If you’re familiar with our nexus-security Weekly videos or blog, you’ll know we’ve discussed shopping features extensively lately. Despite Instagram’s removal of shopping from Stories or Google’s launch of shoppable image ads, nothing has created the same buzz as Google’s Smart Shopping announcement at Google Marketing Live this past summer. As the seasons change and we enter the holiday period, it’s a perfect opportunity to explore Smart Shopping. See if you can turn holiday excitement into sales for your business.

This article will cover the ins and outs of Google Smart Shopping: what it is, how it functions, setting up effective campaigns, and using it to enhance your holiday marketing strategy.

What Exactly is Google Smart Shopping?

Smart Shopping is a new campaign type from Google. It leverages machine learning to not only decrease the time spent optimizing campaigns, but also achieve more in that time. Advertisers simply input their budget and campaign goal, and Smart Shopping handles the rest through automated bidding and ad placement. This makes Smart Shopping ads ideal for businesses with limited budgets and time for strategic management. Less time managing your campaigns doesn’t mean reduced results. In fact, Google’s early testing showed that advertisers using Smart Shopping campaigns achieved over 20% higher conversion value at a similar cost.

Smart Shopping utilizes product data from your Google Merchant Center account, which should already be linked to your Google Ads account if you’re running standard Shopping campaigns. Similar to responsive search ads, Smart Shopping uses machine learning to display the most effective combinations of your text and visual assets to potential customers across various platforms like Search, Display, YouTube, and Gmail. Google states this optimization process, aimed at generating ads with the highest conversion value, takes approximately 15 days. Want to advertise on Google Shopping but prefer maintaining control? Download our free guide to creating highly profitable campaigns!

Google Smart Shopping Campaign: Setup and Budgeting

Smart Shopping merges standard Shopping and display remarketing. If you’re currently using these campaign types, pause them before targeting the same products with Smart Shopping. When determining your budget, use your existing standard Shopping and display remarketing campaigns as a guide. Reallocating that budget to your Smart Shopping campaigns is a good starting point, allowing you to compare the success of each campaign type. Google suggests targeting all available products within a single campaign for maximum simplicity and performance. To create your Smart Shopping campaign, go to the Google Ads UI and start a new campaign:

Choose Shopping as your campaign type, select the appropriate Merchant Center account, and click “Goal-optimized” (Smart):

Remember that, as previously mentioned, your new Smart Shopping campaign will override existing standard Shopping and display remarketing campaigns. Next, select your product group and upload creative elements. Unless specified, all products in your product feed will be included in your campaign. Google advises against excluding products. This is because, when showing Smart Shopping ads on the Display Network, Google considers products your potential customers have interacted with on your website. Therefore, include any products they may have viewed. Additionally, Google automatically tests various image and text combinations for each product to identify the ad with the highest conversion value. For those who haven’t yet interacted with your products, Google serves ads based on your uploaded creative assets:

These responsive remarketing ads appear on Display and YouTube to prospects who have visited your site but haven’t shown interest in specific products. That’s the essence of creating a Smart Shopping campaign! Here are a few requirements for campaign eligibility:

1. You must have conversion tracking enabled with transaction-specific values and at least 20 conversions across existing Shopping campaigns in the last 45 days.
2. You need to add a global site tag to your website and possess a remarketing list of at least 100 active users. Alternatively, connect your Google Analytics account for tag management.
3. You must fulfill Google’s requirements for Shopping campaigns.

Analyzing Smart Shopping Campaign Reports

Standard reporting metrics (clicks, conversions, etc.) are available at the campaign, ad group, product group, device, and product levels within the Reports tab of your dashboard:

Navigate to Predefined reports (formerly dimensions) in the Reports tab for data segmented by product attributes like category, product type, and custom labels. However, performance reporting based on placement isn’t available, meaning you can’t see which networks yield better results for your Smart Shopping ads. Avoid directly comparing Smart Shopping performance to your old standard Shopping campaigns. You may see lower conversion rates (due to Smart Shopping including Display) and assume the new campaigns are underperforming. Instead, compare Smart Shopping performance to the combined performance of both your previous Smart Shopping and display remarketing campaigns.

Smart Shopping Campaign: Best Practices

Keep these best practices in mind when setting up and managing your Smart Shopping campaigns:

• If you choose a targeted approach initially, focusing on a specific product group rather than your entire catalog, maintain your other product groups in your existing standard Shopping and display remarketing campaigns.
• Since conversion rates optimize within 15 days, use this timeframe to benchmark performance against your old campaigns.
• If your conversion value targets aren’t met, consider Target ROAS (return-on-ad-spend) bidding to achieve daily goals or create separate campaigns for products with significantly different ROAS targets.
• To boost conversion volume, think about lowering your target ROAS.
• Like standard Shopping campaigns, optimize product titles, descriptions, and images for relevance and operate within Google’s spec requirements.

Potential Drawbacks

Are there any concerns before diving into this new campaign type? Here are some points to consider:

• Attribution. Combining standard shopping with display remarketing makes it difficult to attribute results to a specific channel. You rely on Google’s assurance that this blend is beneficial.
• Negative Keywords. Encountering impressions from irrelevant searches? You can’t remove those queries from your campaign.
• Product Control. Want to prioritize specific products or clear inventory? That level of control within a single campaign isn’t possible. As with any new automated format, you sacrifice some control over campaign details.

Final Thoughts

Automated bidding, broad reach, and hands-off CRO (conversion rate optimization) are just a few of Smart Shopping’s benefits! Google is increasingly providing advertisers access to machine learning. While this may not always guarantee better results, it does offer less time managing your account, potentially improved performance, and at the very least, the opportunity to A/B test campaign performance.