Shopping campaign

Introduce and promote products to customers anywhere. A shopping campaign is an excellent way to promote your online inventory and local stores. By visually showcasing product information, users can easily compare and evaluate items, enabling them to make quick purchasing decisions. These campaigns help businesses attract high-quality leads, increase website traffic, and drive in-store visits. Let’s learn about this type of ad and how to create them with Ad Support!

Overview of Shopping Ads

Shopping ads are created using product data from the Google Merchant Center (GMC) and a Google Ads campaign. Unlike text-based ads, Shopping Ads display product titles, images, prices, seller information, and additional details. This visual approach allows users to gain a better understanding of the products you offer before clicking on the ad. As a result, businesses attract high-quality leads while promoting local inventory and online stores. These ads effectively boost website visits and physical store foot traffic.

How Shopping Ads work

Shopping Ads use the product data you upload to Google Merchant Center to determine where and how ads are displayed. The product data includes detailed information about the items you sell. Google matches this data to users’ search terms to ensure the most relevant products appear in search results.

Retailers benefit from Shopping Ads by showcasing their products to the right audience in various formats. Shopping Ads display a product’s name, image, price, description, and seller. Google Merchant Center takes the uploaded feed data to create these ads. You can manage Shopping Ads within Google Ads using either Shopping Campaigns or Performance Max Campaigns. These tools make creating and managing your inventory in Google Merchant Center simple and flexible.

The Bid Simulator collects and analyzes data from ad auctions conducted on Google over the previous seven days. It evaluates factors like ad quality, competitor bids, and product data. Using this data, Google estimates how changes to your bids could impact clicks, costs, impressions, and conversions. You can use the Bid Simulator to forecast performance for individual product groups or categorized product groups.

Benefits of creating a shopping campaign

By deploying a shopping campaign on Google, businesses will receive the following benefits:

Get high-quality leads

By highlighting product information right in the ad to attract target customers. Then, customers will have a better understanding of the products that the business is selling before clicking on the ad to get high-quality leads. At the same time, it helps them compare and contrast between suppliers, thereby making quick and informed purchasing decisions. This helps increase the conversion rate for the ad and increases the likelihood of users purchasing on the business’s website.

Easy campaign management, focusing on sales

Unlike search ads or other types of Google Ads, shopping ads use the product attributes that you have uploaded to the Google Merchant Center feed to display ads in relevant search results. Creating and managing campaigns that promote multiple products is easier with Shopping ads. Plus, you can check and manage inventory right in Google Ads and create product groups for the items you want to bid on.

Wider reach

Shopping ads can appear for a user’s search query. If relevant, shopping ads and search ads will appear at the same time. This helps businesses increase their reach to target customers for the same search. In addition, when ads appear in search results and shopping tabs, it helps increase brand awareness.

Provide detailed reporting

Google will provide you with product performance at any level of detail you need. Through this data, you can evaluate the health of your campaign and make appropriate adjustments to improve campaign performance. By using Maximize performance for Shopping ads, you will have access to new ad inventory and AI-powered insights. Eligible ads will be delivered across YouTube, Display Network, Search Network, Gmail, and Maps. This allows businesses to reach new audiences across all Google channels and networks.

How to create a detailed shopping campaign

What do you need to prepare when creating shopping ads?

To set up shopping ads, you need to add products to Google Merchant Center so that those products can appear on Google search results pages. Then you can promote products to reach more customers and increase sales. Create a campaign in Google Ads to promote the added products.

When combining GMC and Google Ads, you can promote products by providing customers with information about the products for sale before they click on the ad. At the same time, it allows businesses to reach many potential customers, and track the performance of product ads by using reporting tools.

Before you start, you need to be familiar with shopping ads, you need to register for Google Merchant Center to provide information about your business and products. Verify your online store when you have issues and automatically upload product data from your online store or upload a file with all the product details yourself. Review products to ensure compliance with Google policies and regulations.

Create a Google Ads account and link it to Google Merchant Center to provide campaign information to create shopping ads. Set up conversion tracking for your website and set up data-driven segments to re-engage customers by adding visitors to your website or app. To start creating campaigns, you need to meet the requirements for shopping ads.

Linking Google Ads to Merchant Center

When you create a shopping campaign, you need to link your Google Ads account to Google Merchant Center. You can then create campaigns using your product information. Product data in GMC is used to support promotions and custom reporting. If you link GMC to Google Ads, your account will be automatically linked to Business Manager, which connects all of your apps and services on Google.

