More than likely, your goals for your Standard Shopping campaigns are based on performance results. Three examples of this scenario are:

1. Retailer A wants to drive the most sales volume for their seasonal product line.
2. Retailer B wants to maximize their revenue by prioritizing products that are bringing them the most revenue.
3. Retailer C has varying profit margins for different products and wants their costs to be in line with these margins.

Smart Bidding will automatically optimize your bids for performance metrics that are important to your business. Apply the Target Return on Ad Spend (Target ROAS) bid strategy to adjust your bids for every user search to meet your set ROAS goal and maximize conversion value. Many factors, including device type, user location, and product details are evaluated into each bid adjustment. If you have strong mobile performance, for example, Target ROAS will adjust your mobile bids accordingly. Read more about Target ROAS.

If you need to manually adjust your bids, we recommend creating a system for managing your bids. To further optimize, you can enable the Enhanced CPC (eCPC) feature to adjust your product group bids at the query level for every auction. These bid adjustments help maximize the number of conversions while keeping costs around the same, leading to higher conversion rates and lower costs per conversion. Read more about eCPC.

Shopping Ad	Query	Without eCPC Bid Change	With eCPC Bid Change	Conversion Rate
	puddlers yellow rainboots size 7	$0.60	$0.78	High
	puddlers yellow rainboots	$0.60	$0.75	High​
	puddlers rainboots	$0.60	$0.64	High​
	puddlers boots	$0.60	$0.61	High​
	yellow rainboots	$0.60	$0.59	Low
	puddlers shoes	$0.60	$0.55	Low
	rainboots	$0.60	$0.40	Low
	boots for rain	$0.60	$0.35	Low
	waterproof boots	$0.60	$0.31	Low
$0.60 Max CPC Bid	boots	$0.60	$0.10	Low

Let’s say your primary goal is to drive as much traffic as possible to your products. Three examples of this scenario are:

1. Retailer A wants to generate the most traffic for their newest product line.
2. Retailer B wants to build awareness for a specific product brand.
3. Retailer C creates a new Shopping campaign and wants to accrue traffic before further optimizing their campaign.

Your bids must be competitive to receive the most traffic. Use the Maximize Clicks bid strategy to automatically adjust bids to optimize for click traffic within your given budget. See more on Maximize Clicks.

Once your campaign has accumulated enough data, you may consider switching to an eCPC or Target ROAS bid strategy to start optimizing for conversions instead of traffic.

Whether you’re using Smart or manual bidding, be careful to consider all segment-level performance differences in addition to your bid strategy. Capitalize on strong performance or prioritize segments by increasing bid adjustment modifiers for specific device types, times, locations, and/or audience lists. If you want to focus on driving more mobile traffic, for instance, increase the mobile bid adjustment modifier. Note that the Target ROAS bid strategy already optimizes bids automatically based on a variety of factors, including device and user location, so you won’t need to manually adjust modifiers with this solution in place. Find out more about bid adjustments.

Create relational ad/product group divisions in a tiered, broad-to-narrow structure. This approach will:

• Provide total bid coverage by capturing your entire inventory
• Give your bidding system more ad/product group data to inform bid optimizations
• Create better visibility into performance reporting
• Align bid management to your objectives
• Simplify account management
• Prevent wasted investment on item IDs or small ad/product groups that have little to no activity and warrant little to no changes to their bids.

Use traffic and performance data to determine the right level of granularity and group your products by how likely they’ll perform similarly to reach specific objective targets. The more traffic there is in each product group, the better it will be. Try to avoid product groups that have a small number of clicks.

Start with broader divisions using attributes like product type and Google Product Category (Category). If there is enough data and a need to justify more divisions, you can continue segmenting your products further with the same or more focused attributes. The brand attribute, for example, can be used for more brand-centric businesses. In your final tier, item ID, custom label or brand are more focused attributes that can be used to hone in on specific products. Be wary that using the item ID will greatly restrict any more relational product group divisions. For instances where you can’t reasonably infer performance, put those products into their own group to gather more insight. See the example below and read more about attributes available for product group subdivisions.

Product Group	Subdivision	Suggested attribute for dividing products
▼All products	1	Product type, Category
▼Apparel	2	Product type, Category
▼Shirts	3	Product type, Category
▼Luxury Brand	4	Product type, Category, Brand
▼Product ID: 123456789	Final	Product type, Category, Brand, Custom Label, Item ID
Everything else in 'Luxury' brand	Final	Product type, Category, Brand, Custom Label, Item ID
Everything else in 'Shirts'	4	Product type, Category, Brand
Everything else in 'Apparel'	3	Product type, Category
▼Electronics	2	Product type, Category
▼Laptops	Final	Product type, Category, Brand, Custom Label, Item ID
▼Tablets	Final	Product type, Category, Brand, Custom Label, Item ID
▼Phones	Final	Product type, Category, Brand, Custom Label, Item ID
Everything else in 'Electronics'	Final	Product type, Category, Brand, Custom Label, Item ID
Everything else in 'All products'	2	Product type, Category

As an example, let’s look at a campaign structure for a retailer who sells men’s shoes and a smaller selection of men’s accessories.

