competitor analysis, ad copy research, and even campaign management features. For example, SEMrush lets you uncover your competitors’ top keywords, see their ad copies and landing pages, and estimate their ad spend on Google (Source -> Semrush).

It can also help organize your keywords into campaigns and ad groups with its PPC Keyword Tool, suggesting negative keywords and helping structure ads for better Quality Scores. In short, SEMrush is fantastic for the planning and research phase: identifying opportunities (new keywords, gaps in your strategy, competitive benchmarks) and even using AI to help write ads or manage bids across Google and Meta from one dashboard. However, what SEMrush doesn’t do is simulate your exact campaign performance the way Performance Planner does. SEMrush might tell you, for instance, that a certain keyword has 5,000 monthly searches and an average CPC of $2.00, so you can estimate spend – but it won’t automatically tell you “increase your budget by 20% and you’ll get X more conversions” for your specific account. It lacks the direct integration to know your conversion rates or the dynamic auction simulations.

Think of SEMrush as a strategic planner’s toolbox: it gives you market insights and helps you build better campaigns from the ground up, even across multiple platforms. It even allows managing campaigns (there are features to launch and optimize Google/Facebook ads through SEMrush’s interface), acting almost like a third-party ad manager.

Key Differences: Google’s Performance Planner is hyper-focused on optimizing within Google Ads using real performance data and AI forecasting, whereas SEMrush’s tools are broad and exploratory, using external data to guide your PPC strategy. Performance Planner automatically gives prescriptive advice (“do this with your budget for best results on Google”). SEMrush provides descriptive and comparative data (e.g., “competitor A spends an estimated $10k on these keywords; here are some keywords you’re missing; here’s how your ad ranks vs others”).

Another difference is scope: Performance Planner is limited to Google campaigns only, while SEMrush covers Google Ads, Microsoft Ads, and even social ads for research and management – but at a less granular forecasting level. Also, SEMrush is a paid service (with subscription plans), whereas Performance Planner is free. A savvy marketer might use both in tandem: first use SEMrush to discover new keyword ideas or spy on competitors (to expand or refine campaigns), then use Google’s Performance Planner to fine-tune the budget and bids of those campaigns for maximum ROI.

In summary, Performance Planner vs. SEMrush isn’t an either/or – they serve different needs. If you want hands-on forecasting for an existing Google Ads account, go with Performance Planner. If you want big-picture planning, competitor insights, and multi-platform PPC management, SEMrush is your friend. The Performance Planner’s recommendations will be more directly actionable for immediate budget tweaks, while SEMrush’s insights will inform your overall PPC strategy and give context beyond your own data (Source -> Semrush).

Conclusion

The Google Ads Performance Planner is like having a knowledgeable co-pilot for your PPC campaigns. It automatically analyzes your data, runs forecasts, and hands you an actionable plan to achieve better results. In an environment where every click and dollar counts, the Planner empowers marketers to make data-backed decisions rather than educated guesses. By clearly defining “if you spend $X more, you can get Y more conversions” (or vice versa), it brings transparency and confidence to campaign planning. This means less wasted spend and more opportunities captured – whether that’s boosting holiday sales, increasing lead volume, or improving overall ROAS with Google’s planner recommendations.

Importantly, Performance Planner doesn’t operate in a vacuum. We’ve compared it with tools like Meta’s planner and SEMrush, and it’s clear each has its role. But if you’re heavily invested in Google Ads, not using Performance Planner is like flying blind when you have radar available. It’s a free tool, seamlessly integrated into the platform, and it’s fueled by Google’s best AI and vast dataset. The tone of its suggestions is very much “We’ve identified your ideal plan – would you like to implement it?” – leaving you in control but with expert guidance.

As a helpful SORTED FIRMS salesperson would tell any marketer: using Performance Planner can save you money and unlock growth by revealing the sweet spots in your campaigns.

In conclusion, Google Ads Performance Planner automatically does the heavy analytical lifting to show you the road ahead. It forecasts outcomes, recommends how to adjust bids and budgets, and effectively takes the trial-and-error out of campaign optimization. For marketers aiming to maximize every penny of their PPC budget (and who isn’t?), it’s a must-use tool. Take advantage of it to optimize PPC campaigns, forecast your Google Ads budget needs, and confidently drive better results. And remember, tools like this are most powerful when combined with your own marketing intuition and strategy. Performance Planner gives you the map – but you choose the destination and route based on what’s best for your business. Happy planning, and may your campaigns reach new heights of success!

FAQs about Google Ads Performance Planner

Q1: Is Google Ads Performance Planner free to use?

