How to Set Up Google Shopping Paid Ads: Part 2

Deciding on Your Structure

We’ve all heard the saying that it’s never a good idea to put all of your eggs in one basket; essentially if you switch on product ads, set to target all of your products in one ad group you are doing exactly that. The most basic setup is to simply switch on product ads for all products, which means that you will have one campaign containing a single ad group targeting all products; it may do the job, but not very well.

In order to set up product ads and get the most from them, it’s important to firstly understand how they work and secondly why the above approach can result in poor performance.

Within AdWords you can set how much you are willing to spend per day and also per click, however these are set at different levels.  As product ads do not rely on keyword targeting, bids are set at the ad group level and therefore all products contained within the target will have the same maximum bid applied. Daily budget is set at campaign level and therefore all ad groups within the same campaign will be subject to the same daily budget.

Going back to the ‘having all of your eggs in one basket’ scenario, if you only have one product target set to all products, you will only be able to bid one amount regardless of how much money you make from each product.

By default you can group your products by the product type, condition, brand or ID all of which are required Google Merchant centre fields and therefore if you are using Google Shopping already you will have them. The problem with grouping using these attributes is the inflexibility, for example if you group by brand you may have one model of product that retails for £10 and another for £1,000 meaning that they will both be subject to the same bid regardless of the fact you make more profit from one than the other. The ID target does allow you to manage this more effectively but requires a considerable amount of time.

Whilst the fields, adwords_grouping, adwords_labels and adwords_publish  are not required for your ads to show, implementing them within your feed gives you more flexibility to group products in a way that suits your business model.

Consider how much you are prepared to pay per sale and also the lifetime value of acquiring a new customer. Consider the margins on each product as well as the likely conversion rate and potential for repeat purchases. As each retailer is different, as are their products; a structure that is best for one is not necessarily right for another.

If you would like more information, help or advice simply get in touch with us here

Note: If you are MetaCommerce customer you will already benefit from the additional fields, simply navigate to the ‘merchant centre’ tab to make use of them.

Missed the first part to this blog? Catch up on How to Set Up Google Shopping Paid Ads: Part 1

Get the next installment of the series with How to Set Up Google Shopping Paid Ads: Part 3