Quick answer: No, they are not the same thing. An audience signal is an input you hand Performance Max to point it at the kind of buyer who converts for you. Optimized targeting is the automated system that reads that input, along with live conversion data, and decides who actually sees your ad. Inside PMax the two run together by design, your signal feeds optimized targeting, which never switches off.
Why the usual explanation falls apart
The shorthand you will read on forums is "PMax equals search and keywords, optimized targeting equals display." That line breaks the second you look at it. Performance Max serves across Search, Display, YouTube, Gmail, Discover, and Maps, so pinning it to keywords is flat wrong. And optimized targeting is not a channel at all. It is a mechanism that runs on top of your audience.
Confusing a campaign type with a targeting mechanism is what leaves people going in circles, thanking the expert who answered them, and still walking away with no rule for which lever to touch. So let me separate the two cleanly.
What an audience signal actually is
When you build a PMax asset group, Google lets you attach audience signals. These are your best guess at who buys from you: first-party data like all converters and past buyers, your recent site visitors, plus custom audiences and in-market audiences you have built.
Here is the part that trips up anyone coming from Search. A signal does not restrict targeting. You are not telling Google to show your ad only to these people. You are telling it where to start looking, because people who resemble this group tend to convert for you. The algorithm takes it as a warm start and then reaches past it. If you have ever attached a signal and watched traffic show up somewhere you did not expect, that is the signal doing its job, not misfiring.
What optimized targeting actually does
Optimized targeting is the engine on the other side of that signal. It builds a live picture of what one of your converters looks like using real conversion data from your account, then goes and finds more people who match that picture, including people sitting outside the segments you handed it.
Picture your audience signal as the seed and optimized targeting as the thing that grows reach around it. It will never be as legible as a keyword list. You do not get to inspect every audience it decided to pull in. That opacity is the price of the expansion.
The detail that ends the confusion
Here is the fact that resolves the whole question. Inside Performance Max, optimized targeting is always on. There is no checkbox to turn it off. So these are not two rival settings you pick between. Your audience signal is the food, optimized targeting is what eats it, and they operate as one system every time PMax serves an ad.
Where you actually get an on and off switch is in Demand Gen, Display, and Video campaigns. There, optimized targeting sits as a checkbox in the campaign settings, and when it is on it expands past the audience segments you selected. Search campaigns use a separate, older feature called audience expansion. That is the real map, and it is exactly why the "PMax equals search, OT equals display" line never held together.
How to decide which lever to touch
You do not choose between an audience signal and optimized targeting. You choose the campaign type, and the campaign type tells you what you are holding.
Step 1: Name the campaign type before anything else
If you are in PMax, you are feeding a signal and optimized targeting is already running underneath with no toggle. If you are in Demand Gen, Display, or Video, you pick audience segments and decide whether to leave the optimized targeting box checked. If you are in Search, you are dealing with audience expansion, which is a different control with a different name.
Step 2: In PMax, treat the signal as a hint, not a steering wheel
Feed it your strongest first-party data first: all converters, past buyers, and recent site visitors. Skip the duplicated system-defined lists that pile up in the dropdown, since those come from imports and add noise rather than power. Then let optimized targeting handle the expansion. It is built to reach past your seed, so a tighter signal shapes the start, it does not lock the destination.
Step 3: Check structure and target before you blame the signal
When PMax underperforms, the number almost always moves on campaign structure and your tROAS, not on which of eight near-identical audiences you chose. A cleaner asset group built around one tight product set, paired with a target that is not choking your spend, beats hours lost agonizing over the audience panel. If a campaign is already constrained at a tROAS you keep lowering and ROAS is still poor, that is a structure and target problem wearing an audience costume.
Step 4: Protect your conversion history
Optimized targeting is only as sharp as the conversion data feeding it. Pausing a PMax campaign and rebuilding from scratch throws away the history the engine learns from, which is one of the most expensive Search-era reflexes you can bring into PMax. When you can, restructure inside the campaign that already has the data.
If the real problem is a thin signal or muddy asset groups, no targeting mechanism will save it, because optimized targeting can only expand on the seed you give it. Signal Rich Structures walks through building PMax asset groups that hand the algorithm clean, specific signal instead of a vague hint, so the expansion pulls toward your buyers instead of wandering. You can grab it at freak.marketing/signal-rich-structures.
FAQs
Can I turn off optimized targeting in Performance Max?
No. It is always on in PMax and there is no setting to disable it. The only campaigns where you get an on and off checkbox are Demand Gen, Display, and Video.
Do audience signals control who sees my PMax ads?
No. A signal is a hint, not a filter. It tells Google where to start, then optimized targeting expands beyond it using your conversion data. If you need hard control over exactly who gets targeted, PMax is the wrong campaign type for that job.
My PMax has bad ROAS. Should I swap my audience signal?
Probably not. The audience signal is rarely what moves ROAS. Look at your campaign structure and tROAS target first. A target set too aggressively will hold the campaign back no matter which signals you attach to the asset group.
Is optimized targeting the same as audience expansion in Search?
They are close cousins, not the same feature. Optimized targeting runs on Demand Gen, Display, and Video. Search campaigns use audience expansion, a separate and older control. Same broad idea of reaching past your chosen audience, different mechanism and different campaign types.