What are Search Themes?

Google’s explanation:

Performance Max currently looks at your assets, feeds, and landing pages to predict which placements, including search queries, will perform well for your campaign. Now with the search themes beta, you can fill in gaps by adding information about your business that you expect to perform well. By combining your expertise with Google AI you’ll be able to expand your reach on all channels, including Search.

Here are a few examples where search themes can be especially helpful if you have knowledge about your business or customers that AI can’t easily or quickly learn:

• Your landing page doesn’t have complete details or the latest updates about the products and services you offer.
• You’ve just expanded into a new market or launched a new product or service where your campaigns don’t have extensive performance history.
• You are launching a new promotion or sale for the holiday season where you don’t have extensive performance history.
• You want to expand your reach within Performance Max—including on Search inventory in Performance Max—and ensure you have comprehensive coverage on important business themes.
• You want to provide important information to help your campaign ramp up and optimize performance faster.

When you add search themes, you’re telling Google AI you want to reach that traffic in your Performance Max campaign across all Google Ads inventory including Search, YouTube, Gmail, Discover, Maps, and Display. Search themes also help you find audiences across channels based on users’ search behavior.

https://support.google.com/google-ads/answer/14179631#:~:text=In early 2024%2C we'll,interests will still be available.

<aside> 💡 Simple Explanation: Search Themes are just a new additional signal that help bridge the gap between what Google will know what to target based on your landing pages, assets, or product feed

</aside>

How they work?

Google’s Explanation:

Here’s how it works:

• *Search themes let you indicate queries that you know your customers are looking for. They are optional and are additive to what queries Performance Max would match you to using your URLs, assets, and more.*
• You can add up to 25 search themes per asset group.
• Search themes will respect brand exclusions in Performance Max and account-level negative keywords.
• Results driven from search themes will bring your customers to the landing pages you’ve indicated via your [Final URL expansion](https://support.google.com/sa360/answer/12367110?#:~:text=Final URL expansion helps you,matches your landing page content.), page feeds, and URL contains settings.
• Search themes will have the same prioritization as your phrase match and broad match keywords in your Search campaigns.