Let’s unravel the advantages and disadvantages of Google Standard Shopping compared to Performance Max to help you make the right decision for your campaign goals. Below I discuss the mechanics of different campaigns and the potential impact on performance.
What are Standard Shopping campaigns?
Google shopping has been around for a long time, since the birth of Google’s shopping comparison service “Froogle” in 2002 to it’s integration with Google search and customers being able to purchase online in 2007 (under the name “Google Product Searches”) to 2012 when the name changed again to “Google Shopping.”
This is when it ceased to be a free service and ads started to appear. The next major change from Google occurred in 2019 when they turned their attention to user personalization and made buying easier with new features such as recommendations, price tracking, local searches and instant purchase.
Standard Shopping campaigns, compared to Performance Max, take more time to build but in return give you more control and insights into the campaign.
That being said, Standard Shopping also incorporates automation by creating individual product ads based on your product feed, meaning you don’t need to create an ad for each product you are advertising.
Here are a few details about Standard Shopping Campaigns compared to Performance Max:
Cons of Standard Shopping:
- Longer set up time
- Manual testing required
- Active on Shopping placements only
- Bid strategies such as target CPA or ROAS don’t work until you meet the minimum requirements of 20-30 conversions per campaign per month
- Difficult to scale
Pros of Standard Shopping:
- Complete targeting control including:
- Keyword reporting and negative keywords optimization
- Audience level reporting and bid adjustments available
- Device device level reporting and bid adjustments available
- More campaign bid strategies available such as manual CPC and maximize clicks
Good Use Cases for Standard Shopping in the Modern Day World:
Standard Shopping is a good place to start if you are working with a new account or with a small budget as the additional controls and data will help you understand how different products perform on Google Ads.
WMM believes there is space for both Standard Shopping and Performance Max campaigns to work together to meet campaign goals. Taking into consideration that Performance Max campaigns are favored over Standard Shopping, it’s important to split products across campaign types or you won’t see results via Standard Shopping campaigns.
A good way to split products in an account that has Performance Max campaigns running is to “take out” products from Performance Max campaigns and place them in Standard Shopping campaigns when:
- Products are not gaining any traffic in PMax campaigns
- Products are performing badly (low ROAS) in PMax campaigns
Moving products into Standard Shopping campaigns will provide you with more control and increased optimization options such as the maximize clicks bid strategy to boost traffic for products with low data associated with them and search query insight data to be able to optimize via negative keywords and improve performance based on searches.
Which Bid Strategy Should I Use for Standard Shopping?
Although manual CPC bidding is available for Standard Shopping campaigns, we recommend that for eCommerce campaigns you always optimize towards target ROAS over CPC so that the campaign aims to drive revenue rather than clicks.
Therefore, as soon as your Standard Shopping campaigns have enough conversion data (min 20-30 conversions per campaign, per month) you should use a target ROAS bid strategy.
What is a Good Target ROAS for Standard Shopping Campaigns?
In order to understand what target you should set it’s important to determine the breakeven ROAS for the client,taking into consideration cost of goods sold. From here we recommend that you set the campaign bid strategies 50-100% higher than this figure.
Once the campaign is running and you have data coming in, test what target ROAS works best for balancing volume and ROAS. Careful not to make too many significant changes to the campaign as it will put it into a learning phase that could seriously impact performance.
We suggest changes of 30% maximum difference in a 24 hour timeframe and to keep a log of your changes.
What are Performance Max Campaigns?
Performance Max campaigns replaced Smart Shopping and Local campaigns in 2022. They were created in response to the evolving needs of customers by creating a more personalized and omnichannel experience for the user.
Performance Max campaigns expand across: Search, Shopping, Display, Discover, YouTube, Gmail and Map with the help of Google AI machine learning. The campaign type optimizes placements, ads and budget by choosing the best combinations in order to meet the chosen campaign goal.
Compared to Standard Shopping, Performance Max is much more dynamic in areas such as ad creation. If you’d like to find out more about Performance Max campaigns please see our guide here.
Here are some details about Performance Max campaigns compared to Standard Shopping:
Cons of Performance Max:
- Less control and reporting options available
- Top level keyword insights available
- Account level negative keywords available
- Some top level audience reporting available (no bid adjustments)
- Some top level audience reporting available (no bid adjustments)
- Only maximize conversions or maximize conversion value (with target CPA/ROAS) available
Pros of Performance Max:
- Good at scaling performance fast
- Inventory across Google properties including search, shopping, Gmail, YouTube etc.
- More consist performance
- Increased AI machine learning capabilities
Key Differences Between Standard Shopping and Google Performance Max
The key differences between Performance Max and Standard Shopping Campaigns are the ease of set up and machine learning capabilities being higher in Performance Max. Please see the table below for a summary of the differences:
A/B Test Standard Shopping and Google Performance Max
Although it’s not 100% necessary as you can decide which campaign to choose without running a test, it is possible to A/B test Standard Shopping campaign vs. Performance Max using a Google experiment.
You need to use the experiment functionality otherwise comparing campaign data side-by-side will give you skewed results since Performance Max is favored within the account by Google. The experiment available works to compare a Standard Shopping campaign of your choosing against a new Performance Max campaign and can help you to decide which campaign type works better for you.
For more information on the experiment please see this Google ads support article.
Conclusion
In conclusion, when it comes to Google Shopping campaigns there is no secret formula. Good results take time, patience, testing and experience. If you need help navigating the world of shopping campaigns please reach out to a member of the What Matters Media team here.
