Campaign Mix experiments

Campaign Mix experiments are used for complex testing scenarios that involve comparing multiple variables across one or more campaigns (supporting up to 5 experiment arms). This workflow supports a mix of campaign types within the same experiment.

This workflow is supported for the following ExperimentType value:

• COMPARE_CAMPAIGNS

Overview

The COMPARE_CAMPAIGNS experiment type maps to Custom mixed campaign typesin the Google Ads UI (which also encompasses Custom Performance Maxexperiments). Its flexible design supports experiments that don't fit with the system-managed or intra-campaign workflows.

Campaign Mix experiments let you compare multiple variables across one or more campaigns by selecting existing campaigns and assigning them to different experiment arms (up to 5 total). This lets you test different campaign types (Search, Performance Max, Shopping, Demand Gen, Video, and App) within a single experiment to optimize budget allocation, evaluate account structures, test campaign consolidation, and compare various campaign settings.

Before you begin

• Campaign Mix experiments let you create up to 5 experiment arms.
• You can add any number of campaigns per arm.
• It is available for all campaign types except Hotel campaigns.
• It supports custom and even traffic splits across arms. The minimum traffic split is 1%, and traffic split percentages cannot have decimals.
• The same campaign can be added to multiple experiment arms, and the traffic will be split according to the percentage chosen. No experiment arm can be identical in terms of which campaigns are included in them.
• We recommend having a plan or intent of what you want to experiment with before starting. For example, you should aim to have the same budget amounts per experiment arm, unless budget is what you are specifically testing.

Setup

The setup for Campaign Mix experiments follows a similar structure to system-managed experiments but with more flexibility in arm configuration.

1. Create an Experiment with the type COMPARE_CAMPAIGNS .
2. Create ExperimentArm resources for control and treatment.
3. Assign existing campaigns to the arms. Unlike standard system-managed experiments where treatment campaigns are automatically generated, Campaign Mix experiments require you to select and assign existing campaigns directly to each experiment arm.

Report on the experiment

Once the experiment is running, you can query for metrics to compare performance. See the Reporting guide for details.

Graduate or end

After evaluating the results, you can either end or graduate the experiment using ExperimentService .

• End: If you are not satisfied with the results from any of the treatment arms, use EndExperiment . This is a synchronous operation.
• Graduate: If you prefer the performance of a specific treatment arm, use GraduateExperiment to graduate that arm. As part of this process, the campaigns associated with other arms (including the control arm) are paused, and the campaigns associated with the graduated treatment arm are converted to independent, non-experimental campaigns. This is a synchronous operation.