Detect high-spending products with no sales

Performance Max campaigns could spend your ad budget on never-sell products. Let's find out why and the solution.

Reminder: When creating Performance Max campaigns, you determine which products will be displayed. The complete selection you make is called a product feed. You can set this up by selecting URL structures on your site or using product categories on Google Ads.

Performance Max campaigns spend your set ad budget to promote the products in the feed you provide across Search, Video, Display, and Shopping channels.

How does PMax decide which products to display?

The primary metric determining which products your budget will be allocated to is ROAS (Return on Ad Spend).

In other words, PMax focuses on turning ad spending into maximum revenue. This operating principle can sometimes lead to advertised products without resulting in sales.

For instance, an expensive product in your store may continue to be displayed because, if sold, it would result in a high ROAS. This means a significant ad expenditure could be on a product that never sells.

An example: If your store typically sells products averaging $100, a product worth $1,000 might be displayed excessively by PMax because its sale would generate a high ROAS. Due to the way PMax operates, it might allocate your budget to promote such products.

What should you do for these products that PMax spends a budget on but never sells?

Exclude these products from your PMax campaign.

By controlling and removing these products from the feed, you ensure PMax allocates more budget to products that do sell rather than ones that don't.

How to exclude products?

• Log into Google Merchant Center.
• Go to 'Products' > 'Feeds'.
• Find and click on your feed.
• In the feed's settings, look for 'Rules' or 'Feed rules'.
• Create a new rule to exclude specific products based on attributes (e.g., Product ID, Title).
• Apply and save changes.

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