Frequently Asked Questions for adaptive shopping campaigns

When should I expect new groups to be created?

Search Ads 360 continuously monitors the performance of products from your Merchant Center feed. When products—either newly added products or products that have been around for awhile—become popular or start to generate more revenue than other products in the same group, Search Ads 360 may automatically divide them into their own product group.

To auto-generate product groups, Search Ads 360 requires a minimum of 32 days of performance history in a campaign. To verify the number of days of performance history: 

1. Navigate to a Google Ads or Microsoft Advertising account.
2. Click the Campaigns tab.
3. Add the Creation time column to the report.

Note that in Google Ads accounts, auto-tagging must also be enabled for adaptive features to work.

What happens to performance metrics when product groups are subdivided?

When a product group is subdivided—either manually by you or automatically by an adaptive shopping campaign—Search Ads 360 keeps all of the metrics associated with the product group. Metrics, including those that occurred before the subdivision, will be attributed to sub groups. For example:

1. For the month of April, you had a product group named Shoes, which received 500 clicks.
   Search Ads 360 records clicks for potential sub groups, but doesn't show the sub groups.
2. At the beginning of May, the Shoes product group was subdivided into Boots and Sneakers.
3. During the month of May, the Boots product group received 325 clicks, and the Sneakers group received 400 clicks.
4. At the end of May, you view the Product groups tab and set the time range to include April and May. The totals will include clicks that occurred prior to creating the sub groups. 
5. The Shoes group reports 1,225 clicks, which includes the 500 clicks from April, as well as the 725 clicks from the sub-groups that were created in May.
   The sub group totals also include clicks that were logged before the sub groups were created. In this case, the Boots sub group reports 625 clicks which includes 300 clicks that occurred in April, before Boots group was created, and 325 clicks from May. The Sneakers sub group includes 200 clicks from April and 400 clicks from May.

Time range: April 1, 2015 — May 31 2015

Product group	Sub group	Clicks (April)	Clicks (May)	Clicks (April and May)
Shoes		500	725	1,225
	Boots	--	325	625
	Sneakers	--	400	600

 

Learn more about reporting on shopping campaigns in Search Ads 360.