Google is rolling out asset experiments for Performance Max, letting advertisers test asset groups, individual assets and seasonal versus evergreen creative. It is a rare look inside the black box that runs much of Google Ads spend.
Performance Max finally lets you ask which of your creative is actually working, instead of trusting the machine and hoping.
Google is rolling out asset experiments for Performance Max, the campaign type that hides most of its decisions from the advertiser paying for them. The new tools let you test entirely new asset groups, measure the impact of adding a single asset, or pit seasonal creative against evergreen. You can also test assets built in Google's own Asset Studio.
Conversion lift studies and experiments now sit together under one Experiments page. Support for manager accounts and the Google Ads API is coming in the following weeks. It is a small crack of daylight into a campaign type that has frustrated advertisers since launch.
The ways advertisers can now test Performance Max creative: new asset groups, individual assets and seasonal versus evergreen. Source: Search Engine Land, June 2026.
Why it matters
Performance Max eats a large share of Australian Google Ads budgets, and until now it ran as a black box. You fed it assets and a goal and trusted the output. Trusting a system you cannot see is how money leaks without anyone noticing.
Proper asset testing changes the question from how is the campaign doing to which specific creative is pulling its weight. That is the difference between flying blind and getting under the hood. The catch is that testing only helps if you act on what it tells you.
What to do about it
The black box just opened a little. Use the visibility while you have it, because the next update could close it again.