Effective March 9, 2026, Google removed Display and Video campaign support from Performance Planner, its built-in forecasting tool inside Google Ads. The change also eliminates the ability to plan using impression share, top impression share, or absolute top impression share as primary metrics. Any existing plans that relied on those campaign types or metrics can no longer be viewed or edited.

The update was documented quietly in Google's Help Center rather than through a formal press release or product announcement. It marks a significant contraction in what Performance Planner can do, restricting the tool to campaign types that are oriented around conversion signals rather than reach and visibility measurements.

What Performance Planner is - and what it no longer does

According to Google's Help Center documentation, Performance Planner is a tool that lets advertisers create plans for advertising spend and assess how changes to campaigns might affect key metrics and overall performance. The tool draws on billions of search queries and is updated every 24 hours. According to Google, it simulates relevant ad auctions over the last 7 to 10 days, incorporating variables like seasonality, competitor activity, and landing page signals.

The scope of those simulations has now narrowed considerably. Before March 9, advertisers could use Performance Planner to model Display and Video campaigns alongside other supported formats. That capability is gone. According to the Help Center notice, "Effective March 9, 2026, Performance Planner no longer supports planning for Display and Video campaigns, or plans that involve metrics based on impression share."

The immediate operational consequence is clear. Plans that included Display or Video campaigns, as well as any plans using impression share, top impression share, or absolute top impression share as the primary metric, are now inaccessible. Advertisers cannot view them. They cannot edit them. The data those plans contained is effectively frozen.

Which campaigns still work with Performance Planner

The supported campaign types that remain are Search, Shopping (Standard), Performance Max, Demand Gen, App, and Local campaigns. Each category carries specific eligibility conditions.

For Search, Shopping, and Performance Max campaigns, eligibility requires that the campaign has not changed its bid strategy in the last 10 days, has received at least 3 clicks, has accumulated at least 10 impressions, has recorded at least 1 conversion or conversion value, and shows greater than zero spend in the last 17 days. Campaigns operating under a portfolio bid strategy must also be linked to a shared budget that includes every campaign using that portfolio.

Demand Gen campaigns operate under a slightly different set of conditions. According to Google's documentation, the bid strategy must not have changed in the past 7 days. For campaigns using tCPA, Maximize Conversions, or Maximize Clicks bidding, at least 14 impressions must have been received in the past 7 days. Additional restrictions apply: campaigns cannot be part of an experiment, connected to a product feed, structured as flighted campaigns, or use a mixed bidding strategy. Campaigns using tROAS or Maximize Conversion Value require at least 5 conversions in the past 7 days.

App campaigns require no bid strategy change in the last 10 days, use of app install ads with target cost-per-install, target cost-per-action, or app engagement ads with target cost-per-action bidding strategies, a run time of at least 10 days, at least 10 conversions in the last 10 days, and a budget status that is not "Limited by Budget."

Performance Planner can support up to 10,000 campaigns per plan and is available for manager accounts.

How the forecasting engine works

The underlying mechanics of Performance Planner have not changed. According to Google's documentation, the tool takes into account billions of search queries, updated approximately every 24 hours. It simulates relevant ad auctions over the last 7 to 10 days. Google AI is then applied to fine-tune forecasts based on how campaigns eventually perform against those projections.

One notable feature is the tool's handling of budget allocation. According to the documentation, Performance Planner may propose a budget of $0 for some campaigns or portfolios. When that occurs, it indicates that those campaigns are not contributing to the most efficient spend distribution. The planner may advise pausing them.

Conversion delay is another factor built into Performance Planner forecasts. According to Google, the tool includes conversion delay estimates for Search and Performance Max impact estimates. Conversion delay occurs when a person clicks an ad and then completes a conversion at a later point. The estimates are designed to produce more accurate traffic and conversion projections, informing decisions around bidding strategies, budgets, and target return on ad spend.

Forecast conversions are based on conversion types in the "Conversions" column of Google Ads performance reports, or the conversion goal selected when creating a new forecast. Conversion estimates reflect conversions expected within the defined conversion window.

The broader shift away from impression-based planning

The removal of Display and Video support from Performance Planner is not a standalone event. It fits a pattern that has been building across Google's advertising platform for years, documented consistently on PPC Land.

In September 2024, Google announced the deprecation of Enhanced CPC bidding for both Search and Display campaigns, with the transition completing in March 2025. That move eliminated a hybrid bidding model that many Display advertisers relied on to balance manual control with limited automation.

In September 2025, Google restructured its campaign setup flow to require channel selection before campaign format, making Performance Max the default when all channels are selected. The interface change accelerated a trend already well underway: the platform systematically routing new campaign creation toward automated formats.

By February 2026, Google's own product leadership was openly discussing why hyper-granular campaign structures built around keywords and traditional impression metrics had become optimization obstacles. Brandon Ervin, Director of Product Management for Search Ads at Google, described impression-level thinking as misaligned with how AI-powered systems now operate.

The Performance Planner change extends this logic into forecasting infrastructure. If Display and Video campaigns are not the formats Google intends to support going forward - at least in their standalone, impression-share-focused form - removing them from the planning tool is a consistent next step. As PPC Land has tracked across multiple platform decisions, open web display advertising impressions represented only 11 percent of Google's display advertising in January 2025, down from over 40 percent in January 2019.

