Google has added household income to the demographic exclusions available in Performance Max campaigns, though only for "select advertisers in beta," according to the company's own help documentation. The change to Google's Performance Max setup guide was reported by PPC News Feed on November 12, 2026, which credited Hana Kobzová with spotting it.

The addition gives advertisers a third lever for keeping ads away from particular groups of people, after age and gender. It also arrives with a contradiction built in. The same section of the same page still states that "Currently, demographic exclusions in Performance Max are limited to age and gender-based exclusions."

In Short

Google's help page for Performance Max now describes household income exclusions, which let advertisers in a beta stop their ads from showing to people in chosen income brackets. It matters for advertisers in regulated or sensitive sectors and for brands whose products only suit certain budgets, because Performance Max previously offered only age and gender exclusions. Access is limited to select advertisers, the page still contradicts itself about what is available, and income is an estimate that Google says it cannot make for everyone.

What Google's page now says

The text sits in "Step 3: Set your campaign settings," the third of six steps in Google's guide titled "Create a Performance Max campaign with online sales or lead generation goals." That step covers a long list of controls: location and language targeting, text customization and brand guidelines, brand exclusions, data exclusions, campaign URL options, page feeds and device targeting. Demographic exclusions have their own heading within it.

Google frames the feature as a tool for two jobs. According to the page, Performance Max offers demographic exclusions "to refine your target audience" and to help meet regulatory requirements. It adds that the feature can be used to make advertising more efficient, or "to prevent ads from showing for restricted groups" in sensitive industries.

Under that heading, the page now lists three bold labels: Age exclusions, Gender exclusions and Household income exclusions. The wording for each follows the same pattern, with one sentence on what selecting an option does and one on the "Unknown" category.

Exclusion What selecting an option does, in Google's words Guidance on "Unknown", in Google's words Status on the page
Age "Selecting an age range will exclude users in that age range from being served ads for your Performance Max campaign." "If this is a regulatory requirement to only serve to certain age groups, ensure you exclude users of 'Unknown' age ranges." No restriction stated
Gender "Selecting a gender option will exclude users of that gender from being served ads for your Performance Max campaign." "If this is a strict or regulatory requirement, ensure you exclude users of 'Unknown' gender." No restriction stated
Household income "Selecting a household income option allows you to exclude users within specific income ranges from being served ads for your Performance Max campaign." "If this is a strict or regulatory requirement, ensure you exclude users of 'Unknown' household income ranges." "Household income exclusions are currently available to select advertisers in beta."

The beta notice appears in a separate note block. It does not say how advertisers are chosen, whether they can apply, or when wider availability might follow.

A page that disagrees with itself

Two other sentences in the section say something different. The first is the limitation quoted above: "Currently, demographic exclusions in Performance Max are limited to age and gender-based exclusions." The second follows it directly: "This initial rollout focuses on addressing the most critical demographic exclusion needs."

The setup instruction also mentions only age and gender. It tells advertisers to open the settings section and "select the 'Demographic exclusions' option to turn on age or gender exclusions." Household income is not mentioned in that sentence.

So the page now describes household income exclusions and, a few lines away, says that such exclusions do not exist. Google's help page carries no date and no change note. Nothing on it shows when the household income block went in, or whether the older sentences are due to be revised. For advertisers reading documentation to confirm what their account can do, that ambiguity is not trivial: the beta label and the limitation statement point in opposite directions, and only the account interface settles which applies.

The brackets and the countries

The Performance Max page does not list the income brackets. Google's separate help page, "About demographic targeting," does. It uses the same seven household income categories across Performance Max, Search, Display, Demand Gen and Video campaigns.

Household income category Notes from Google's demographic targeting page
Top 10% Highest bracket
11-20%
21-30%
31-40%
41-50%
Lower 50% One bracket covering the bottom half
Unknown People whose demographics Google has not identified

The same seven options were visible when the control first surfaced in some accounts. Household income exclusions appeared at campaign level in late July 2026, with checkboxes running from the top 10% to the lower 50% plus an unknown category. PPC News Feed had reported the setting on July 26, 2026, crediting Thomas Eccel, and its July report did not describe the control as a beta.

Country availability is less clear. According to PPC News Feed, the exclusions are available in "several countries including the United States, Australia, and Japan." The Performance Max setup page names no countries at all. Google's demographic targeting page, however, lists household income as available for Performance Max campaigns in 20 markets.

