Jyll Saskin Gales (00:00)
This is PPC Zone, April 2026, e-commerce expansion. I'm your host, Jyll Saskin Gales. I use the pronouns she and her. I'm a Google Ads coach, ex-Googler, and the founder of the Inside Google Ads course, podcast, and book. I created PPC Zone in 2022 to elevate new perspectives and insights in our industry.
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Next up in the Zone is the founder of PPC Boost, a boutique paid media agency specializing in taking six and seven figure e-com brands to eight figures.
He's here to shed some light on top Google Ads trends for e-commerce brands in 2026. Please welcome Brian Lasonde. Awesome. Yeah, thanks for the intro, Jyll. Yeah, great to be on here. Like Jyll mentioned, founder of PPC Boost, paid media agency. And yeah, today we're going to talk about some of the top Google Ads trends that we see for e-commerce brands in 2026. so.
I know we got only seven minutes here. We're going to try to get through five trends in seven minutes though. So I'm going to, I'm going to run through these fairly quickly. Like Joe mentioned too, if you guys have any questions, yeah, add them to the chat or, ⁓ or bring them up in the Q and a, but I think trend number one is almost something that's, that's been a trend over the last couple of years. ⁓ P max for standard shopping. We're still seeing this be a case by case basis. There's no hard and fast rule of.
always go PMAX, always go standard shopping. ⁓ I will say for a lot of times for small newer budgets, if you're spending a couple thousand, 5,000, 10,000 per month, or if you need or if it's a niche or a highly specific product, lot of the times we're starting with standard shopping there just so we have a little bit more control ⁓ over those search terms as well as where those ads are being served. One recent example is a
A new client we onboarded, it's a stargazing tent. So it's specifically for being able to see the stars better. So we don't really want to be showing up on tents and Coleman tents, some of these broader keywords. So we also don't want to be showing up in, in, ⁓ you know, non search channels. And so for us, standard shopping was, a logical choice there. ⁓ I will say, ⁓ for P max though, especially if you're an established brand or even a growing brand.
but you do have conversion history. have really good assets, videos, images. A lot of the times, Performance Max can work really well here. I would say when we look at our book of business, it's probably something like 50-50 these days where we're going standard shopping, 50 % going PMAX. Whereas a couple of years ago, it was a little bit heavier, tilted toward Performance Max. So I do see that as a trend. Talking with other PPC people, it seems like a lot of people are.
going back to standard shopping or testing that out as well. ⁓ The next big one here is merchant center. So optimizing your feed. I say for LLMs here, but it's really just optimizing your feed in general. And then I think there's a lot of benefits of having good feed hygiene, good feed maintenance that is gonna help ⁓ in LLMs as well. So just a couple call-outs here.
For product titles, this is actually something we've been doing for years. It's pretty easy to do in a supplemental feed, or you can actually do it in the backend or in your feed management tool. If you don't have those resources, you can just create a supplemental feed. You don't necessarily have to change the product titles on your website. Really the important thing is having that core non-brand keyword first. I think a lot of times people have the manufacturer name.
or maybe it spits out the measurements and dimensions. And that's all good to have in there, but you really want to have that core keyword first. This example is from one of our B2B e-com advertisers. So they actually don't really want people who are searching like just trash cans or kitchen trash cans, anything like that. So outdoor trash can is a good term. Anything with commercial, we want to make sure we have in there. Commercial trash container, commercial trash can.
⁓ These types of keywords that that give that intent that it's not somebody looking for a kitchen or a bathroom trash can they're looking for You know ordering trash cans and recycling bins for their for their business Yeah using customer language not not skew logic like I mentioned so ⁓ Having that core keyword but also including some some case in context to like I mentioned the commercial or outdoor trash can and supplemental feeds I highly recommend if if
And if you guys haven't used those before, it's a really great, tool. Description. This is where I think it's, this is kind of an underrated ⁓ optimization tactic. You know, the product title certainly is the most important, but I believe, you know, as LLMs get more popular, having more information in here, having a really detailed product description is going to help you both from an organic side and a paid side. ⁓ And so what we recommend here,
is this is where you can really go into detail and give a lot more context than you can in the title. So we don't recommend just repeating the title, but really adding in use cases, know, mentioning. So I mentioned commercial in this example, commercial trashcan, recycling bin, but also just mentioned what comes along with it. You know, plastic liners we have mentioned in here. We do have the measurements that some of the different applications you can do.
