What data you need to get PMax reaaaally working
What data infrastructure you need to succeed with Google Performance Max and Meta Advantage +.
Your Performance Max campaigns are hitting their CAC target. Volume is there, the dashboard looks fine. Then sales tells you the leads are worthless, or your trials are climbing while activation stays flat.
The standard reading is that this is a funnel problem: the leads are fine, the nurture is weak, we need better onboarding and better follow-up. It's the wrong diagnosis. The platform optimises toward whatever conversion signal you send it. Send a flat "lead" or a flat "trial started" and it finds the cheapest ones available, because that's what you asked for. The people who don't convert aren't leaking out of the funnel. They're exactly who you ordered.
We will cover:
The two symptoms, lead gen and subscription, and why the funnel diagnosis sends both your budget and your effort in the wrong direction
Why automated buying is worth using at all, and which controls you gave up to get it
What a flat CPA target costs you: the $100 lead that never enters the funnel because it would take a $10 CAC to win
The difference between tCPA and tROAS, and why you can't run tROAS without value data
What the value model is doing, at marketer level, not engineer level
The five requirements for sending a predicted value: the warehouse, the model, the pipeline back to the platform, ROAS reporting, and a named owner
Predicted value isn't a default playbook, and we'll say so. It earns its place when conversions land long after the click, or when lifetime value varies a lot between users. If your value doesn't vary much and your conversions land inside the attribution window, this probably isn't worth the effort, and part of the session is a test you can apply to yourself to find out.
Who should attend
Marketers who own paid media budget decisions and are running Performance Max or Advantage+, or about to: marketing leads, growth, performance marketers, marketing ops. The data and analytics people supporting them will get value too, but the session is framed for the marketing side of the table throughout.
It will be especially useful if you're hitting target CAC while sales calls the leads worthless, your trial volume is up but activation is flat, a rep is pushing you toward automated campaigns, you tried value-based bidding and it didn't stick, or you're about to ask your data team for something and don't know what to ask for.
No coding required. Bring your questions, we'll keep 15 minutes for live Q&A. Capped at 200.
About Barbara and Timo
Barbara leads marketing measurement strategy at Propel. Over the past 10 years she has helped brands like Microsoft, Mollie, and VEED.io answer the question every marketer dreads: what is actually driving results?
Timo leads data engineering at Propel. He builds the tracking systems marketing teams wish they could trust, and has done it for companies like Amplitude, Shimano, Cricut, and Audible