Service, by platform
Shopping ads management: the feed first, then the campaigns
Shopping ads are matched to searches by the product feed in Merchant Center, not by keywords: Google reads the title, the description, the product type and the Google product category, so a title that says the brand, the model, the size and the colour wins auctions that “Blue Widget” never enters. Shopping is managed on the Growth tier at £399 a month, which covers the feed, Merchant Center, the campaign structure and the weekly Search Terms read, with ad spend paid to Google on your own card.
Feed first
Most Shopping accounts are fixed in the spreadsheet, not the campaign
The feed decides which searches you can appear for at all. Before a bid is touched, every product needs the attributes Google matches on, and the ones it uses to decide whether to show you at all: price and availability that agree with the page, a GTIN where one exists, shipping and returns set in Merchant Center.
What we fix in the feed
- Titles that read like the search
- Brand, product, key attribute, size or variant, in that order, in the first 70 characters. “Bosch GSB 18V-55 combi drill, 2 x 2.0Ah, L-Boxx” beats “GSB 18V-55” on every search a buyer types.
- Product type and Google product category
- Your own taxonomy in product_type, Google's in google_product_category, both filled, because campaign subdivision and search matching both lean on them.
- Custom labels for margin and season
- custom_label_0 for margin band, custom_label_1 for bestseller or clearance, so the campaigns can bid by what a sale is actually worth.
- Price, availability and images in step with the page
- A scheduled fetch several times a day, so a price change on the site does not become a disapproval in Merchant Center by the afternoon.
Campaign structure
Priorities that send each search to the right bid
Standard Shopping has no keywords, so the structure does the targeting. Three campaigns at three priority levels, with negatives funnelling the searches between them, mean a search for your brand name, a search for a product model and a search for a category each meet a bid set for that kind of buyer.
| Campaign | Priority | Searches it catches | Bidding |
|---|---|---|---|
| Generic | High | Category searches with no brand or model: "cordless combi drill". Brand and model terms are negatives here, so they fall through | Lower target ROAS: these buyers are comparing, and the sale is worth less per click |
| Product and model | Medium | Searches naming a model or a specific product: "GSB 18V-55". Your own brand is a negative here | Target ROAS from the product's margin label |
| Brand | Low | Searches that include your shop's name, which nothing above has claimed | Highest target: these buyers were coming anyway, so the bid stays modest |
Product groups inside each campaign are subdivided by product type and custom label, never left at “all products” with one bid, so a low-margin accessory does not carry the same target as the machine it fits.
Search Terms in Shopping
The weekly read still applies, and it is where retail waste hides
Shopping has a Search Terms report, and on a retail account it is longer than a Search campaign's. Every week we sort it by cost and read what the feed matched: spare parts you do not stock, a competitor's house brand, “used” and “refurbished” against new stock, “manual” and “instructions” from people who already own the thing. Each goes into a shared negative list, and the list is what keeps the generic campaign profitable.
The report also tells us what the feed is missing. When a search for a size or a colour you do sell matches nothing, the title is wrong, and the fix is in the feed rather than in the campaign.
Standard Shopping or Performance Max
Decided by the numbers, not the default
| Standard Shopping | Performance Max | |
|---|---|---|
| Search terms | Visible, and negatives work at every level | Categories only; campaign negatives are recent and limited |
| Brand traffic | Kept in its own low-priority campaign | Claimed as PMax's result unless brand exclusions are set |
| Where it runs | Shopping results only | Shopping, Search, YouTube, Display, Discover, Gmail, Maps |
| Best for | Under a few hundred products, or margins that vary a lot | Large feeds with strong conversion values and volume |
Measurement
Return on ad spend is not profit, so we report both
A Shopping account is judged on ROAS, and ROAS is meaningless without margin. We ask for the gross margin by product type before the first campaign, set target ROAS from it, and the monthly report shows revenue, ad spend, our fee and the margin left after all three. Purchases are tracked with values through your platform's own tag or Google Tag Manager, and where a platform double-fires on the thank-you page we find it in the first week, because a doubled revenue figure would teach target ROAS to spend twice what it should.
Related
Where this connects
Questions about Shopping ads
Do I need Merchant Center before you can start?
Yes, and if you do not have one we set it up as part of the setup fee: business verification, the shipping and returns policies Google now checks, the feed connection from your platform, and the fixes for the disapprovals that always appear in the first week. Nothing serves until Merchant Center is clean.
Which platforms can you connect?
Shopify, WooCommerce, Magento, BigCommerce, Wix and anything that can export a scheduled Google product feed. Where the platform's own feed is poor, and Shopify's default titles usually are, we run a supplemental feed to fix titles and product types without touching your shop.
Will you run Performance Max or Standard Shopping?
Whichever the numbers justify, and often both. A feed with a few hundred products, real margins in the conversion values and a clear brand versus non-brand split runs well on Standard Shopping with priorities, because we can see the search terms. Performance Max is added where the account has the conversion volume for it, with brand excluded so it cannot claim your own name as its result.
What does ROAS need to be?
Whatever your margin says. A 400% return on ad spend on a product with a 20% gross margin loses money after the cost of goods; the same return on a 60% margin is excellent. We set the target ROAS from your margin per product type, which is why we ask for it before the first campaign, and the report shows return against margin, not just against spend.
Do you take one shop per sector?
One business per sector and area on the monthly plans, confirmed personally in the reply. For an online shop the area is usually the UK, so the sector is what matters: we will not run two shops selling the same category into the same Shopping auctions.
Send us the shop. We reply with the feed fixes and the fee.
Your Merchant Center status, your platform and roughly what you spend. The reply lists what the feed is missing, the structure we would run and whether your category is still free.