Google's Performance Max help page now says a campaign needs "at least 15 conversions over 30 days" to perform steadily. For a small account, that gives you a written benchmark to check your numbers against, but the page doesn't say which conversions count.
What changed
Google added the sentence to the second of ten reasons on its troubleshooting page for Performance Max fluctuations. PPC News Feed reported it on November 1, 2026, and PPC Land picked it up. The page carries no date, so Google hasn't said when the wording was added. One agency reported that an archived copy from June 8, 2026 had no threshold at all. I haven't been able to check that archive myself.
The section ties the number to Smart Bidding, which depends on the conversion data your tags send back. Google warns that late or missing data can cause "spend spikes or low ROAS," and says the system can recover as delayed data processes. It doesn't say how long recovery takes.
The number isn't new. Google's Target ROAS page has used 15 conversions in 30 days for Search and Shopping for some time, counted at the conversion tracking level. Most other campaign types have higher bars.
Show the numbers
| Measure | Change |
|---|---|
| Target ROAS, Search and Shopping (30 days) | +15% |
| Target ROAS, Display (30 days) | +15% |
| Video action (30 days) | +30% |
| Demand Gen (35 days) | +50% |
| Hotel (per week) | +50% |
| Travel (7 days) | +50% |
| App (30 days) | +300% |
Source: Google Ads Help, via PPC Land
What it means for you
If you run Performance Max and record fewer than about 15 conversions in a typical month, this is for you. Your spend and returns may swing, and Google now says so in writing.
You can mostly ignore it if you get hundreds of conversions a month. Your campaigns sit well above the line.
The page doesn't say Google will restrict, pause or flag a campaign below 15 conversions. The real cost of doing nothing is misreading the swings. You might change bids or budgets in response to noise from thin data, or miss a broken tag that's causing the swings.
The money is simple arithmetic. Fifteen conversions in 30 days is one every two days. At $40 per conversion, that's about $600 a month, or $20 a day. At $150 per conversion, it's about $2,250 a month, or $75 a day.
What to do
- Count your conversions honestly. Pull the last 30 days of conversions for each Performance Max campaign, then for the whole account. Google hasn't said which level it applies, so check both.
- Check your tracking before your bids. Google's detail page points to the conversion tracking status troubleshooter and the conversion lag report. Run both before you change anything. Google's detail page allows conversions to be reported up to 90 days after the click, so recent numbers may still be filling in.
- Look for a recent site change. A tag that stopped firing after a website update, or one that fires twice, looks like exactly the kind of sudden change the page describes.
- Use Explanations first. Google describes this feature as comparing your selected date range with the previous period of the same length. Read the cause it gives before you touch budgets.
- Check channel controls if a channel has gone quiet. Google introduced channel prioritization on October 14, 2026, with rollout from October 15. You can rank channels High or Low priority and cap Low-priority spend as a percentage of your average daily budget. Two days later, Google's Ads Product Liaison Ginny Marvin wrote that Search partner spend can be set to 0%. The troubleshooting page mentions neither control, so use the controls on their own terms.
If you're not sure your conversions are counting the way you think they are, I can run a free scan of your account and show you what I see.
Scan my site