Standard Google Shopping Ads – Other optimization tactics

The objective of your online store is to increase profitability and, in turn, sales. If you use standard Google Shopping Ads campaigns and their results are not satisfactory, in this article we present to you some advanced optimization tactics for your account.

Normally, in Search campaigns you can optimize using updates to text or writing better ads, or by adding new keywords. However, for optimizing standard Shopping Ads campaigns, more advanced tactics are necessary. 

Here are some examples of advanced optimization tactics for standard Shopping Ads campaigns:

• Prioritizing the display of best-selling products or products on sale
• Excluding certain keywords (generic or brand)
• Product feed optimization
• Tracking ROAS to prioritize more profitable products

In this article, we will make a distinction between daily clear optimization tactics and more advanced optimizations for standard Shopping Ads campaigns.

General optimizations for Google Shopping Ads campaigns

There are a few things you can actively change in a Shopping Ads campaign.

Priority 1:

• Managing offers
• Negative keywords
• Product feed optimization

Priority 2:

• Budget management
• Excluding the product
• Audience segmentation

Budget and audience are important, but they are not truly optimization tactics in a standard Google Shopping Ads campaign. If you run campaigns using Smart Bidding, then both the audience and bidding are not as important. So, how can you optimize Shopping Ads campaigns to get more results?

We have prepared a list of other optimization tactics:

Weekly

1. Bid management

**The structure of the product group needs to be managed for Manual Bidding.

2. Merchant Center – Review

Checking for disapproved products.

Monthly

1. Negative keywords

• Standard optimization
• Excluding the words ”now”
• Displaying the appropriate product for searches
• Campaign segmentation

2. Product feed optimization

Trimestrial

1. Product exclusions

• Excluding/ updating products

2. Audience segmentation

Other optimizations for Google Shopping Ads campaigns

After performing routine optimizations and reviewing data, it's time to look at advanced optimizations.

This is where Google Shopping Ads really shines. 

Although there are several main ways to set up campaigns on the Search Network, optimizing for Google Shopping Ads refers to:

• Changing the structure of the campaign
• Working with the overall elements

For most online stores, we would usually make a major change to the entire Google Shopping Ads strategy once a year. 

Of course, there are some PPC specialists who use the same campaign structure for 5 years, but that's because their strategy has not changed much in that time.

But as you move from 5,000 to 10,000 products, you often have to rethink the strategy and that's where the overall picture optimization or deep performance campaign optimization comes into play.

We have divided below different ideas for advanced optimization, as follows:

• Try segmenting / restructuring a new campaign
• Check keyword performance
• Differentiate ROAS strategy
• Monitor prices
• Manual vs. Smart Bidding
• Performance Max for eCommerce

Segmenting a new campaign

One of the key optimizations you can make to a Shopping Ads campaign is restructuring or segmenting it.

The idea is to assist the strategy with Smart Bidding, but before doing this, you need to understand how Smart Bidding works.

A campaign with Smart Bidding is effective because it reacts directly to changes in historical account data compared to the manually bid amount that has probably not been updated for weeks.

In addition, a Google Shopping Ads campaign with Smart Bidding includes more signals than you can include, simply because it is composed of mathematical formulas that machine learning runs much better.

Although all these Smart Bidding Shopping Ads campaigns are seemingly very effective, in fact, they are reactive.

That is, they have no indicators for the future. 

Example:If Andrea knows that she should not sell a winter coat in Spain in April (and indeed, she should not), a Smart Bidding campaign will spend almost the entire budget to reach the same conclusion.

Here, Smart Bidding and Shopping Ads come to the rescue. The way to do this is by using priority settings to tell Google which products to show first or by making other changes.

Here is a list of main ideas on how to segment and, therefore, optimize Google Shopping Ads campaigns:

• Split on keywords / search terms
• Splitting products into Best-selling
• Splitting products into Cheapest
• Splitting products into Variants
• Splitting products into On Sale vs. Without Sale
• Splitting products into New vs. Old

Monitoring prices

We cannot overlook that price is a major factor in a consumer's decision to buy a product, especially for branded products where you have exactly the same product, whether you buy it from emag.ro, altex.ro or from amazon.com. 

As such, price is a decisive factor.

It is important to establish competitive prices that support marketing, increase revenue and ultimately ensure good profit.

Stock, product variants etc. are important to consider before establishing the pricing structure.

Even if your products have higher prices than your competitors, they can easily sell and in some cases even better than if they were cheaper.

But the most important thing to consider is that, even if you don't change prices, just knowing what they are in comparison to your competitors is a significant advantage in managing the efforts from the Google Standard Shopping Ads campaigns.

Manual Bidding vs. Smart Bidding

There are moments when it makes sense to move parts of campaigns to manual bidding for a certain period. This is not encouraged in general but there are moments when you want a bit more control, reset the data or simply have expenses at a certain budget.

Also, there are situations where Manual Bidding simply outranks Smart Bidding for multiple reasons:

• Fresh new campaigns
• Low volume campaigns
• Transitioning into a peak season

So, if you have evidence that running campaigns with Manual Bidding may be better, then just give it a try.

What metrics matter in Standard Shopping Ads campaigns?

For regular Search campaigns (text ads), we have all grown accustomed to using the same old metrics such as: average position,, display, percentage, maximum CPC, real CPC, CTR or ROAS.

However, in Google Shopping Ads campaigns, an important aspect has disappeared: average position,.

This confuses many PPC specialists when trying to optimize bid amounts, as they will wonder: What should I optimize now?

The key metrics for Google Standard Shopping Ads are:

• Conversion value
• Cost of conversion
• Rate of conversion
• Impression share
• Absolute top impression share
• Click share

Average CPC and other values are still used.

Additionally, another metric you can include is the reference product price difference.This can be useful if you don't have price monitoring for products.

Performance Max for eCommerce

Performance Max (PMax) is a type of Google Ads campaign available since November 2021, created with the purpose of maximizing results, by combining the most advanced automation technologies in terms of bidding, targeting and creatives. 

*Starting September 2022, Performance Max will replace the Smart Shopping and Local campaigns. 

Because it covers more channels and formats, offers more complexity, and accepts many more elements to create dynamic types of ads, Performance Max requires retailers to come with strong strategies and optimizations.

We will talk about the new strategies and optimizations for Performance Max campaigns for eCommerce in a future article.

We are here anytime for a consultation on how to optimize your Google Shopping Ads campaigns and more.