Product Group	Max. CPC	Description
▼All products	$1.00	Targets all products in inventory
▼Men's shoes	$1.00	Targets all men's shoes using product type
Boots	$4.00	Targets boots using product type
Sneakers	$2.00	Targets sneakers using product type
Everything else in 'Men's shoes'	$1.00	Targets remaining products in men's shoes
Everything else in 'All products'	$1.00	Targets remaining products in inventory

As a whole, the retailer will be able to glean valuable insight into performance for their parent Men’s Shoes product group as well as their child product groups: Boots, Sneakers, and everything else. The retailer maintains visibility by creating a system of bids to cover all products, no matter what bucket they fall into. This relational structure also captures new product additions to their inventory without having to create new groups.

One size doesn’t fit all when it comes to your advertising goals across your inventory. The nuances of the right campaign structure and bid strategy combination will vary from retailer to retailer. But, fundamentally, using traffic and performance data to inform your structure and bids will be essential to reaching your objectives.

Use campaign priorities to your advantage. Campaign priorities won't affect your search relevance or influence the likelihood of your product to show for a specific query. Rather, priorities are a useful feature to set which products and their corresponding bids are most important to you.

For example, a jewelry retailer may choose to prioritize competitive bids from a seasonal campaign containing Mother’s Day products by setting the campaign priority to “high.” This way, the retailer’s bids will remain strong against competitors’ when they activate the campaign for Mother’s Day. See the example below:

Campaign	Status	Default Max. CPC	Description
#1 Mother’s Day Seasonal Standard Shopping Campaign (High Priority)	Eligible	$5.00	Targets only Mother’s Day products using custom label
#2 Bestsellers Standard Shopping Campaign (Medium Priority)	Eligible	$3.00	Targets top-selling products using custom label
#3 Core Standard Shopping Campaign  (Low Priority)	Eligible	$0.50	Targets entire product inventory

Use a “high” campaign priority setting to ensure that the products you’re most interested in promoting get the traction they need. Your “high” priority campaign should contain the products that will make the largest impact and drive your top campaign objectives with a separate budget. This prioritization will remain until you change the setting back to “low” or your budget is depleted. To exclusively target specific products for this campaign, you can:

• Use the ”Excluded” option on your “Everything else” product groups to bid only on the items you specified in a given ad group. You can “exclude” product groups by clicking in the “Max. CPC” column of your “Campaigns” or “Ad groups” tabs. To minimize potential bid conflicts, we recommend having no more than 100 “Everything else” product groups.
• Apply an inventory filter to limit the items in a given ad/product group by specific attributes or custom labels. Learn more about using the inventory filter.

For accounts with multiple campaigns, it’s especially important to have a catch-all core campaign. Create a “low” priority campaign with all products or the long-tail of remaining products that are not captured by your higher priority campaigns to ensure complete product coverage. This acts as a safety net by making sure your products are always serving in the auction when higher priority campaigns reach budget caps or unexpected issues occur. Read more on campaign priorities.

If you advertise in multiple languages for the same target country, you may want to create separate campaigns for each language by using custom labels. For example, if your target country is Switzerland, you may set up a custom label that uses the values "German" and French". This will allow you to set your budget, bids, and negative keywords by language. Learn more about custom labels.

Now, let’s put this into practice. How can we combine a relational campaign structure with a bid strategy to drive your top objectives? Here are a couple possible arrangements:

Example of campaign objective to drive ROAS goal

A home decor retailer has a separate budget for their top products with an aggressive ROAS target while maintaining an efficient ROAS target for the rest of their catalog. In order to deliver on their objectives, the retailer separates their top-selling products into a “high” priority campaign using the inventory filter and applies the Target ROAS bid strategy. The retailer also has a “low” priority core campaign, which contains all their products, with the Target ROAS bid strategy. Each campaign is broken into product groups based on similar product performance using the brand attribute to drive their top-line objectives and provide complete visibility into performance.

Product Group	Campaign	Bid Strategy	Description
All products (filtered)	#1 Bestsellers (High Priority)	Target ROAS	Targets top-selling products using custom label
All products (filtered) > Luxury Brand	#1 Bestsellers (High Priority)	Target ROAS	Targets luxury top-selling products using brand
All products (filtered) > Everything else in ‘All products (filtered)’	#1 Bestsellers (High Priority)	Target ROAS	Targets remaining top-selling products
All products	#2 Core Campaign (Low Priority)	Target ROAS	Targets entire product inventory
All products > Luxury Brand	#2 Core Campaign ​(Low Priority)	Target ROAS	Targets luxury products using brand
All products > Everything else in ‘All products (filtered)’	#2 Core Campaign ​(Low Priority)	Target ROAS	Targets remaining products in inventory

Example of campaign objective to drive traffic

An electronic retailer has new budget to drive as much traffic as possible to their Holiday Sale. They exclusively target their Holiday Sale products in a “high” priority campaign with the Maximize Clicks bid strategy. Within the new campaign, the retailer breaks out two product groups of interest to evaluate traffic performance. This campaign will run alongside their other campaigns, which capture all products to maintain total inventory coverage and drive other campaign objectives. In this example, if the retailer sees strong mobile performance, they will also increase their mobile bid modifier in addition to their current Smart Bidding strategy.