A: Yes – Performance Planner is completely free for anyone running Google Ads campaigns. It’s a built-in feature within the Google Ads platform (under the Tools & Settings menu, in the “Planning” section). There’s no extra cost or premium version; you can use it as long as your campaigns meet the basic requirements (for example, having enough data for Google to make a forecast). Even if you’re a smaller advertiser, as soon as you have a few weeks of consistent campaign performance, this tool is available to help you plan ahead without any fees.

Q2: Does Performance Planner automatically implement changes to my campaigns?

A: No, Performance Planner does not make any automatic changes to your live campaigns. It provides forecasts and recommendations (like suggested budgets or bid adjustments), but it’s up to you to apply those changes if you choose. Think of the planner as a simulation and planning tool – it tells you what it would do for an ideal outcome, but it leaves the execution in your hands. You can manually update your campaigns according to the plan, or use the option to download an editable file (for Google Ads Editor) to implement the changes. This design ensures you stay in control. Your campaigns won’t suddenly shift or spend more because you ran a plan; they only change if you apply the plan’s recommendations.

Q3: How accurate are the forecasts provided by Performance Planner?

A: In general, Performance Planner’s forecasts are considered quite reliable because they’re based on advanced machine learning and up-to-date data. Google refreshes the forecast models daily and uses the latest 7-10 days of auction data, adjusted for seasonality and market trends. In practice, many marketers find the projections for metrics like conversions or clicks to be in the ballpark of actual results if the suggested plan is implemented. Of course, no forecasting tool can predict the future with 100% accuracy – unexpected events (market changes, new competitors, etc.) can cause actual performance to differ.

However, Google has built the planner to continuously learn and improve its predictions (it compares forecast vs actual and fine-tunes its models). The result is surprisingly precise estimations under normal conditions. We recommend using the forecasts as a guiding light rather than a guarantee. They’re very useful for directionally understanding what will likely happen. And you can increase accuracy by always ensuring your conversion tracking is solid (since bad or missing data in your account can affect forecasts). In summary, trust the planner’s forecasts as educated predictions – they’re among the best you can get – but also monitor your campaigns and use your judgment as things play out.

Q4: What campaigns are eligible or work best with Performance Planner?

A: Performance Planner works for a variety of campaign types in Google Ads, but not every single campaign will be eligible. The tool is most commonly used for Search campaigns (text ads on Google Search) and Standard Shopping campaigns, as well as Performance Max campaigns. It also supports Display campaigns (both standard and Smart Display) and App campaigns, given certain criteria. Key eligibility requirements include having a consistent history of data – usually at least 1-2 weeks of running time with a minimum number of clicks and conversions. For example, a Search campaign needs to have run for at least 72 hours and accrued a few conversions in the last 7 days to get a reliable forecast. If a campaign is too new or has very little data, the planner might not allow you to create a plan for it (it will label such campaigns as “not forecastable” until they have more history). Additionally, certain bid strategies or campaign types (like Smart campaigns, or Video campaigns for now) may not be supported in the planner. Generally, manual or standard automated bidding campaigns with clear conversion tracking enabled will work best. If your campaign doesn’t meet the requirements, you can try again after it gathers more data. Google Ads will typically guide you – when you open Performance Planner, it will show a list of which campaigns are eligible to include. And you can always group campaigns with similar goals into one plan. So, the bottom line: ensure your campaigns have some stable performance data (and conversion tracking) before using the planner for the most meaningful insights.

Q5: How often should I use Performance Planner for my campaigns?

A: It’s a good practice to use Performance Planner on a regular planning cycle – many marketers use it monthly or quarterly when setting budgets and targets. You might run a new plan at the start of each month to see if you can squeeze more out of your budget or to adjust for any changes in conversion trends. If your business is affected by seasonal trends or promotions, you’ll want to use the planner a few weeks in advance of those periods (for example, plan in late Q3 for the Q4 holiday season push, as in our example earlier). Google itself suggests that if markets are volatile, plan more frequently (even weekly) (support.google.com), so you can stay agile with the latest data.

At minimum, consider running it whenever you’re about to make significant changes – like increasing budget, entering a new quarter, or setting next year’s ad spend – to inform those decisions. The tool only takes a few minutes to run and can prevent costly missteps, so there’s little downside to using it often. That said, you don’t need to obsessively plan every day; allow your campaigns to gather fresh data for a week or two to feed into new forecasts. A practical approach: incorporate Performance Planner into your monthly optimization routine, and do an extra run for special events or big strategy shifts. Regular use ensures you’re always a step ahead with a clear view of the road ahead for your Google Ads.