Demand Gen as the intended successor

Google has been positioning Demand Gen campaigns as the successor to both Video Action Campaigns and, to some degree, traditional Display campaigns for awareness-focused objectives. Demand Gen campaigns run across YouTube, Gmail, and the Google Discover feed. The campaign type uses conversion-oriented optimization rather than impression share as its primary planning framework.

The fact that Demand Gen campaigns remain supported in Performance Planner - while Display and Video campaigns have been removed - signals where Google sees upper-funnel planning activity moving. Demand Gen is a conversion-trackable format. Its planning metrics fit the conversion-first architecture that Performance Planner now exclusively serves.

In February 2026, Google changed how Lookalike segments function within Demand Gen, moving from strict targeting constraints to suggestion-based signals. That change, effective March 2026, further automated how Demand Gen campaigns reach audiences. Both changes together - Lookalike expansion and Performance Planner restriction - took effect within the same month.

In January 2026, Google launched cross-channel budgeting capabilities inside Google Analytics, introducing projection and scenario planning tools that forecast channel performance against spend, conversions, and revenue targets. That system operates independently of Performance Planner and covers cross-platform data. Its arrival in the same quarter as Performance Planner's contraction may indicate where budget forecasting for Display-type campaigns is expected to happen going forward.

What changes for advertisers with active plans

The practical implications differ by situation. Advertisers who had been using Performance Planner to model Display or Video budgets, or who had built plans around impression share targets, now face a gap in their native toolset. Those plans cannot be accessed for reference, cannot be exported or updated, and cannot be used as baselines for future forecasting within the tool.

Advertisers who use Performance Planner exclusively for Search, Shopping, App, or Performance Max campaigns are unaffected by the change. Their plans and forecasting workflows continue as before.

For campaigns that qualify as Demand Gen, the tool remains available with its specific eligibility conditions applied. Advertisers managing upper-funnel budgets through Demand Gen can continue using Performance Planner to model those investments.

The absence of native Display and Video planning within Performance Planner does not prevent advertisers from running those campaign types. It removes Google's built-in forecasting layer for them. Advertisers seeking impression share-based planning for Display or Video will need to rely on external tools, manual modeling, or third-party platforms.

Google's Help Center also includes a note that if advertisers are affected by market changes, the recommendation is to plan weekly rather than monthly or quarterly until markets stabilize. Performance Planner's forecasts are refreshed daily based on the last 7 to 10 days, adjusted for seasonality.

Timeline

  • March 22, 2022 - Google introduced Performance Planner as a tool to identify spend amounts for incremental conversions, based on billions of search queries updated every 24 hours.
  • September 8, 2024 - Google announced the deprecation of Enhanced CPC bidding for Search and Display campaigns, with full removal completing March 2025.
  • September 1, 2024 - PPC Land documented when to use Google Demand Gen campaigns as a successor to awareness-focused formats.
  • September 14, 2025 - Google unveiled Journey Aware Bidding, a conversion-signal-oriented bidding technology targeting the full customer funnel.
  • September 24, 2025 - Google modified its campaign setup flow to default to Performance Max when all channels are selected, restructuring new campaign creation around automated formats.
  • November 6, 2025 - Google Ads Editor 2.11 added Performance Max search term reports, extending automation transparency tools to the editor desktop application.
  • January 16, 2026 - Google launched cross-channel budgeting in Google Analytics, introducing projection and scenario planning across platforms independent of Performance Planner.
  • February 11, 2026 - Google product leadership discussed campaign consolidation strategy on the Ads Decoded podcast, framing impression-level management structures as obstacles to AI optimization.
  • February 17, 2026 - Google announced that Lookalike segments in Demand Gen would shift from hard targeting constraints to audience suggestions, effective March 2026.
  • March 9, 2026 - Google removed Display and Video campaign support from Performance Planner. Plans using those campaign types or impression share, top impression share, or absolute top impression share as primary metrics can no longer be viewed or edited.

Summary

Who: Google Ads, affecting advertisers who used Performance Planner to forecast and plan Display campaigns, Video campaigns, or any campaigns measured primarily by impression share metrics.

What: Google removed Display and Video campaign support from Performance Planner, effective March 9, 2026. The change also eliminates plans built around impression share, top impression share, and absolute top impression share as primary metrics. Existing plans in those categories can no longer be viewed or edited. Supported campaign types now include Search, Shopping (Standard), Performance Max, Demand Gen, App, and Local campaigns.

When: The change took effect on March 9, 2026. Google documented it through a notice in the Performance Planner Help Center. The article reporting on this change was published April 9, 2026, by Search Engine Land.

Where: The change affects the Performance Planner tool within Google Ads, available across all Google Ads accounts globally including manager accounts.

Why: The removal reflects Google's platform-wide shift toward conversion-focused campaign types and AI-driven automation, moving away from impression share as a planning and measurement framework. Performance Planner now exclusively supports campaign types that are oriented around conversion signals, consistent with a multi-year pattern of Google deprioritizing traditional Display and impression-based planning infrastructure in favor of automated formats like Performance Max and Demand Gen.

The timing of these two changes - Performance Planner dropping Display and Video on March 9, and Demand Gen Lookalike segments shifting to suggestion mode in March - is notable. Both affect how advertisers model and target upper-funnel audiences. Together they close off one set of tools and push advertisers toward a different planning architecture. Whether that architecture delivers comparable forecasting quality for awareness-oriented campaigns remains an open question for practitioners managing budgets across the full marketing funnel.

Share this article
The link has been copied!