By: Jyll Saskin Gales, Google Ads Coach

I'm a Google Ads Expert, and of course these days every ecommerce business wants to know about Performance Max. As much as we all love Google Ads PMax (right?!), there are still some use cases where a Standard Shopping campaign may make more sense than Performance Max for your business.

Here's my quick & easy cheat sheet for launching a Google Ads Standard Shopping campaign.

Standard Shopping setup guide

1. Start with a Max Clicks bid strategy, or Manual CPC @ $2 CPC bid⁠. Switch to a conversion-focused bid strategy once you have at least 1 conversion per day for at least 2 weeks.
2. Include add-to-cart as a conversion to scale faster, especially if you're newer to running ads. Once you've achieved 30 purchases in 30 days, remove add-to-cart so you're optimizing for purchases only.
3. Check search terms report and add negatives: daily for the first week or so, then weekly for the first 1-2 months, then bi-weekly⁠
4. Ensure product titles (and pages) are descriptive⁠. You can edit these in Google Merchant Center. Don't be intimidated by Google Merchant Center! It's really easy, just hit the pencil icon to edit your feed.⁠
5. If your budget is limited, don’t advertise all of your products⁠. Create a filter at the campaign level or ad group level and focus on your bestsellers or your most profitable products first.
6. If Standard Shopping is performing really well and you want to scale further, test a Performance Max campaign!

Standard Shopping or Performance Max?

Deciding whether to create a Standard Shopping campaign or a Performance Max campaign in Google Ads will depend on your business goals and the resources you have available to manage your campaigns (both time and money).

Standard Shopping campaigns are generally easier to set up and manage, as you can see, so they can be a good choice for businesses with limited resources or experience with Google Ads. Performance Max campaigns, on the other hand, require more advanced optimization techniques and may be more suitable for businesses with larger budgets and more experience with Google Ads.

Ultimately, the right choice for your business will depend on your account and goals; it may be worth experimenting with both types of campaigns to see which one works best for you.

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