Google Ads is no longer a collection of channels. It’s a single, AI-driven demand system, and brands that still operate it as siloed campaigns are quietly falling behind.
Over the last 18–24 months, Google has made its direction unmistakably clear. The platform is converging toward a recommended operating model built around three campaign types:
- Demand Gen
- Performance Max
- AI-enhanced Search
Together, these form what many practitioners now refer to as the “Power Pack” – Google’s preferred full-funnel architecture for discovery, consideration, and capture in an AI-first search environment.
This article is not about what these campaigns are. It’s about how to operate them as a system, how they learn together, and how to avoid the common traps that come with automation at scale.
1. From Channel Management to System Design
Historically, Google Ads was run as a set of discrete levers:
- Search for intent
- Display for reach
- YouTube for awareness
- Shopping for commerce
Each channel had its own KPIs, budgets, and optimization logic. But that model no longer reflects how Google’s AI works.
Today, Google optimizes across surfaces, across intent states, and across formats using shared signals, shared creatives, and shared learning.
The implication is profound:
You’re no longer managing campaigns; you’re designing a learning system.
The Power Pack is Google’s way of formalizing this shift.
2. What the Power Pack Really Is (Conceptually)
At a strategic level, the Power Pack is not three campaign types. Instead, it is three distinct learning roles operating within the same demand system.
- Demand Gen builds future demand signals
- Performance Max converts ambiguous or latent demand
- Search (AI-enhanced) captures inferred intent
They are not sequential. They are interdependent.
When operated correctly:
- Demand Gen increases the volume and quality of downstream searches
- PMax expands reach into users who don’t yet express intent cleanly
- Search captures and validates demand created elsewhere in the system
When operated incorrectly, the system degrades:
- They cannibalize each other
- Learning becomes noisy
- Budget decisions are made on incomplete signals
3. Demand Gen: Demand Creation, Not Just Awareness
Demand Gen is often mispositioned as a replacement for YouTube or paid social. In reality, it plays a much more strategic role within Google’s demand system.
Demand Gen is Google’s primary tool for intent shaping.
Its real value lies in:
- Seeding brand memory
- Building familiarity before explicit search
- Creating future query behaviour
- Influencing consideration before users articulate it
In a Power Pack system, Demand Gen should be judged less on CTR or CPA, and more on:
- Brand search lift
- Assisted conversions
- Incremental contribution to lower-funnel efficiency
If Demand Gen is evaluated purely on last-click performance, it will always look inefficient (and is often turned off just before it starts working).
4. Performance Max: The System Integrator
Performance Max is the bridge between demand creation and demand capture.
It operates in the grey zone:
- Users with weak or emerging intent
- Users influenced by prior exposures
- Users whose intent does not yet map cleanly to keywords
PMax’s role in the Power Pack is not to replace Search; it’s to:
- Expand reach beyond query constraints
- Monetize non-search demand
- Test which creatives and propositions resonate across surfaces
Crucially, PMax learns from the entire system.
If Demand Gen is strong, PMax improves.
If Search is capturing clean signals, PMax sharpens.
This is why PMax performance often deteriorates when budgets are isolated or signals are starved upstream.
5. Search in the Power Pack Era: Still Critical, No Longer Isolated
Search is not disappearing, but it isfundamentally changing.
Historically, paid search was anchored to explicit intent: keywords, queries, and declared demand. Today, that model is increasingly incomplete.
With the introduction of AI-driven enhancements such as AI Max, Search is now optimized across multiple intent signals simultaneously — not just the words a user types, but the broader context around them. This includes behavioural signals, creative signals, landing page content, historical performance, and demand signals generated elsewhere in the system.
In effect, Search is evolving from a keyword-matching engine into a multi-modal intent resolver.
Rather than asking, “Does this keyword match this query?”, the system is increasingly asking,
“Is this the right ad to surface at this moment, given everything we know?”
This has important implications for how Search should be operated inside the Power Pack.
First, Search performance is no longer purely a function of keyword strategy. It is deeply influenced by:
- The quality and clarity of creative inputs
- The strength of upstream demand creation
- The consistency of messaging across formats
- The richness of signals feeding the system
Second, Search should be understood as a validation and conversion layer, not an isolated growth engine. Strong Demand Gen activity improves the quality of inferred intent. Effective Performance Max activity expands and tests that intent across surfaces. Search then captures and converts it, increasingly based on inferred readiness rather than explicit declaration.
Finally, this shift means Search KPIs must be interpreted carefully. Volatility in CPA or volume does not necessarily signal failure; it often reflects system-level learning adjustments. Short-term reallocation based on CPA volatility often breaks long-term learning.
In the Power Pack era, Search still matters, but it no longer works best when treated as a standalone channel. It works best when fed by strong, creative, clear propositions, as well as sustained demand creation elsewhere in the system.
6. Operating the Power Pack: Principles That Matter
6.1. Budget Architecture Beats Budget Allocation
The question is no longer “how much do we spend on each campaign,” but:
- How do we ensure each layer has enough signal to learn?
- Where do marginal dollars create the most system-wide value?
Short-term reallocation based on CPA volatility often breaks long-term learning.
6.2. Creative Is the Primary Control Surface
In a Power Pack system:
- Targeting is largely abstracted
- Bidding is largely automated
Creative becomes the main optimization lever:
- Message clarity
- Entity definition
- Format diversity
- Proof vs persuasion balance
Poor creative limits learning across all three campaign types simultaneously.
6.3. Measurement Must Be Layered
No single KPI explains Power Pack performance.
You need:
- Direct response metrics (conversions, revenue)
- Assist metrics (view-through, assisted paths)
- Demand indicators (brand search, query growth)
- Incrementality tests to validate true lift
If measurement collapses to last-click, the system will be misread.
7. Common Failure Modes
Most Power Pack implementations fail for predictable reasons:
- Treating Demand Gen as a short-term performance channel
- Using PMax as a catch-all dumping ground
- Optimizing Search in isolation
- Turning budgets on and off too aggressively
- Expecting linear causality in a non-linear system
The result is usually the same: unstable performance, confused learning, and a loss of confidence in automation.
8. The Strategic Shift Required
The Power Pack demands a different operating mindset:
- From optimization → orchestration
- From channel KPIs → system signals
- From short-term efficiency → compounding learning
Brands that make this shift early gain an advantage that is difficult to unwind because learning compounds quietly, and laggards often don’t realize what they’re missing until performance plateaus.
9. Key Takeaway
The Power Pack is not a Google recommendation. It’s a reflection of how AI-driven advertising now works.
Success no longer comes from managing campaigns independently, but from designing a system where each layer reinforces the others.
Demand Gen shapes intent.
Performance Max expands it.
Search validates it.
Operate them together, and Google Ads becomes a full-funnel growth engine. Operate them in silos, and you’ll constantly feel like performance is slipping through your fingers.
