Performance Max for a mortgage business: 227 conversions at $5.41
Commentary byROASArchiveOur analysis, not theirsA Reddit user ran a Google Ads Performance Max campaign for a mortgage business and got 227 conversions at $5.41 each.
Spend was $1.23K over about a month, with a 32.52% conversion rate.
What counted as a conversion is not stated.
- Conversions: 227 at $5.41 each.
- Conversion rate: 32.52%, which is very high for paid search traffic. That hints the conversion may be a light action, not a full application.
- Cost: $1.23K over the period.
- Not shared: lead quality, closed loans or what the conversion event was.
The change
Before
The post does not show what ran before this campaign.
After
A Performance Max campaign ran for a mortgage business from Nov 22 to Dec 21, 2025.
Our reading: why it likely worked
Our interpretation, not the advertiser's claim.
- PMax can find cheap leads across Google's inventory, which helps when the conversion is a simple form or call.
- A $5.41 lead in mortgages is unusually cheap, so the conversion event is worth checking before copying the setup.
- PMax optimizes for whatever you count as a conversion, so a loose goal can produce many low-value leads.
Caveats: This is a dashboard snapshot of one campaign with no control and no before period. The conversion definition, lead quality and outcomes are unknown, and it comes from a single account shared on Reddit.
How to run this in your account
- Hypothesis
- If we run Performance Max for mortgage leads with the right conversion goal, then cost per lead will fall because PMax can reach searchers across all Google placements.
- Primary metric
- Cost per qualified lead
- Guardrails
- Lead-to-application rate
- Spam or junk lead share
- Conversion rate
- Who should try it
- Mortgage brokers and other local lead-gen businesses that can track which leads turn into real applications. It probably won't help if you can only measure form fills, since PMax may chase cheap, low-quality ones.
Questions
Does Performance Max work for mortgage leads?
It can bring cheap conversions. This campaign got 227 at $5.41 each, but lead quality wasn't shown.
What is a good cost per lead for mortgage Google Ads?
It depends on what counts as a lead.
$5.41 here is very low, and a 32.52% conversion rate suggests a light conversion action.
How do I keep PMax from generating junk leads?
Optimize for a deeper action, such as a qualified lead or booked call, and feed results back to Google. Track how many leads become applications.