Earlier this year at Google Marketing Live 2025, we came across a new phrase: power packs. While it may sound like something you’d do on a camping trip, it’s actually a collection of campaign types in Google Ads that Google believes will be the next big thing for advertisers.
I’m sure all of you didn’t add to GML this year. (Confession: I didn’t either.) But for those of you who aren’t quite focused on the changing landscape within paid media, we wanted to take a look at what PowerPack is and what it’s intended to do so you can decide whether it’s right for you.
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What is Google Power Pack?
Google Power Pack is a strategy for combining three different campaign types within Google Ads. Two of these are current, Performance Max and Demand General, and one is ongoing in front of advertisers, which is AI Max.
Before we get into the power packs themselves, let’s go over the campaign types that this strategy is based on.
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The three campaigns that make up the Google Power Pack
Google Power Pack uses three campaigns that work together to achieve your goals. To use the Google Power Pack strategy you will need to have it running at the same time.
1. Call for general campaigns
Demand Gen campaigns are designed to do just what their name suggests: create demand for your business. These are a tailored version of discovery campaigns and target customers in YouTube, Gmail, and Discover placements.
These campaigns use a combination of views, custom segments, and first-party data to find your target audience in the Google Network. These campaigns rely heavily on your creative (videos, images, or carousels) and are best for companies that are just trying to generate demand, not necessarily capture it. According to Google, it will come with other campaign types.
2. AI Max Campaigns
AI Max is the latest release in Google Ads. Unlike the other two, It’s not really a campaign type. It actually is one You can enable a set of controls within search campaigns To take advantage of more Google automation and find your target customers..
AI Max is (or will be) a simple toggle that lives in Settings For each search campaign in your account. By toggling on it, you will choose between:
- Search term matches: A new type of extended match that combines functionality for dynamic search ads as well as broad match keyword elements, such as asset targeting and landing page content.
- Final URL extension: Allows Google to send users to different pages on your site if it deems them more relevant than your current landing page. This is a functionality that lives in Performance Max campaigns.
- Text customization: It uses text from existing ads, landing page copy, and assets with Google’s Generative AI to come up with potentially more customized copy that may be more relevant to the user’s query.
- Places of Interest: Defines some locations (at the AD group level) that users may be interested in, even as a target.
Other features are still present in AIMax campaigns that are available in regular search campaigns, such as brand settings and costs for URL inclusion and URL expansion.
3. Performance optimization campaigns
Performance Max campaigns are powered by Google’s AI and designed to reach your target audience across all Google family networks. Everything from search to YouTube to the Google Display Network is included.
These campaigns are driven by a combination of audience signals, creative assets, and product feeds to deliver dynamic ad creatives to your target audience when Google thinks they’re most likely to convert.
Optimizing performance campaigns for e-commerce accounts is usually easy, but we’ve seen success with lead generation campaigns when you follow some simple best practices.
Performance Max’s primary goal is to drive conversions across all Google-owned properties for your account, and they need to track conversions to deliver those results.
How Google Power Pack brings these three campaigns together
Here’s a quick recap of the goals for each election type:
- Demand General Creates awareness and interest in your business and products.
- Hey Max Engages users in search to capture and convert their intent.
- Performance max Orchestrates full funnel performance at scale.
With each campaign type having its own objectives, Google envisions them as ideal complements to each other.
Demand Gen feeds AI Max and Performance Max more by generating more awareness and interest for your company. AIMax ensures you’re effectively converting bottom-of-the-funnel intent, and PerformanceMax reinforces those results across all platforms, regularly engaging users and driving them to action.
Considerations and Best Practices for Google Power Pack
Now, while Google may be really keen on the new Power Pack, that doesn’t mean it will work perfectly for all advertisers. It also doesn’t mean that the setup will take care of itself. You, as an advertiser, need to do something to give this machine the best chance to work.
Along with the best ways to use Google’s Power Pack, here are a few things to consider.
Conversion tracking is non-negotiable
While Demand is designed to create general awareness and will only occasionally drive conversions, AIMax and PerformanceMax rely heavily on these success points to know when and where to target your customers.
Both campaign types will take advantage of the Smart Bidding strategy of Maximize Conversions, Maximize Conversion Cost, Target CPA, or Target RAA. Without conversion tracking in place (and ideally 30-50 conversions that flow into your account each month), you won’t see the results you’re looking for with these campaign types.
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Creatives are more important than ever
All of these campaign types rely heavily on compelling copy and creative to attract and convert their customers. Without strong creatives, even with a dynamic service, Google will have a hard time getting a return.
Input is required on targeting
While the results from conversion tracking will help guide Google who serves your ads, it’s still strongly recommended that you take advantage of all the targeting input you can. This can be first-party data in the form of uploads or third-party data based on your website pixels and Google Analytics 4 accounts.
You can’t set it and forget it
As with everything in advertising, the landscape is always changing, and you never know what strategies will and won’t work for you until you try them. Furthermore, what works now certainly won’t work forever, and although it may seem strange, tests that fail now may actually perform better in the future. Keep your creatives fresh, add new audience inputs, take advantage of new features, and always keep your strategy in tune with the environment.
Start taking advantage of Google Power Pack today
In Google’s new Power Pack, each campaign type has a role to play in creating a complete funnel marketing machine for your business. While each of these campaigns can perform well on their own, Google believes the real power lies in leveraging them together. Feed automation well, and it can help drive your business and transform your digital marketing approach. For more ways to take advantage of the Google Ads Power Pack, see how our solutions can help!