Performance Max: Household Income Audience Exclusions

Performance Max just gained a long-awaited lever: advertisers can exclude household income segments right at the campaign level — while Google's automated optimization keeps running. PMax has offered almost no audience control until now, so even this narrow filter is a notable step.

Paid search specialist Thomas Eccel first spotted the feature in a European campaign and shared the find on LinkedIn. There's no official Google announcement yet — it looks like a limited rollout. The setting sits inside campaign options and lets you remove selected income groups from delivery.

Seven brackets are available to exclude: the top 10% of earners, the 11–20%, 21–30%, 31–40% and 41–50% ranges, the lower 50%, and "unknown" household income. A full breakdown was published by Search Engine Land.

Who it affects most:

• Premium and luxury, financial services, automotive — cut the lower brackets and stop wasting budget on off-target users;
• Discounters and value brands — do the opposite and exclude the top 10–20% to focus on their real audience;
• Small businesses and agencies — finally get some manual control inside the PMax black box.

Be careful with the "unknown income" segment: it often covers a large share of traffic, and excluding it can slash your reach. Test on a separate campaign, compare CPA and volume, and only then scale it onto your core budgets.