Google Ads has gone through a steady wave of changes over the past year.
Advancements in outputs like Demand Gen and AI Max, and shifts in how users interact with search have all changed how performance shows up in the data.
A new Q1 2026 benchmark report from Optmyzr, based on more than 21,000 accounts, offers a clearer view of how those changes are playing out across real accounts.
At a high level, the metrics look stable. Engagement is up, costs are holding relatively steady, and return on ad spend hasn’t moved much.
That might sound like business as usual, but the underlying trends tell a more important story about where growth is coming from and what advertisers should expect as they scale.
The clearest place to start is with engagement, which has been rising consistently across the dataset.
Engagement Is Rising, But It’s Coming From Broader Reach
Across five quarters, engagement improved consistently, led by rising click-thru rates (CTR).
Click-thru rate increased from 1.83% to 2.22%, a 21.31% gain year-over-year.
But, that increased CTR didn’t necessarily correlate with improved conversion rates or CPA.
In fact, conversion rate declined slightly by 0.96%, while CPA increased 4.41%. Impressions also dropped by roughly 11% year-over-year.
Optmyzr summarizes that shift by clarifying: “More clicks, from a smaller impression pool are converting at a marginally lower rate.”
Fred Vallaeys, Co-Founder and CEO of Optmyzr, shared his thoughts about the correlation of impressions and how to scale:
As AI-driven changes reshape the SERP, fewer impressions may be available, but each one carries more weight. That changes how advertisers should think about scaling performance.
Andrew Lolk, Founder of Savvy Revenue, had this to say about Google Ads efficiency:
All of Google Ads is a road to efficiency erosion. Any efficiency gain in any account running Smart Bidding (which is all) leads to higher volume. Nobody gains efficiency, and increases their ROAS target. We just chase higher volume.
Taken together, the data points to stronger engagement driven by a broader mix of queries and user intent, rather than purely more efficient conversions.
In practice, that means advertisers are reaching users in more places and at more stages of the decision process, not just capturing the same high-intent clicks more efficiently.
Mid-Market Accounts Continue To Outperform On ROAS Efficiency
Budget size sems to play a role in how performance scales.
Mid-market advertisers, defined as those spending between $10K and $50K per month, delivered the strongest returns in the dataset.
According to the Optmyzr report, this mid-market group reached a 566% ROAS, roughly 50% higher than both SMB and enterprise segments.
On the opposite spectrum, enterprise accounts reflect a different dynamic.
They recorded the highest CPA in the dataset at $16.00 and were the only segment where acquisition costs increased across all five quarters, with ROAS declining year-over-year.
This doesn’t necessarily suggest that larger budgets perform worse.
It shows how performance changes as accounts expand into broader coverage across queries and audiences.
As spend increases, growth comes less from the most efficient conversions and more from capturing additional demand beyond that core set.
Demand Gen Growth Reflects A Shift In How Conversions Are Captured
At the campaign level, the most significant changes come from format.
Demand Gen campaign volume increased 53.2% year over year, making it the fastest-growing format in the report, while Video campaign volume declined by 31.6%.
However, that decline isn’t necessarily tied to performance, but rather a migration from Video Action campaigns to Demand Gen.
Joe Martinez, Co-Founder of Paid Media Pros, provided his take on video performance:
Video is still performing well for us, but the campaign type we hold valuable has changed. Our Conversion-focused campaigns in almost all accounts have shifted to Demand Gen because that’s where our performance is. For any awareness play focused on views, we still test YouTube for the 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 did not change, but how that behavior is tracked across campaign types did.
This is where interpretation becomes important.
What appears to be declining performance in one format often reflects a redistribution of conversions across multiple campaign types, especially as advertisers reach users across YouTube, Discover, and Search at different points in their journey.
Performance Max and Search Show A Familiar Tradeoff
Performance Max continues to expand, with campaign volume up 15.7% year-over-year.
CTR from this campaign type improved from 1.29% to 1.68%, while CPA increased and ROAS declined slightly.
This reflects a familiar tradeoff as campaigns scale.
Performance Max is designed to extend reach across multiple surfaces, which naturally introduces a broader mix of queries, placements, and user intent. As more advertisers adopt the format, competition increases within that expanded inventory.
Search, by comparison, remains the most stable campaign type in the dataset, with CTR reaching 12.15%, the highest engagement rate across all formats, and performance holding relatively steady despite a slight decline in volume.
The relationship between these two campaign types is becoming 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.
As a result, growth is less about improving performance within a single campaign type and more about how these formats work together to engage users across multiple touchpoints.
E-Commerce and Lead Gen 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% even as CPA rose slightly, alongside nearly 20% growth in CTR.
E-commerce accounts, on the other hand, show a different pattern.
CTR increased 23.87% while CPC remained flat, creating more traffic at the same cost. At the same time, conversion rate declined by nearly 5%, and ROAS dipped slightly.
Kirk Williams, Founder of ZATO Marketing, provides his analysis around the e-commerce performance:
Expanding into broader queries and placements brings in more traffic, but not all of it is ready to convert on the first interaction.
That doesn’t automatically mean the traffic is less valuable.
It means more of the buying process is happening across multiple touchpoints, where users return through different campaigns before converting.
What This Data Means For Advertisers
The data in Optmyzr’s report doesn’t point to a decline in effectiveness, but it does show a shift in where conversions are coming from.
In many accounts, the same user is now being reached multiple times across different campaigns. They might first see a product through Demand Gen, come back through a Shopping ad, and then convert later through Search.
When that happens, conversions don’t always increase at the same rate as clicks. They just get spread across more interactions.
That can make performance look flatter than expected, especially if you’re used to measuring success from a single campaign or touchpoint.
Underneath the data, it doesn’t mean that your account performance is getting worse.
It’s more of a reflection of how people are actually making decisions now. They take more time, do more research, and often need multiple interactions before they convert.
From an advertiser perspective, that’s where the tradeoff comes in.
Showing up in more places usually means paying for some clicks that won’t convert right away. But those interactions still play a role in getting the user to come back and convert later.
If you’re not showing up there, you’re leaving those earlier interactions to other advertisers.
Where Performance Is Heading Next
The Optmyzr data reflects a platform that is changing how growth shows up in accounts.
Engagement continues to increase, costs remain relatively stable, and returns haven’t shifted dramatically. What is changing is how advertisers capture those results.
More of that growth is coming from multiple campaign types working together, rather than a single campaign driving the conversion on its own.
For advertisers, that means performance should be evaluated less in isolation and more across how campaigns support each other.
If conversion rates look flat or CPAs start to rise slightly, it’s worth looking at how different campaigns are contributing to the same conversion path, not just which one gets credit for the final click.
You can find the entire State Of Google Ads report by Optmyzr here.
