Google Ads has seen a steady wave of change over the past year.
Advances in results like Demand Gen and AI Max, as well as changes in how users interact with search have all changed how performance shows up in data.
A new Q1 2026 benchmark report from Optmyzr, based on more than 21,000 accounts, offers a clearer view of how these changes manifest in real accounts.
At a high level, the measurements appear stable. Engagement is up, costs remain relatively stable, and the return on ad spend hasn’t changed much.
It may seem like business as usual, but the underlying trends tell a bigger story about where growth is coming from and what advertisers should expect as they scale.
The most obvious place to start is engagement, which has been steadily increasing across the data set.
Engagement is growing, but it comes from a broader reach
Over the five quarters, engagement has steadily improved, driven by increased click-through rates (CTR).
Click-through rate rose from 1.83% to 2.22%, a year-over-year gain of 21.31%.
But this increase in CTR does not necessarily correlate with improved conversion rates or CPA.
In fact, conversion rate decreased slightly by 0.96%, while CPA increased by 4.41%. Impressions also fell about 11% year over year.
Optmyzr summarizes this change by clarifying: “More clicks, from a smaller pool of impressions, convert at a slightly lower rate. »
Fred Vallaeys, Co-Founder and CEO of Optmyzr, shared his thoughts on impression correlation and how to scale:
As AI-driven changes reshape the SERP, fewer impressions may be available, but each one carries more weight. This changes the way advertisers should think about performance scaling.
Andrew Lolk, founder of Savvy Revenue, had this to say about the effectiveness of Google Ads:
All of Google Ads is a path to eroding efficiency. Any efficiency gains in any account running Smart Bidding (that’s it) results in higher volume. No one gains efficiency and increases their ROAS goal. We’re just looking for higher volume.
Overall, the data indicates stronger engagement, driven by a broader mix of user queries and intent, rather than purely more effective conversions.
In practice, this means advertisers reach users in more places and at more stages of the decision process, not just capturing the same high-intent clicks more effectively.
Mid-market accounts continue to outperform in ROAS efficiency
The size of the budget appears to play a role in changing performance.
Mid-market advertisers, defined as those spending between $10,000 and $50,000 per month, generated the highest returns in the data set.
According to the Optmyzr report, this mid-sized group achieved an ROAS of 566%, approximately 50% higher than the SMB and enterprise segments.
In contrast, company accounts reflect a different dynamic.
They had the highest CPA in the dataset at $16 and were the only segment where acquisition costs increased over all five quarters, with ROAS declining year-over-year.
This does not necessarily mean that larger budgets achieve worse results.
It shows how performance changes as accounts expand to broader coverage across queries and audiences.
As spending increases, growth comes less from the most efficient conversions and more from capturing additional demand beyond that base set.
Growth in demand generation reflects a shift in how conversions are captured
At the campaign level, the most significant changes come from the format.
Demand generation Campaign volume increased 53.2% year-over-year, making it the fastest-growing format in the report, while video campaign volume decreased 31.6%.
However, this decline is not necessarily related to performance, but rather a migration of action video campaigns to Demand Gen.
Joe Martinez, co-founder of Paid Media Pros, gave his perspective on video performance:
Video still works well for us, but the type of campaign we care about has changed. Our conversion-focused campaigns in almost every account have shifted to demand generation because that’s where our performance is. For any views-driven outreach play, we always test YouTube for very low CPVs with skippable ads. But even still, we see better long-term attribution for future conversions with Demand Gen.
The underlying user behavior hasn’t changed, but the way that behavior is tracked across campaign types has.
This is where interpretation becomes important.
What appears to be a drop in performance in one format often reflects a redistribution of conversions across multiple campaign types, especially as advertisers reach users on YouTube, Discover, and Search at different points in their journey.
Performance Max and Search display a familiar trade-off
Maximum performance continues to grow, with campaign volume up 15.7% year-on-year.
The CTR for this campaign type increased from 1.29% to 1.68%, while the CPA increased and the ROAS decreased slightly.
This reflects a familiar trade-off as campaigns evolve.
Performance Max is designed to extend reach across multiple surfaces, which naturally introduces a broader mix of queries, locations, and user intent. As more advertisers adopt this format, competition increases within this expanded inventory.
In comparison, search remains the most stable campaign type in the dataset, with a CTR reaching 12.15%, the highest engagement rate across all formats, and relatively stable performance despite a slight drop in volume.
The relationship between these two types of campaigns is becoming more and more interconnected.
Performance Max often captures earlier or less defined intent, while search continues to convert users who return with clearer intent later in the process.
Therefore, growth is less about improving performance within a single campaign type and more about determining how these formats work together to engage users across multiple touchpoints.
E-commerce and lead generation show different paths to growth
The report also highlights how performance varies by business model.
Lead generation accounts saw modest efficiency gains, with ROAS increasing from 248% to 267%, although CPA increased slightly, as well as almost 20% growth in CTR.
E-commerce accounts, on the other hand, show a different trend.
CTR increased by 23.87% while CPC remained stable, creating more traffic at the same cost. At the same time, the conversion rate decreased by almost 5% and the ROAS fell slightly.
Kirk Williams, founder of ZATO Marketing, provides his analysis of e-commerce performance:
Expanding to broader queries and locations drives more traffic, but not everything is ready to convert on the first interaction.
This doesn’t automatically mean that traffic is less valuable.
This means that more of the purchasing process takes place across multiple touchpoints, where users return via different campaigns before converting.
What this data means for advertisers
The data in the Optmyzr report does not indicate a drop in effectiveness, but it does show a change in where conversions are coming from.
In many accounts, the same user is now contacted multiple times during different campaigns. They may first see a product through Demand Gen, return through a Shopping ad, and then convert later through search.
When this happens, conversions don’t always increase at the same rate as clicks. They just spread out over more interactions.
This can make performance appear flatter than expected, especially if you’re used to measuring success from a single campaign or touchpoint.
Behind the data, it does not mean that your account performance is deteriorating.
This is more reflective of how people actually make decisions now. They take longer, do more research, and often need multiple interactions before converting.
From the advertiser’s perspective, this is where the trade-off comes in.
Appearing in more places usually means paying for some clicks that won’t convert immediately. But these interactions still play a role in enticing the user to come back and convert later.
If you don’t show up there, you’re leaving those past interactions to other advertisers.
The next step towards performance
Optmyzr data reflects a platform that is changing the way growth shows up in accounts.
Engagement continues to increase, costs remain relatively stable, and returns have not changed dramatically. What’s changing is how advertisers capture these results.
Much of this growth comes from multiple campaign types working together, rather than a single campaign driving the conversion on its own.
For advertisers, this means that performance should be evaluated less in isolation and more in terms of how campaigns support each other.
If conversion rates seem stable or CPAs start to increase slightly, it’s worth looking at how different campaigns are contributing to the same conversion path, not just the one that gets credit for the final click.
You can find the entire Google Ads Status Report by Optmyzr here.