Region Markets where Google lists household income for Performance Max
Americas Brazil, Canada, Colombia, Mexico, United States
Asia-Pacific Australia, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, New Zealand, Philippines, Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan, Thailand, Vietnam
Middle East Israel, United Arab Emirates

No European country appears on that list. Whether the exclusion beta follows the same 20 markets, or a narrower set, is not stated on either Google page.

How Google arrives at the numbers

Household income in Google Ads is an estimate. Google's demographic targeting page explains that, for demographics in general, it may use information from signed-in users' Google Account settings, which those users can change in My Ad Center. Otherwise, it estimates demographics from activity on Google properties and Display Network sites, using identifiers such as cookies. That data feeds ad personalization across Google's network.

Google is also explicit that the estimate has limits. It says it cannot know or infer everyone's demographics, which is why the "Unknown" bucket exists. When an advertiser targets by demographic, "the 'Unknown' demographic category is selected by default," according to the same page. Google's general advice sounds a different note from its Performance Max guidance: "Exclude the 'Unknown' demographic category only if you're sure you want to restrict your campaign to a narrow audience."

The two pages are reconcilable. Excluding "Unknown" narrows reach, and Google warns that it may block many people an advertiser might want to reach, but it is the only way to guarantee that no one outside the chosen brackets sees an ad. For a regulated advertiser, the trade-off is spelled out in Google's own wording: strict requirements mean excluding the people Google could not classify.

How the setting works, according to Google

Google's documentation describes a short path, and earlier reports on the age and gender controls fill in how the interface behaves. According to the help page and those reports, the process has five parts:

  1. The control lives in the settings of a Performance Max campaign. It can be reached in an existing campaign's settings or during campaign creation, under what the page calls the "More/Other settings" section.
  2. Within that section, the advertiser selects "Demographic exclusions." Age and gender were merged into this single section in August 2025, according to PPC News Feed.
  3. The advertiser picks the ranges to exclude. For age, the interface text reads "Select age ranges to exclude from the campaign. Unselected ages will be included," as PPC Land reported when age exclusions arrived. Household income uses the seven categories listed above.
  4. The exclusion applies at campaign level. When age exclusions launched, the campaign-level setting overrode asset group settings, which had previously offered one age range per asset group.
  5. Where a requirement is strict or regulatory, Google's page says the "Unknown" category should be excluded as well.

The page gives no review time, no minimum audience size and no figure for how much reach an exclusion might remove. It also does not say whether the setting is available through the Google Ads API or Google Ads Editor.

From age to income in 19 months

Household income is the latest addition to a set of controls Google has added to Performance Max since 2025. As recently as May 2024, demographic data in Performance Max was a reporting view, showing the age and gender of converting audiences without letting advertisers act on it directly.

Exclusions followed. Age exclusions began appearing in some accounts on April 17, 2025, with brackets from 18-24 to 65+ plus "Unknown." Gender exclusions arrived in July 2025, according to PPC News Feed. By August 2025, Google had moved demographic exclusions out of beta to general availability, alongside device targeting, campaign-level negative keyword lists of up to 5,000 terms and search themes doubled from 25 to 50 per asset group. From the first age exclusions in April 2025 to the documented household income beta in November 2026, the span is 19 months, by PPC Land's count.

Regulated advertisers and the policy question

Google's stated rationale leans on regulation. The help page says demographic exclusions can "prevent ads from showing for restricted groups" in sensitive industries. Age is the obvious case: alcohol, gambling and some financial products carry age limits. PPC Land noted in April 2025 that those sectors were the most likely early users of age exclusions.

For income, the page does not say which regulations the control is meant to address. Google's separate policy on restricted targeting in personalized advertising sets out rules for housing, employment and consumer finance ads in the United States and Canada. According to that policy, "In the United States and Canada, you can't target audiences using:" gender, age, parental status, marital status or ZIP codes. Household income is not on the list, and the policy page does not mention Performance Max.

Those rules have their own history. Google restricted targeting on consumer financial ads in a policy update announced in November 2023 and effective February 28, 2024. In June 2026, it clarified that Demand Gen and Discovery campaigns may not serve ads for products in 21 sensitive interest categories. And in October 2026, Google said it would require financial advertisers in the United States and Canada to verify their licences from early 2027, extending a program that already covers 42 countries.

None of those documents address household income exclusions in Performance Max. The policy language speaks of targeting, while the Performance Max page speaks of excluding; Google has not published anything connecting the two for income.

