This article covers Standard Shopping campaigns. To get the best of Google Ads' AI and serve ads on all Google properties, you can try Performance Max campaigns instead.
Shopping campaigns optimize for both online and offline sales. Use conversion goals to optimize your campaign for additional goals. With all Shopping campaigns, you'll gain reporting on the goals you select.
With Smart Bidding (Target ROAS), in addition to reporting on the goals you select, you can control your bids by setting a value for each goal. Since Smart Bidding campaigns maximize conversion value, Google uses your conversion value to determine your bid. These additional values won't affect your ability to report on sales (purchase conversions).
Which measurements can you track with conversion goals?
- Online sales to new and existing customers: any conversion action that you've selected to “Include in conversions’” on the "Conversions" page (under “Goals”). This counts sales regardless of whether a customer is new to your business or has previously purchased from your business.
- Store visits (physical store): visits to your physical store by people after they’ve clicked your ads. You set the value for a store visit, which can be based on estimated in-store revenue.
- Store sales (physical store): sales that happened in your physical store. You can choose to improve for Store sales by selecting it as a conversion goal. This requires enabling store sales measurement and importing your offline conversion data.
- Local action conversions (physical store): People take actions that help them find your physical business location, such as "Get directions (Google Hosted)". You can optimize your campaigns for footfall to your physical store locations. Learn more About local actions conversion.
- New customers: first-time purchases from your website or app. This goal is available for Performance Max campaigns only. You set the value for a new customer acquisition, which can be based on the expected lifetime value of the customer. Learn more about the new customer conversion goal.
How to set up conversion goals
To add conversion goals to a new campaign, start by creating your campaign:
In “Campaign settings”, after you’ve identified your “Bidding” preferences, you’ll find selectors for “Conversion goals” and can follow these steps:
- Under “Select the conversion settings you want to use for this campaign” select Campaign-level conversion goals.
- Under “Select the goals you want to focus on with this campaign", you'll have the following goals to choose from:
- “Online sales to new and existing customers”.
- “Store visits (physical store)”. For this goal, you can assign a value to each visit. Your campaign will then maximize the total conversion value, including the value of store visits. Your campaign will increase focus on store visits.
- “Store sales (physical store)”. For this goal, you can assign a value to reflect how much a store sale is worth to your business. If you are receiving dynamic store sales values through in-store transaction uploads or from automated dynamic values reporting, you can leverage a modeled and dynamic store sales conversion value.
- “Get directions (Google Hosted)”. Advertisers can optimize campaigns for footfall to their physical store locations.
- “New customer acquisition”. For this goal, you can assign an additional value for each new customer acquisition. Your campaign will then maximize the total conversion value, including the new customer value. Your campaign will increase focus on new customers as opposed to existing customers.
Tips on goal valuation
The value you designate for store visits, store sales, or for new customer acquisition will act as the value for all campaigns in your account. Learn more about how to value your store visit conversions, About Smart Bidding for store sales and About the new customer acquisition goal.
- To choose a store visits value, it’s common to multiply your average in-store conversion rate by your average in-store order value. This value is added to the conversion value column in Google Ads reporting. If you set a Target ROAS, make sure your target takes the store visit value into account to avoid unwanted changes in spend.
- It’s best practice to consider expected lifetime value of the customer when choosing how much value to add for new customer acquisition.
To add conversion goals to an existing campaign, follow the steps below:
- In your Google Ads account, from the workspace bar at the top, select Shopping campaigns.
- Go to Campaigns within the Campaigns menu.
- Below the "Campaigns" page header, you'll find 3 tabs. Select the Settings tab, then select the campaign you want to make changes to.
- Under “Bidding and budget” select “Conversion goals”.
- Under “Select the conversion settings you want to use for this campaign” select Campaign-level conversion goals.
- Under “Select the goals you want to focus on with this campaign”, you'll have the option to select your online sales, offline sales, and advanced goals.
- For Store visits, you need to set up Store visit conversion reporting. You can assign a value to each visit. Your campaign will then optimize for visits to your physical store by automating bidding that increases conversion value based on store visits. Learn more about how to value your store visit conversions.
- For Store sales, you need the requirements stated in About store sales availability and eligibility and your Google Ads account(s) need to be allowlisted. Ensure you have enabled store sales measurement and are importing your offline conversion data. Learn more About Google Ads store sales measurement.
- For "Get directions (Google Hosted)", you can optimize campaigns for footfall to your physical store locations.
- For new customers, you need to have a purchase conversion action “Included in conversions” (this will make the conversion action biddable), and in some cases, you’ll need to provide additional information on which customers are existing customers. Learn more about the new customer conversion goal.
Combine conversion goals for Shopping campaigns
There are several supported combinations of conversion goals that you can use based on your overall Shopping campaign goals. Combine goals when creating or editing campaigns.
- Sales only - select the box beside “Online sales to new and existing customers” and ensure that it’s checked and colored blue.
- Sales and Store visits - select the box beside “Store visit (physical store)" and ensure that it’s checked and colored blue.
- Sales and new customer goals - select the boxes beside “New customer acquisition” and “Online sales to new and existing customers” and ensure that they are checked and colored blue.
- Sales, new customer, and store visit goals - select the boxes beside “New customer acquisition” and “Store visit (physical store)” and ensure that they are checked and colored blue.
- Store visits only - select the box beside “Store visit (physical store)" and ensure that it’s checked and colored blue.
- Store sales only - select the box beside “Store sales (physical store)" and ensure that it’s checked and colored blue.
- Get directions only - select the box beside “Get directions (Google Hosted)” and ensure that it’s checked and colored blue.
Note: Selecting offline goals will also automatically opt your campaign into Local Inventory Ads, allowing you to show ads for products available in your physical stores. You can even show ads to people near your stores by using location groups and specifying a radius around your store locations. Learn how to Enable local products in your campaigns.
Best Practices when changing goals or values
- Updating ROAS targets: Conversion value includes the value of all conversion goals that you select. When you change your goal selection, move between account level and campaign-level goals, or change store visit and/or new customer acquisition values, your conversion value reporting will reflect these changes. You’ll want to update your ROAS targets to reflect these changes and avoid sudden changes in bidding.
- If you’re unsure how to effectively adjust your ROAS target, remove it temporarily. You can still steer the campaign by changing the budget. Monitor performance with the new conversion goal selection and use that to inform your choice of a new ROAS target.
- Conversion values: You can track conversion values for store visits, and for new customers on your “Campaigns” page. Add the applicable columns by selecting the “Columns” icon at the top right of the metrics columns. Then select Conversions to open the conversion metric selector. Select the box beside “store visit value” and/or “new customer value”, and select Apply.
