Pmax automated: Give your products the last chance with Underperformers campaign

Define the criteria for a product to be considered underperforming

There is no universal answer for when a product is considered underperforming, but it should meet these criteria:

• Your ad system has discovered the product and generated sufficient impressions or clicks
• The product spent enough budget
• The product has not met the performance requirements of the main campaign

If a product has no or low clicks/impressions, it should be considered "dead," and you should run a Zombie campaign instead. You also need to ensure that the product had a fair chance to prove itself, but still didn’t perform after some budget was spent.

The goal of the Underperformers campaign(s) is to give your products one last chance to shine and return to the main campaigns. The algorithms of the main campaigns might not favor them, but giving them a chance could put their performance back on track.

This campaign also puts a spotlight on weak products, giving you valuable feedback that can be used to optimize your main campaigns. For example, if most underperforming products come from a single category, your Category Asset Groups might need an upgrade.

What’s the right performance benchmark

The appropriate limit should be based on the main campaign structure you're using. Since it’s always performance-driven, one of the following two benchmarks should align with your strategy:

Not meeting the minimum ROAS

This one is quite simple. A ROAS of 1 or 100% means that for every 1 USD spent, you earn 1 USD in revenue. Anything below that (90%, 80%, 70%, etc.) results in a loss. Generally, anything below 100% falls into the "underperformer" category.

However, 100% is not a universal benchmark. Consider these main campaigns:

• PMAX - High Performance (600%+ ROAS)
• PMAX - Medium Performance (400%+ ROAS)
• PMAX - Low Performance (200%+ ROAS)

In this case, you might want to consider any product with a ROAS below 200% as a potential underperformer.

Losing money due to a negative POAS metric

I guess you all know what POAS means, but let me remind you if not. POAS (Profit on Ad Spend) measures how much profit you earn for every unit of currency spent on advertising. It’s calculated as Profit ÷ Ad Spend and helps determine the true profitability of campaigns:

• POAS > 1 - you earn money for your products
• POAS < 1 - you lose money when advertising the product

In this case, anything below 1 could be considered underperforming. However, depending on your main strategy, you might choose to set the threshold at 1.2 or another value.

Important: Do not forget the minimum ad spend

You don’t want to move products from your main campaign if they haven’t had a proper chance to deliver results. A product shouldn’t be considered an underperformer if it has only spent, for example, 2 USD in total.

Every product deserves a fair shot. Therefore, you need to define a minimum ad spend criteria based on the spend of your main campaigns.

One or more campaigns for underperforming product

It’s entirely up to you and your budget. Most companies run just one campaign, but you can also create multiple campaigns and name them something like “Poor,” “Bad,” or “Sucks” if that helps you organize them better.

For our example, let’s go with two Underperforming campaigns:

• PMAX - Underperformers: In this campaign, I consider a product underperforming if its ROAS is between 100% and 199%. The target ROAS for this campaign is set to 300%.
• PMAX - Losers: This campaign includes all products with a ROAS of 99% or lower. The budget allocated here will be lower than for the Underperformers campaign, and the goal will be less ambitious—around 200%.

Setup in Dotidot

STEP 1 - import the ROAS metric from Google Ads

To build a ROAS-based PMAX structure, you first need to calculate the metric, as it cannot be directly imported from Google Ads. Instead, you will need to import both required metrics from Google Ads first:

• Metric “Conversion value” will automatically create a variable called _ads_last_60d_conversion_value_
• Metric “Price” (= costs) will automatically create a variable called _ads_last_60d_price_

Let's jump into importing this data to Dotidot: 

1. Navigate to "Data Sources" and select the data source for your upcoming campaign.
2. Go to the "Data Enrichment" and choose "Google Ads product stats"
3. Name the enrichment whatever you like.
4. Select the correct mapping key between your data source and Google Ads — usually Product_ID.
5. In the Data Selection section, choose Price and Conversion Value.In the Time Range section, select a period that provides enough data — in this case, we'll go with 60 days.

STEP 2 - calculate the ROAS

Next, you need to create a new variable that calculates ROAS from the additional data using this formula: (Revenue / cost)*100 = ROAS %

With this in mind, create ROAS % variable:

1. Navigate to your data source
2. Go to Variables section and click “+”
3. Choose Numeric variable
4. Name it appropriately so you can easily identify it later in your data source. We’ll use “ROAS_percentage”
5. In the Input field, replicate the formula above using data from your source
   (See the image below for how it should look)

STEP 3 - segment your products

This is the most important step, as you need to combine your conditions correctly. Your goal is to:

• Include products that aren’t delivering the expected performance
• Define a minimum ad spend to ensure the product had a fair chance, in our case the ad spend should be higher than 100 USD

Let’s create your product sets:

1. Navigate to (or stay in) your Data Source.
2. Go to the Product Sets section and click “+” to create a new set.
3. Name the set (e.g., “Underperformers” or any name you prefer).
4. For the first condition, select the variable containing the calculated ROAS percentage and set the condition: ROAS is greater than 99% and less than 200%.
5. For the second condition, select the ad spend variable and set it to greater than 99.

Done! Now repeat the process for the "Losers" product set. The only difference is in the ROAS condition — set it to less than 100%, the budget condition remains the same.

STEP 4 - Build campaigns

The final step is the simplest: build your campaigns based on created product sets: 

• PMAX – Underperformers: Select the “Underperformers” product set and set the target ROAS to 300%.
• PMAX – Losers: Select the “Losers” product set and set a less ambitious goal—a ROAS around 200%.

TIP: If you need help with the Pmax campaign setup, visit our Knowledge base.

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