For them, certain industries work really well, like stadiums or universities. So this is another opportunity for you to put some of those relevant industries in that text. Another piece here, so this is kind of what I have listed as trend number three, product image optimization. So this is actually something we've been doing manually for years. Actually the same client that the commercial recycling one we were.
creating images, having their team create images that had maybe a stadium background or a university background. ⁓ But now with Google Product Studio, which is built into Merchant Center now, you can just go in and basically prompt it to add any background you want. And so this is something that we're starting to test out in some of our campaigns. I encourage you to look at the SERP too to see what your competitors look like.
Because it can be a really good way to stand out like in that in that trashcan example I think almost everybody has just a white background with the trash can so if you're if you're able to stand out with that University background with that stadium background ⁓ You know, whatever is relevant to your industry. I think it can it can really be Really be worth testing, you know quite a bit here
There's also some new stuff that we're learning quite a bit in terms of metadata compliance. so whether you're other AI gen platforms, the nice thing with built into Google ⁓ is that it does have that metadata compliance with it. So ⁓ less likely to get your ads disapproved there. So highly recommend anybody who hasn't played around with it yet just to go in. You can do a test and just ask it to add a different background. And so I think that stuff is something that we're doing.
that we're starting to test into quite a bit. ⁓ AI Max, I know this is a very controversial topic. ⁓ I'm definitely curious to kind of hear people's thoughts on this. I will say we're more cautious of this just being turned on right now than ⁓ embracing it, ⁓ but we are continuing to test it. ⁓ With AI Max, what it does is it expands your reach beyond manual keywords. It also can dynamically generate, add, copy, and select landing pages.
This can work if you're in kind of an expansion mode and you want to test this out. But I would just caution people to check to make sure it hasn't been turned on. We've audited a lot of accounts recently where it gets turned on, everything gets switched to broad match, and it just tanks the account. So while we are excited to see where this goes long term, ⁓ so far, it's been more on the conservative and cautious side. And then
Lastly here, just using AI to mine customer pain points. I think this is a huge one that we do across channels. We use this for our Metacopy, our Metacreative, as well as on Google. But if you can, if you're e-commerce and let's just say you're on Shopify, you can get an export of all your reviews of all time, load that up into your favorite AI platform, ChatCPT Cloud, and then start to ask questions, start to get to the pain points. You can start to key in on
I didn't like this or they're great, but this. ⁓ And so when you prompt it for those pain points, you start to get ideas about, okay, now I can address this in ad copy. Maybe I can address this in a YouTube video ⁓ on other platforms that can be really helpful too from a creative standpoint. So ⁓ yeah, I know I went through all that really quickly here. ⁓ Key takeaways, like I said, just PMAX for standard shopping, feed optimization for LLMs.
product image optimization, AI max, and AI powered pain point mining. That's all I have today. But if anyone wants to engage with me, I'm pretty active on LinkedIn under Brian Lasonde. Also my website is ppcboost.com. Thank you so much, Brian, for sharing your unique perspective and insights with us in the zone.
Our next event will be in June, 2026. If you would like to apply to speak at an upcoming event, you can do so on our website at ppc.zone. Thank you one more time to our sponsors, Usercentrics, optmyzr, and two trees PPC for supporting our mission to elevate new perspectives and insights in our industry.
You can learn more about Optmyzr at ai.ppc.zone. You can learn more about UserCentrics at consent.ppc.zone. Those are both affiliate links. And you can learn more about TwoTrees PPC at twotreesppc.com. I'm your host, Jyll Saskin Gales. Be sure to follow me on LinkedIn and or subscribe to my YouTube channel so you don't miss future PPC Zone events. I look forward to seeing you next time.
in the zone.