How do you set up and properly read a pMAX script? Any good scripts you've been using?

I am brand new to PPC. I've only ever used outbound for my business but want to build out another pipeline. The course I'm about to go through on here is going to be my first ever interaction with PPC. So my question: Is this the best place to start? Or should I go through some other material before taking the course?

Hi I just got an email from Google "salespeople" recommending the following 1.Adding Consent Mode: 2.Enhanced Conversions for web (Google Ads): do i need this ? Thanks Lawrence

Is anyone running pmax and search together? For our Pmax, the leads are horrible and for our search campaigns (mostly non-branded), we are getting no traffic. Thoughts? Should I test running search only and pause Pmax and see results? Pmax seems to be mostly "other", which includes search. Search CPA is so much higher, so I want to make Pmax work, but the tracking when the leads there is a lot of irrelevant conversions. I have asked our web dev team to test out Austin's idea of tracking better (stand alone page), but we really don't have it in the budget right now!