Most B2B accounts are one Search campaign trying to do everything. It captures the people already typing your category into Google, and then it stops. The setup that actually fills a pipeline splits the work across three campaigns, each pointed at a different audience: new, competitor, and warm.
Campaign 1: Search, for new, in-market demand
Search is the foundation. It puts you in front of people who are actively searching your category right now, the highest-intent, highest-cost clicks you can buy. But that's also its ceiling: it only reaches people already looking. On its own, it's the top of a funnel with no sides and no bottom.
Campaign 2: Performance Max, for competitors
Your highest-quality traffic is often the people already using a competitor. They have the use case, the budget, and the intent, they just picked someone else. Performance Max is how you go get them, and it's more controllable than its "black box" reputation suggests. You feed it three things:
- Competitor brands and category terms as search themes.
- A custom segment of people who browse competitor websites and use their apps.
- Negative keywords to keep it clean and off your own brand.
PMax then works that orbit across all of Google: Search, YouTube, Display, Gmail, Maps and Discover. Given the right signals, it stops being a black box and starts being your competitor-conquest engine. One caveat: that reach also means it leaks onto mobile app placements, so you have to cage the app inventory or it quietly burns budget on games.
Campaign 3: Display retargeting, now inside Demand Gen
Someone clicked a Search ad, landed, and left without converting. You already paid for that visit, and most accounts just let it evaporate. Dedicated Display retargeting re-engages those visitors for a fraction of a Search click, and Google lets you keep them in the audience for up to 540 days. It's the cheapest pipeline you'll ever buy, because the audience is already warm. One change to plan for: Google is moving Display campaigns into Demand Gen, so new builds should be a Demand Gen campaign with the Display Network selected. Here is what does and doesn't survive that move.
Why one campaign stalls
Three audiences: new (searching), competitor (considering), and warm (already visited). A single Search campaign serves only the first. You pay to fill the top of the funnel and have no way to catch what leaks out of it, no conquest of the buyers hovering around competitors, no second chance at the visitors who bounced. The three-campaign mix is simply a funnel that closes.
This is core to how we run Google Ads: a deliberate structure where every campaign owns one audience and one job, instead of one campaign asked to do all three badly.
The takeaways
- The B2B setup that fills pipeline is three campaigns, not one.
- Search for new, in-market demand, Performance Max for competitors, Display retargeting (now built in Demand Gen).
- Target competitors in PMax with search themes, a custom segment of competitor-site browsers, and negative keywords.
- Retarget bounced visitors cheaply with Display retargeting, now built as a Demand Gen campaign, for up to 540 days.
Common questions
How many campaigns do you need for B2B Google Ads?
Three, each pointed at a different audience: a Search campaign for new, in-market demand, a Performance Max campaign for competitor conquest, and Display retargeting of site visitors, which Google now builds inside Demand Gen. Most accounts run only Search and leave the other two audiences untouched.
How do you target competitors in Performance Max?
Add competitor brands and category terms as search themes, build a custom segment of people who browse competitor websites, and apply negative keywords to keep the campaign clean. Performance Max then serves those audiences across Search, YouTube, Display, Gmail, Maps and Discover.
Why run separate Display retargeting?
Dedicated Display retargeting re-engages people who visited but didn't convert for a fraction of a Search click, and Google allows remarketing for up to 540 days. It is the cheapest pipeline you can buy, because the audience is already warm. Google is moving Display campaigns into Demand Gen, so build it as a Demand Gen campaign with the Display Network selected.