Optmyzr Report Finds Google Ads Engagement Soars While Performance Lags

Google ads have gone through a steady evolution over the past year.

Advances in results such as Demand Gen and AI Max, and shifts in how users interact with search have all changed the way performance is reflected in data.

The new Q1 2026 benchmark report from Optmyzr, based on more than 21,000 accounts, gives a clear view of how those changes play out across real accounts.

At a high level, the metrics look stable. Engagement is up, costs haven’t changed, and return on ad spend hasn’t budged much.

That may sound like business as usual, but the underlying trends tell a very important story about where growth is coming from and what marketers should expect as they scale.

The most obvious place to start is with engagement, which has been steadily increasing in the dataset.

Marriage Is Growing, But It Comes From Broad Reach

Across all five segments, engagement improved steadily, led by increased click-through rates (CTR).

Click-thru rate increased from 1.83% to 2.22%, a 21.31% year-over-year gain.

But, that increased CTR did not correspond to improved conversion rates or CPA.

In fact, the conversion rate decreased slightly by 0.96%, while the CPA increased by 4.41%. Impressions are also down about 11% year over year.

Optmyzr sums up that change by stating: “More clicks, from a smaller impression area convert at a slightly lower rate.”

Fred Vallaeys, Founder and CEO of Optmyzr, shared his thoughts on the relevance of impressions and how to measure them:

As AI-driven changes reshape the SERP, fewer impressions can be found, but each carries more weight. That changes the way marketers should think about measuring performance.

Andrew Lolk, Founder of Savvy Revenue, had this to say about the success of Google ads:

All Google Ads are a well-worn road. Any profit that works well in any account that uses Smart Bidding (which is everything) leads to high volume. No one is achieving efficiency, and increasing their ROAS target. We’re just chasing high volume.

Taken together, the data points to strong engagement driven by a broad mix of questions and user intent, rather than highly effective conversions.

Essentially, that means marketers are reaching users at 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 Perform Well in terms of ROAS

The size of the budget plays a role in how performance is measured.

Mid-market advertisers, defined as those who spend between $10K and $50K per month, delivered the strongest returns in the dataset.

According to Optmyzr’s report, this mid-market group achieved a 566% ROAS, nearly 50% higher than both the SMB and enterprise segments.

On the other hand, business accounts show a different dynamic.

They recorded the highest CPA in the dataset at $16.00 and was the only segment where acquisition costs increased in all five segments, with ROAS decreasing year over year.

This doesn’t necessarily mean that big budgets are very bad.

It shows how performance changes as accounts expand to a broader coverage of all questions and audiences.

As costs rise, growth comes less from conversion to greater efficiency and more from capturing additional demand beyond that core set.

Demand Gen Growth Shows Changing How Conversions Are Captured

At the campaign level, the most important changes come from the format.

Demand Gen 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, that decline isn’t necessarily performance-related, but rather a shift from Video Action campaigns to Demand Gen.

Joe Martinez, Co-Founder of Paid Media Pros, gave his take on video performance:

Video still works well for us, but the type of campaign we value has changed. Our conversion-focused campaigns for almost every account have shifted to Demand Gen because that’s where our performance is. In any view-based awareness game, we still check YouTube for the lowest CPVs with skippable ads. But even so, we see a better long-term exposure to the upcoming transformation with Demand Gen.

The basic user behavior hasn’t changed, but how that behavior is tracked across campaign types has.

This is where translation becomes important.

What appears to be a drop in performance in one format often reflects the 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 Normal Trade-offs

Performance Max continues to grow, and campaign volume is up 15.7% year over year.

CTR from this type of campaign improved from 1.29% to 1.68%, while CPA increased and ROAS decreased slightly.

This shows the standard trade-off as the scale of the campaigns.

Performance Max is designed to extend access to multiple environments, naturally presenting a broad mix of queries, placements, and user intent. As more advertisers use the format, competition increases within that expanded list of words.

Search, by comparison, is still the most stable campaign type in the dataset, with CTR reaching 12.15%, the highest engagement rate of all formats, and relatively stable performance despite a slight drop in volume.

The relationship between these two types of campaign is becoming increasingly interactive.

Performance Max often captures early or less defined intent, while Search continues to convert returning users with clear 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 touch points.

IE-Commerce and Lead Gen Show Different Paths to Growth

The report also highlights how performance varies by business model.

Lead generation accounts saw performance gains, with ROAS increasing from 248% to 267% as CPA increased slightly, alongside a 20% increase in CTR.

On the other hand, e-commerce accounts show a different pattern.

CTR increased by 23.87% while CPC remained low, generating more traffic for the same cost. At the same time, the conversion rate decreased by about 5%, and the ROAS decreased slightly.

Kirk Williams, Founder of ZATO Marketing, provides his analysis on the effectiveness of e-commerce:

Expanding on broader queries and placements brings more traffic, but not all of them are ready to convert on the first interaction.

That doesn’t automatically mean that traffic is less important.

It means that most of the buying process takes place in multiple touch points, where users come back through different campaigns before converting.

What This Data Means for Marketers

The data in the Optmyzr report does not show a drop in efficiency, but it does show a shift in where conversions are coming from.

In multiple accounts, the same user is now reached multiple times in different campaigns. They may first see a product through Demand Gen, return 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 spread to more interactions.

That can make performance look softer than expected, especially if you tend to measure success by a single campaign or touchpoint.

With less data, it doesn’t mean your account performance is getting worse.

It shows a lot about how people make decisions now. They take more time, require more research, and often require more interaction before they convert.

From a marketer’s perspective, this is where the tradeoff comes in.

Being visible in many places usually means paying for some clicks that won’t convert quickly. But that connection still plays a role in getting the user to come back and convert later.

If you don’t show up there, you leave that past engagement to other advertisers.

Where Performance Heads Next

Optmyzr’s data shows the platform is changing the way growth is seen in accounts.

Engagement continues to grow, costs remain stable, and returns haven’t changed much. What changes is how marketers capture those results.

Much of that growth comes from multiple types of campaigns working together, rather than a single campaign driving conversions on its own.

For marketers, that means performance should be evaluated less in isolation and more in how campaigns support each other.

If the conversion rate seems to be flat or the CPAs start to rise a bit, it’s worth looking at how different campaigns contribute to the same conversion path, not just which one gets the credit for the last click.

You can find the entire State Of Google Ads report by Optmyzr here.