Google Ads Channel Settings Prioritization Slider Now in Alpha Testing
TLDR
Google is testing an alpha-stage channel priority slider in Google Ads that lets advertisers adjust how much budget Performance Max campaigns allocate to specific channels like Search, YouTube, and Display.
Optimixed Overview
Optimixed's original report on this story.
Google is testing a new channel-prioritization slider in Google Ads that allows advertisers to fine-tune how Performance Max campaigns distribute conversions and spend across different channels—Search, Google Partners, Discover, Maps, YouTube, Display Network, and Gmail. The slider lets users adjust a channel's CPA target up or down, relaxing it for higher-priority channels and tightening it for lower-priority ones. As SERoundtable notes, the feature is currently in alpha and designed to help advertisers steer the algorithm away from underperforming channels more quickly than it would optimize on its own, though users should account for attribution blind spots across the customer journey.
The Attribution Risk Practitioners Are Flagging With This Feature
The feature is drawing cautious interest from paid search practitioners rather than unqualified enthusiasm. Heidi Sturrock, who shared the test on LinkedIn, noted it could help in a specific scenario: when a campaign's automated bidding gets stuck over-investing in an underperforming channel, giving advertisers a way to manually correct course.
But she also flagged a structural risk that applies to Performance Max broadly, not just this new control: PMax is built to work across the full customer journey, where a user might first encounter a brand through a YouTube ad and only convert days later through a Search ad. Judged purely on which channel gets credited for the final conversion, YouTube's contribution in that scenario would look weak — even though it did real work earlier in the funnel. Tightening a channel's priority based on that incomplete picture risks cutting off demand elsewhere in the campaign rather than actually eliminating waste.
The feature is currently in alpha, meaning it isn't broadly available yet, and Google hasn't said when or whether it will move beyond limited testing.