Who is this guide for?
This guide is best for beginner and intermediate retail advertisers who have already set up their free product listings in Google Merchant Center and linked their account to Google Ads. If you still need to upload your products to Merchant Center, you can find more guidance here.
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With people shopping across Google more than a billion times a day1, Shopping ads give you a chance to show your products and connect with consumers at key decision-making points in their shopping journey. In this guide, you’ll learn how you can improve your Shopping ads creatives and optimize your campaigns to drive more sales across additional Google advertising channels and inventory. |
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1. Enhance your product feed to help your Shopping ads stand out
Why: Close-up product shots with a white background make it easy for customers to see product details, helping you drive more engagement.
Why: Accurate data is key to ensure your ads showcase the information your customers are looking for. Upload rich product descriptions and update product prices and availability if they change often.
Why: Shoppers are increasingly looking for great deals, fast delivery times, and easy returns. Use annotations to stand out to them when they're looking for convenient ways to purchase. Tip
Note: In Comparison Shopping Service (CSS) program countries, you participate in Shopping ads through one or several CSSs of your choice. Some CSSs manage your product data and your campaigns on your behalf, while others provide tools allowing you to manage your setup yourself. Learn more about advertising with Comparison Shopping Services. |
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2. Show your ads to more shoppers as they browse across channels
Why: Smart Shopping and Local campaigns will upgrade to Performance Max in the coming months. With Performance Max, you can engage customers with Shopping ads and more inventory across all of Google’s advertising channels—including YouTube, Display, Search, Discover, Gmail, and Maps—all from a single campaign.
Why: With Performance Max, the text, images and videos that you add to your assets groups will automatically be assembled into all applicable formats, allowing you to show your customers the most relevant ad creative at any given time. TipInclude a video asset that’s at least ten seconds long. This helps you show your business in action. If you don’t have a video, Performance Max will automatically generate a high-quality one for you using your other assets.
Why: By setting store goals, Performance Max campaigns help you promote your physical locations across Google and maximize your in-store value (using store visits, call clicks, and/or direction clicks).
Why: By uploading audience signals including first-party data from Customer Match, website visitor lists, and custom segments, you can help automation learn from your existing customers to drive results faster while also uncovering new segments you may not have expected. Case StudyRothy’s is a sustainable brand known for iconic shoes and accessories that are stylish, comfortable, and entirely washable. After experiencing success with Smart Shopping campaigns, they decided to reach customers across even more channels through Performance Max. As a result, Rothy’s increased impressions by 89%, conversions by 60%, and revenue by 59%. Watch their story:
Why: Final URL expansion helps you find more converting search queries that are likely to perform well based on customer intent and their relevance to your landing pages. This feature will enable your ads to show up on additional searches that have a strong likelihood of leading to conversions. Final URL Expansion uses landing pages on your website to match you to relevant queries and to dynamically customize headlines for your ads. It will only send traffic to landing pages related to your campaign’s product inventory. NoteIf you have existing Search campaigns with keywords that exactly match a user’s search query (regardless of match type), ads from those Search campaigns will be prioritized over Performance Max. If you have multiple accounts and would like this behavior to apply to Search campaigns in those other accounts as well, please reach out to your Google team. TipTo maximize your reach and conversions, we recommend leaving the Final URL expansion setting on. It will also dynamically customize your ad headlines to match customers’ intent. You may exclude certain URLs to send traffic to, by utilizing URL exclusion or URL parameter rules. |
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3. Optimize your campaigns to drive more performance
Why: The Products tab in Google Ads helps you understand the performance of individual products in your campaign and resolve potential issues that may be impacting your reach. From there, you can access insights to easily spot underperforming offers, identify products with missing feed attributes, and see how your bidding strategy compares to your top competitors’.
Why: Recommendations can help you improve performance by surfacing the most impactful optimization opportunities based on your account's performance history, your campaign settings, trends across Google and more. Advertisers that used recommendations to increase their account-level optimization score by 10 points saw a median 14% increase in conversions.1
Why: The Insights page in Google Ads gives you visibility into what’s driving your automated performance, while surfacing relevant trends in your market. By checking the Insights page often, you’ll be able to better understand how your customer interests and preferences are shifting. TipIf you’re preparing for key shopping seasons, the Insights page can offer forward-looking insights that will help you set your business up for success. For example, demand forecasts show you search interests that are predicted to rise for the products you sell, so you can prepare your budgeting, marketing, and merchandising plans for moments of peak consumer demand. Watch how you can power your strategy with insights and automation. |
Note
This guide focuses on Performance Max campaigns, which can be used alongside your existing campaigns to drive incremental conversions across all Google Ads channels and inventory. To maximize your digital marketing mix even further or to drive performance with specific channels or audiences, check out our guides to Discovery ads, Display ads, Video ads, and Search ads.
You can also access the 2022 Google Retail Guide to explore a collection of useful tools, product recommendations, and consumer insights that will help you achieve your business and marketing objectives.
1. Google internal data, Global, 2021
2. Google Data, Global English, July 2nd, 2020 vs July 28th, 2021.