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For those who still have Smart Shopping campaigns, time is running out to make the switch to PMax yourself.

Or Watch On YouTube HERE

Chapters

00:00 Introduction

00:36 Google's Announcement

01:16 Three Major Options

03:43 Definition Changes

04:05 Feeling Lazy? No Time? How About Auto-Upgrade?

05:12 Setting Up Feed-Only PMax Campaigns

06:00 Adding Audience Signals

08:34 Don't Miss This Setting

10:17 What Happens To My Smart Shopping Campaign(s)?

11:09 Where's All My Data Going to Be?

13:25 The "Perfect" PMax Setup?

?? Per Google:

"If you choose not to upgrade early, your Smart Shopping campaigns will be automatically upgraded starting September 2023."

?? Google's reasoning: "To bring you additional inventory and formats to reach new customers."

?? Translation: We'll be showing your ads on underutilized Google ad inventory, hopefully it gets you more customers. To reach "new" customers is, obviously, not a guarantee and will be dependent on many factors, such as campaign setup...

?? Three Main Options (As of 8/21/23)

1?? Feed-Only: closest to Smart Shopping; Shopping (w/ Display) ads only**

2?? Full-Build PMax: Smart Shopping plus Search, Display, Discover, Gmail, Maps (if appl.), and YouTube

3?? Feed-Only or Standard Shopping & Asset-Only: Separating Shopping (with, potentially, Display) and all other ad channels

** Many of us have seen Search, Display, and YouTube impressions increasing in these Feed-Only campaigns. Google plans to continue this trend.

?? Use a PMax tracking script, like this community favorite from Mike Rhodes, to monitor the ad placement behavior of these campaigns.

If a brand has waited this long to upgrade their Smart Shopping campaigns, then it's likely they're not wanting to go "full PMax" for a reason, so I'm going to focus on the set up most similar to Smart Shopping: Feed-Only

?? Definition Changes

?? Product Groups are now Listing Groups

?? Ad groups are now, essentially, Asset Groups

?? What if I just let Google automatically upgrade for me?

?? I would HIGHLY suggest you take control of this process - as does Google. And it's absolutely necessary if you want something similar to your Smart Shopping campaign(s).

?? Your campaign settings, (e.g. goals, budget, bid strategy, creative assets, and product targeting, will automatically transfer to PMax.

?? Audience signals won't be added for you.

?? A few headlines and descriptions will be auto-populated for you. The quality of those will be questionable at times.

?? Feed-Only PMax campaign setup...

? Create new asset groups with only the Listing Group and Final URL.

? I recommend holding off on adding an Audience Signal until after you've saved the new asset group, then adding it in. You'll have to use the "Summary" tab, at the moment, to do this.

?? My favorite Audience Signals: relevant customer lists, custom segment audiences filled with relevant historically converting, high commercial intent, search terms, and in-market audiences.

? Pause the auto-created asset group.

? Update ad extensions, budgets, bidding, location targeting, ad scheduling, and other settings as needed.

?? One Very Important Note On Settings

?? If you want something similar to Smart Shopping, uncheck the "Text Assets" under the "Automatically created assets" section of the "Settings" tab. If you want to use a list of specific URLs to use without URL expansion, use the Page Feeds option in "Settings." Even if you only build a Feed-Only campaign, I'd suggest unchecking this juuuust in case Google decides to let this setting influence when, or to what extent, it decides to show ads on non-Shopping ad channels.

? What happens to my old Smart Shopping campaigns?

?? They'll be changed to a campaign status of "Removed" - don't worry the historical data is still there

?? Google will carry over the learnings from the SS campaign

?? You won’t be able to edit or reactivate these campaigns.

?? You’ll no longer be able to create new Smart Shopping campaigns.?

? Okay, I upgraded... now where's all my data going to be?

??? Asset Group "Details" - might not be available to you yet

??? Insights - search terms, audience insights

??? Brand Exclusions: if you don't want PMax to show for searches that include your brand or competitor brands, create "brand lists" and use the Brand Exclusions section in Settings

??? Products: probably the most important section for analysis along with the campaign view, insights tab

??? Listing Groups: There's data here, but the filters are limited and you'll likely find yourself using the Products tab instead.

?? Through all of this, remember, we're not chasing the "perfect" PMax set up. We're aiming to put ourselves into the best starting position to align our business goals with the tools available to us in Google Ads. Expect to make changes to your PMax set up as you gather more data.

So long, Smart Shopping... we'll miss you ????