Imagine you’ve just hired a world-class chef for your restaurant in Fortitude Valley. You give them a blank cheque, point to the kitchen, and say, “Make people happy.”
Two weeks later, you find out they’ve been serving free caviar to everyone who walked past the front door. Sure, the customers are ‘happy’ and the restaurant is full, but your bank account is empty.
This is exactly what happens when Australian business owners treat Google’s Performance Max (PMax) as a ‘set and forget’ miracle. In 2026, the myth that “the AI knows best” is the single biggest contributor to wasted digital marketing budgets.
At Local Marketing Group, we’ve seen too many Brisbane businesses hand over the keys to the kingdom, only to find the AI has been taking the easy route. Let’s bust the most dangerous myths about PMax and look at how to actually pull the strings.
Myth 1: PMax Finds New Customers Automatically
One of our clients, a boutique furniture retailer on the Gold Coast, was thrilled with their PMax ROAS (Return on Ad Spend). It looked incredible on paper. But when we dug into the data, we found a glaring issue: the AI was heavily targeting people who had already visited their website three times.
Google was essentially claiming credit for sales that were going to happen anyway. To fix this, you must explicitly tell the AI to prioritise new customer acquisition. If you don't define your segmentation strategies within the campaign settings, the algorithm will naturally gravitate toward ‘warm’ audiences because they are the easiest to convert.
The Fix: Use the ‘New Customer Acquisition’ goal. Upload your existing customer list as an exclusion or a signal, forcing the AI to hunt in fresh territory rather than cannibalising your organic traffic.
Myth 2: More Creative Assets Always Equal Better Results
Google loves to tell you that your “Ad Strength” is poor because you haven't uploaded 20 different images and five videos. This is a trap.
If you provide mediocre assets just to tick a box, Google will serve those mediocre assets. We recently audited a Brisbane-based service business that had uploaded generic stock photos of people shaking hands. The AI spent 40% of the budget on these images because they had a slightly higher click-through rate, but they resulted in zero actual leads.
Instead of quantity, focus on engineering higher ROAS by aligning your creative with the specific stage of the buyer's journey. High-quality, local imagery of your actual team or Brisbane shopfront will almost always outperform a generic 'perfect' stock photo.
Myth 3: PMax Understands Your Seasonal Nuances
While Google’s AI is powerful, it doesn't live in the real world. It doesn't know that a sudden heatwave in South East Queensland will spike demand for pool services, nor does it inherently understand why your Christmas strategy fails if you apply it to the mid-year slump.
If you leave PMax to its own devices during a seasonal shift, it will rely on historical data that is no longer relevant.
The Fix: Use Seasonality Adjustments. This is a manual tool within Google Ads where you tell the AI: “Expect a 30% increase in conversion rate for the next 4 days.” This prevents the algorithm from over-correcting or being too slow to react to local market shifts.
Myth 4: You Can’t Control Where Your Ads Appear
The biggest complaint about PMax is the “Black Box” nature of it. Business owners fear their ads are appearing on junk mobile apps or irrelevant YouTube channels.
While you can’t see every single placement with the same granularity as old-school search campaigns, you are not powerless. You can—and should—implement Account-Level Negative Keywords.
If you are a high-end law firm in the CBD, you don't want your ads appearing for searches like “free legal templates.” By adding these negatives at the account level, you steer the PMax ship away from the rocky shoals of low-intent traffic.
Actionable Takeaways for Brisbane Business Owners
1. Audit your 'Brand' traffic: Check if PMax is just bidding on your own business name. If so, create a brand exclusion list to ensure you aren't paying for clicks you’d get for free via SEO. 2. Feed the machine better data: Instead of just tracking 'Form Fills', track 'Qualified Leads'. If you feed the AI junk data, it will find you more junk. 3. Review your Asset Groups monthly: Don't just look at the total campaign performance. Look at which specific headlines and images are performing and swap out the bottom 20%.
Conclusion
Performance Max is a tool, not a strategy. It is the engine of your digital marketing vehicle, but you still need to be the one with your hands on the steering wheel and eyes on the road. By challenging the myth of total automation, you can reclaim your budget and ensure your ads are working for your business—not just for Google’s bottom line.
Ready to stop the waste and start scaling? Let the experts at Local Marketing Group help you fine-tune your Google Ads for the Brisbane market. Contact us today to book a strategy audit.