Why it matters for Performance Max buyers

The demand for this kind of control has been building for years. Google raised the Performance Max negative keyword limit from 100 to 10,000 in March 2025, after Ginny Marvin, Google's Ads Liaison, acknowledged that the old cap "felt too restrictive." In January 2026, Google began rolling out account-level placement exclusions covering Performance Max, Demand Gen, YouTube and Display.

Some of the pressure has come from larger accounts. In April 2026, advertisers questioned whether Performance Max holds up above $100,000 a month, citing budget drift and remarketing over-indexing. Marvin's response pointed to New Customer Only mode, brand exclusions and first-party audience exclusions as the controls available. Those first-party exclusions now sit in the same Step 3 section, under data exclusions, which accepts Customer Match lists, website visitor lists and Google Analytics audiences.

Other controls remain in limited testing. An opt-out for Search partners and the Display Network was still labelled alpha after five months in October 2026, with no Google documentation. And on November 8, 2026, PPC Land reported that Google's documentation now says Performance Max may filter brand and navigational queries toward dedicated Search campaigns, again without a setting or a date.

Household income exclusions fit the same pattern: a control that appears first in a handful of accounts, surfaces in documentation months later as a beta, and arrives without a public timetable. For brands whose products are priced for particular income levels, the setting draws a firm line: in Google's wording, users in a selected bracket are excluded "from being served ads" for the campaign. For advertisers outside the beta, it is another case where access to a Performance Max control depends on which test group an account is in.

What the page leaves out

Google's page does not give a date for the change, the selection criteria for the beta, the countries where it runs, or any estimate of how much reach an income exclusion removes. It does not reconcile the new block with the older sentences that limit exclusions to age and gender. It is also silent on whether the exclusion applies equally across Search, Shopping, YouTube, Display, Gmail and Discover inventory, and on API support.

Key facts

  • Feature: Household income exclusions, part of "Demographic exclusions" in Performance Max campaign settings
  • Status: "Household income exclusions are currently available to select advertisers in beta" (Google)
  • Source document: Google Ads Help, "Step 3: Set your campaign settings," part of "Create a Performance Max campaign with online sales or lead generation goals" (https://support.google.com/google-ads/answer/15864837), undated, no change note
  • Conflicting text on the same page: "Currently, demographic exclusions in Performance Max are limited to age and gender-based exclusions."
  • Income categories: Top 10%, 11-20%, 21-30%, 31-40%, 41-50%, Lower 50%, Unknown (Google, "About demographic targeting," https://support.google.com/google-ads/answer/2580383)
  • Markets listing household income for Performance Max: 20 (Google, "About demographic targeting"); PPC News Feed names the United States, Australia and Japan
  • First report of the documentation change: PPC News Feed, November 12, 2026, credited to Hana Kobzová (https://ppcnewsfeed.com/ppc-news/2026-11/performance-max-adds-household-income-exclusions/)
  • First sighting of the control in accounts: late July 2026 (PPC News Feed July 26, 2026, credited to Thomas Eccel; PPC Land July 28, 2026)
  • Related policy: Google Advertising Policies Help, "Restricted targeting in Personalized advertising" (https://support.google.com/adspolicy/answer/143465), which bars gender, age, parental status, marital status and ZIP code targeting for housing, employment and consumer finance ads in the United States and Canada

Timeline

Summary

Who: Google, which operates Performance Max, and advertisers using the campaign type, in particular those in regulated or sensitive sectors. PPC News Feed reported the change, crediting Hana Kobzová.

What: Google's Performance Max setup guide now describes household income exclusions, letting advertisers exclude users in specific income brackets from seeing ads. The feature is "currently available to select advertisers in beta," while the same page still says demographic exclusions are limited to age and gender.

When: PPC News Feed reported the documentation change on November 12, 2026. The control first appeared in some accounts in late July 2026. The help page itself is undated.

Where: In the "Demographic exclusions" part of Step 3 of Google's guide to creating Performance Max campaigns. Google lists household income for Performance Max in 20 markets, while PPC News Feed names the United States, Australia and Japan.

Why: Google says demographic exclusions help refine audiences and meet regulatory requirements, including preventing ads from showing to restricted groups in sensitive industries. The addition extends a series of controls Google has added to Performance Max since 2025 after advertiser pressure for more say over where and to whom ads run.