Link to an existing Google Ads account in GMC

In Merchant Center, select Settings and tools and then select Apps and services. In Google services, select Add service. In the next window, select the Google Ads account you want to link. Next, click on the link to complete linking the Google Ads account to Business Manager. If you only want to link the Google Ads account to Merchant Center, select Link to Merchant Center only and then select Link.

Link to a new Google Ads account in GMC

After you access Google Merchant Center and select Add service. Then select Google Ads and click Next. In the next window, select New account and edit the pre-filled information before continuing and then click Next. Click the Link to link the Google Ads account to Business Manager.

Linking to an unmanaged Google Ads account in GMC

Similar to the following 2 linking methods, in Google Merchant Center, after selecting Google Ads, click Next. In the next window, select the Account that you do not manage, enter the customer code, and select Next. Click the Link to complete the process of linking the Google Ads account to the Merchant Center.

Now you need to approve the linking request in Google Ads. In the Google Ads account, you need to click on Tools, and then click on Data Manager. In the Connected Products section, find Google Merchant Center, then select Manage and link. Next, select the Received tab and view the received linking requests. Find the account you want to link and in the Status column, it will display Need your approval. In the Action column, select Review, then review the details of the request, then select Approve.

Guide to creating a shopping campaign from A to Z

Access your Google Ads account, click the (+) icon, and select New Campaign. Next, select the appropriate campaign objective including Sales, Leads, Website Traffic, etc. You can also create a campaign without a goal guide.

Next, select the appropriate campaign type, which is a shopping campaign. Here, choose to create a Maximize Performance campaign or a regular shopping campaign.

Then select the Google Merchant Center account that has the products you want to advertise. Select the feed that contains the products you want to advertise in your campaign by feed label or by country of sale.

Next, select Standard Shopping as your campaign subtype and complete the campaign details. Enter a campaign name and select additional settings including inventory filters, local store products, and campaign Url options.

Select the bid strategy used in the campaign and set a daily budget, then select the display network and device, location. After clicking on Bid Strategy, click the (+) icon and select the Maximize Clicks bid strategy. After completing the normal shopping campaign settings, click Save and continue.

Now create your first ad group by entering some information. The ad group will contain individual product ads that the system automatically creates using information from your Google Merchant Center account. Now enter a name for the ad group and an appropriate bid. Then click Save and you will be redirected to the product groups page. Here you will see an All Products product group that contains all the products in the campaign. You can then manage the campaign and create more product groups by segmenting and setting appropriate bids.

Monitoring and Optimizing Shopping Campaign Performance

After you launch your Shopping campaign, you need to monitor and control your campaign performance to achieve the desired results. You can track your campaign performance using Google Ads tools including the product group page, the parameter page, the Bidding Insights Report, the Bid Simulator, and the product page.

Once you select Maximize Clicks for Shopping as your bid strategy, you can track your campaign performance in several ways. Check your click volume to verify that you are getting more clicks for your budget than before. Make sure you have enough data to evaluate your strategy performance. Consider several factors that affect your results over time. If your click-through rate is high, it may be because you are getting the most traffic.

To optimize your Shopping campaign performance, you should create a campaign with a single All Products product group and a unique bid. Also, get more granular by using the Google Product Type or Product Category attribute for your sections. Choose a bid strategy that matches your Shopping campaign’s preferred bid strategy. Make sure your campaign isn’t budget constrained and set your campaign priority to low when using a regular shopping campaign. Don’t use inventory filters and campaign exclusions, and don’t add untargeted products to an existing campaign.

Contact Google Ads experts for advice

Starting a new campaign is not easy, especially for shopping campaigns. If you want to create a successful campaign with high conversion rates and increase sales and maximize business profits. Contact Google Ads experts immediately for dedicated and thorough advice. We will help you have the most perfect campaigns through detailed instructions. At the same time, build a communication and advertising plan to maximize advertising budgets and achieve the best performance.

Understanding the importance and how to implement a shopping campaign will be very useful for e-commerce businesses or businesses that need to promote many products. Creating shopping ads that provide visual, detailed, and attractive information about products, will promote customer interaction and conversion actions, helping to increase sales and profits.

Frequently Asked Questions