Product Group	Campaign	Bid Strategy	Description
All products (filtered)	#1 Holiday Sale (High Priority)	Max Clicks	Targets products in holiday sale using custom label
All products (filtered) > Computer accessories	#1 Holiday Sale (High Priority)	Max Clicks	Targets computer accessories using product type
All products (filtered) > Phone accessories	#1 Holiday Sale (High Priority)	Max Clicks	Targets phone accessories using product type
All products > Everything else in ‘All products (filtered)’	#1 Holiday Sale (High Priority)	Max Clicks	Targets remaining products in holiday sale
All products (filtered)	#2 Bestsellers  (Medium Priority)	eCPC	Targets top-selling products using custom label
All products	#3 Core Campaign (Low Priority)	eCPC	Targets entire product inventory

Regularly look into the Products tab to uncover areas of improvement and resolve any issues. For example, you can ensure your top products are eligible to show by filtering for the highest clicks or conversions and viewing the product status columns.

Item ID	Title	Clicks	Cost	Avg.CPC	Product Status
123456	Acme Trail Running Shoes	576	$345.11	$0.60	Ready to serve
12345687	Acme Lightweight Training Shoes	552	$236.79	$0.43	Ready to serve
5678613	Acme Natural Form Running Shoes	342	$155.22	$0.45	Ready to serve
5645868	Acme Low Impact Running Shoes	158	$76.21	$0.48	Disapproved
4896135	Acme Training Shoes	119	$40.33	$0.34	Disapproved

Pay attention to your overall product count and approval percentages to flag any disapprovals early. See more insights.

% ready to serve	Products ready to serve	% active	Products active	% approved	Products submitted	Products submitted
92.08%	1,105	94.16%	1,130	95.63%	1,150	1,200

Subdivide your inventory to create product groups that align with your top performers. You can then use conversion tracking to optimize your bids further. For example, if a product group has a low cost-per-acquisition, you can increase your bid to get more conversion volume and spend more of your budget to get more conversions. In the opposite way, if a product group has a high cost-per-acquisition, you could lower that product group's bid to reserve your budget for product groups that can give you more conversions at a lower cost. Another way to determine what bids to set for your important product groups is to use the Bid Simulator, which can give you performance estimates for particular bids. Learn more.

Competitive landscape data is a good place to start identifying opportunities to optimize your campaigns. When looking at your reports, we recommend segmenting by device as the competitive landscape can vary significantly. Try these tools in your Shopping campaigns:

• Click share is the best metric for getting a sense of your position relative to your competitors’. A lower click share with a high impression share indicates that you may not be showing in the top results to drive valuable clicks. Look for ways to differentiate your ads and adjust bids accordingly to capture more click share, especially on mobile where limited screen size drives more visibility and traffic to top results. You can download or schedule a report to get click share by device. Learn more about click share.
  
   

  	Product group	Campaign	Max. CPC	Cost	Clicks	Click share
  	All products (filtered)	#1 Seasonal Standard Shopping Campaign (High Priority)	Auto: $5.00	$193.20	345	50.20%
  	All products (filtered)	#2 Bestsellers Standard Shopping Campaign (Medium Priority)	$3.00 (enhanced)	$52.80	160	30.15%
  	All products	#3 Core Standard Shopping Campaign  (Low Priority)	$0.50 (enhanced)	$11.22	51	11.3%
  Show rows: 50 ▼						1 - 3 of 3

  
   
• Impression share can help you make sure your ads are reaching as many shoppers as possible. If your impression share is low and you’re earning a profit from the impressions you do get, you may want to increase your bids or optimize your data quality to earn more of those valuable impressions.
• Auction insights will allow you to compare your performance with other advertisers who are participating in the same auctions that you are. This information can help you make strategic bid and budget decisions by showing where you’re succeeding and where you may be missing opportunities for improved performance. Find out more about Auction Insights.
• Benchmark CTR and Benchmark Max CPC show how your product groups stack against your competitors. If your CTRs and max CPCs are lagging behind the benchmarks, you’ll know that you need to improve your product data so your ads are more relevant or adjust your bids so you’ll be more competitive. The competitive performance data you see is aggregated and averaged so that it’s anonymous.
• The Bid Simulator can show you what your results might have been in the past week if you’d set higher or lower bids. Try using this tool for mobile specifically to understand your missed opportunity with more competitive mobile bids. See more about the Bid Simulator.

Negative keywords can be an effective tool to avoid showing your products to the wrong shopper. However, adding too many negative keywords may significantly reduce overall or relevant traffic and can often hurt performance unless they're carefully reviewed on a regular basis. Learn more about negative keywords.

We recommend only using negative keywords to prevent your products from showing on completely irrelevant queries. For example, a retailer who only sells dress shoes will not want to show up for a query like “sneakers”. They can add “sneakers” as a negative keyword to their campaign. To optimize your campaigns for specific queries, try using eCPC or Target ROAS to show on relevant traffic.