PMAX vs. Standard Shopping: The $80K Test That Shocked Us

Perpetual Traffic

Tier 11

Marketing, Business, Entrepreneurship

4.8 • 849 Ratings

🗓️ 7 October 2025

⏱️ 26 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Ready to scale your ads with precision? Apply now to access Tier 11’s expert strategies and unlock smarter, data-driven growth for your business!

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Are you struggling to scale your Google Ads campaigns without losing profitability? In this episode, we compare Standard Shopping and Performance Max campaigns, two of Google Ads' most popular scaling strategies.

After moving $40,000 between the two strategies, John Moran breaks down the performance data, including customer acquisition, return on ad spend (ROAS), and conversion rates. The results show that while PMax often promises more efficient scaling, Standard Shopping consistently delivers similar, if not better, results in certain scenarios.

Whether you're an agency or a solo marketer, understanding the strengths and weaknesses of each approach can lead to smarter, more profitable ad strategies. Join the conversation now and start scaling your Google Ads the right way!

In this episode:

- Introduction to the ad flow funnel

- Standard Shopping vs. Performance Max for scaling

- Testing $40K swings between campaigns

- Differences in results between PMax and standard shopping

- Why Performance Max fails at scale

- Final verdict: Standard Shopping wins at scaling

Listen to this episode on your favorite podcast channel:

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We appreciate your support!

Visit our website: https://perpetualtraffic.com/

Connect with John Moran:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/johnmorangads

Connect with Ralph Burns:

LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/ralphburns
Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/ralphhburns/
Hire Tier11 - https://www.tiereleven.com/apply-now

Connect with Lauren Petrullo:

Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/laurenepetrullo/

Transcript

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0:00.0	What's better standard shopping and performance max for scaling to a customer acquisition, still standard shopping.
0:04.8	Today we're going to be breaking down what we refer to as the ad flow funnel, and that is the system.
0:10.1	We use to scale spend from $37,000 a month to $100,000 a month while actually lowering NCA.
0:17.1	I have actually a perfect swing of $40,000 going one way versus the other number one.
0:23.7	You're listening to Perpetual Traffic.
0:30.3	All right, I get it. You're a small business, you're a startup, you're a lean team.
0:33.8	Everyone's doing dozens of different things and you've got to move fast and be smart to
0:38.0	compete with the big guys and the big gals. You've seen their endless resources. You know they
0:43.9	are power. They have more money than you. But you can level the playing field and all their
0:49.8	data scientists and their massive teams. Finally, the secret weapon that you have is active campaign
0:58.2	AI. The active campaign AI suite is built exactly for you, the small business, the startup,
1:04.9	the lean team. It's the secret weapon that saves the average user up to 13 hours a week. Just think of what you could do
1:12.3	with 13 hours a week. It's not about saving time on writing. It's about getting predictive
1:16.8	insights that used to be out of your reach from predicting which deals are most likely to close
1:22.8	to generating on-brand content in seconds from the AI brand kit.
1:28.6	Active Campaign puts enterprise-level capabilities in your hands.
1:32.9	Compete smarter, not harder.
1:35.5	Discover the power of autonomous marketing with ActiveCampaign.
1:39.0	Go to ActiveCampaign.com to get started today.
1:42.6	Hello, and welcome to the perpetual traffic podcast.
1:45.6	This is your host, Ralph Burns, founder, and CEO of Tier 11.
1:49.6	And today's show is one of the past episodes of the Tier 11 ad lab, where we tackled
	...

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