Smart Shopping is DEAD - Long Live Performance Max

[@darrentaylordigital]

Let me know if you think this is a good move by Google?

[@electriibe208]

I think it's a bad move, because a little less than a year ago, this campaign type was just released. I also really do not like not having an option to keep the smart shopping campaign, because a lot of people like me took months and months to research, test, and get that campaign type right. A lot of e-commerce stores, who are run entirely by one person are floating on a raft right now in terms of resources, help from google, etc.

[@electriibe208]

I had a smart shopping campaign that was finally starting to hit its stride after trial and error for months if not a years time, and then poof, it was gone and my conversions (purchases/sales) plummeted, all while paying the same amount on the budget. It is very discouraging.

[@darrentaylordigital]

@@electriibe208 it's hard on advertisers. Hopefully by running with the shopping feed only, you can get performance back to where it was!

[@ScottRedgate]

Great video! FYI, Google recently updated it's docs to say that if no assets are added, but you have "Final URL expansion" set to "On", they can generate search text ads based on the final URL.

[@darrentaylordigital]

Good point to add! Thanks!

[@rogerchappel5769]

@@darrentaylordigital Would you recommend having URL Expansion set to on for a PM Max shopping campaign?

[@DrGuu90210]

Hi, Thanks for the great video. Unfortunately I discovered it too late. I held on to our very good Smart Shopping campaign for as long as I could until Google automatically converted it to Performance Max recently. I unfortunately made the mistake (?) and provided images, text. No videos though, but these were automatically created by Google and are absolutely terrible. What is the best thing I can do to get back to the old successes of Smart Shopping? Create a whole new campaign ? Or do I lose too much data then? The Smart Shopping campaign ran for years....Or is the data linked to the Merchant Center and thus the whole account? Then a new campaign would be no problem because it has the data from the account. Thanks for your help and all the best for the future.

[@DrGuu90210]

EDIT: I just tried to create a new Performance Max campaign, but it is not possible without completing at least 1 Asset Group completely. So text + images. Then unfortunately automatic videos etc. are created again.

[@darrentaylordigital]

The transaction data remains in the account, as does your merchant centre product IDs which Google uses to reference products, if you're running pmax on feed only it should find it's feet

[@RonyMattar]

Thank you for the video. I am using Performance Max for an ecommerce website, it performed way better than the Manual CPC Search ads, and once the Google Merchant products were approved, all our conversions are coming from both Shopping Ads and Performance Max. Why the manual seach ads did not work well in your opinion?

[@darrentaylordigital]

Great to hear! Manual CPC search ads for e-commerce will perform worse than shopping as customers can't see the product before the click. When they can see it, they are pre qualified as interested before the click, so convert better and also don't close click items they don't like the look of

[@RonyMattar]

@@darrentaylordigital Thank you!

[@darrentaylordigital]

@@RonyMattar you're very welcome!

[@waltervanrooyen6169]

Smart shopping ran various assets like banners, KZbin, gmail as well and it skyrocketed some of our accounts. Would you say if we were shooting for similar results as that campaign, would to just excluded branded terms? Ive talked with google support and they were able to exluded our branded terms. Thanks

[@darrentaylordigital]

I would exclude brand in PMax for sure, Brand should be managed separately and deliberately. Google will hopefully make it clear brand terms can be excluded in future!

[@th1285]

Thanks for the vid! One thing I do not understand though. You say with PMAX Instead of adding assets to asset groups "just stick with your merchant center shopping feed" with this you mean literally only adding the product(s) to the assetgroup and leave all assets blank?

[@darrentaylordigital]

Correct! You can save your asset group with just your feed alone. You don't need to add any other elements. This forces the campaign to function more like a targeted smart shopping campaign

[@th1285]

@@darrentaylordigital Thanks so much!

[@darrentaylordigital]

@@th1285 you're more than welcome!

[@johnmoran5680]

@@darrentaylordigital One thing that we found as well. If you start a Pmax Feed Only campaign, you can opt-out of the KZbin portion by contacting your Google Rep. They can manually opt you out of it so that Google will not automatically add new videos to your campaign.

[@darrentaylordigital]

@@johnmoran5680 wow, that's a great bit of info!

[@iapetusgallery6660]

I switched over to Permance Max from Smart shopping in June. I had pretty terrible results compared to a 4x/5x ROAS on Smart Shopping. I spoke to Google about this and they suggested I needed to be spending around £150 per day to see any decent results. I have a budget of about £40-50 per day on Smart shopping (except at Christmas) so this was way more than I could gamble on the new campaign. Have started a manual shopping campaign but struggling to get the results I need. Do you think I should give PMax another go and can it be successful at a small budget?

[@darrentaylordigital]

Manual shopping is a tough ask. Usually this is for 3rd party automated bidding software or single product e-commerce. Try PMax again and ensure you're running on just the feed only with no other assets. Ignore the Google rep, your budget is perfectly reasonable for generating some results

[@iapetusgallery6660]

@@darrentaylordigital Thanks so much for taking the time to reply. Can I just check I have done this correctly? I have paused the original ad group assets and created a new asset group with no assets bar the listing groups ALL PRODUCTS. I have saved and have a warning of "This asset group needs 1 landscape image, 1 square image, 1 logo, 3 headlines, 1 long headline and 2 descriptions". Is that correct and can I just ignore the warning. Thanks in advance.

[@j3506]

@@iapetusgallery6660 I had this problem too.. Make a new asset group and do not add an audience to it. That seems to be what allowed me to get it to work after about 2 hours of screwing with it.

[@iapetusgallery6660]

@@j3506 Thanks J. I did that and so far it seems to be serving fine. Fingers crossed we get rsults coming in soon. Thanks for taking the time to reply to my questions. Really appreciated.

[@strictlybangers]

In pMax you can exclude urls but is there a way you can only use a handful or urls instead? my client has a whole ecomm store but only wants to run activity for a portion of the products that are listed on the site. Thanks either way and great vid.

[@strictlybangers]

sorry to explain myself further, it's easier to say which urls I want to use as opposed to making a big exclusion list of those I dont want to use.

[@darrentaylordigital]

If you're using the shopping feed you can include/exclude products from your feed as part of the setup options. Video on this soon!

[@strictlybangers]

@@darrentaylordigital nice one, thanks for letting me know!

[@SilentCashCow]

Great content as always!! Do you manage ads for clients? I’d be very interested if you do!

[@darrentaylordigital]

Thanks! Ordinarily yes, but at full capacity!

[@SilentCashCow]

@@darrentaylordigital Good for you!👏🏻

[@kartavyaj]

@@SilentCashCow hey kevin

[@SilentCashCow]

@@kartavyaj YO!🐮

[@kartavyaj]

@@SilentCashCow I spy on you everywhere 👀

[@thermomate]

I'm trying this on my account, will update the result after 1 week!

[@darrentaylordigital]

Let me know how it goes!

[@thermomate]

@@darrentaylordigital I've seen great result with concentrating on the shopping feed. But only last for 3 days. I think it might because I changed the budget too soon and the campaign drop back into the learning phrase. A pity. Now I'm considering pausing the campaign and start again with a Pmax ads that concentrating on shopping feed. Any advice?

[@Fifavin14]

Yooo your academy center is supported by Hult?? It’s my uni!

[@darrentaylordigital]

I've lectured at Hult a few times!

[@quiltdirect]

This all about Google profits and very little to do with Customer/Advertiser Service