WARNING:
PMax no longer automatically outranks Standard Shopping; it’s now all about Ad Rank. Source: https://support.google.com/google-ads/answer/15535462
BEFORE this change, when you have the same product in both Standard Shopping and PMax:
PMax would always take priority and place the bid that enters the auction UNLESS your PMax targeting settings and/or PMax negative keywords or a limited budget prevents this.
AFTER this change, when you have the same product in both Standard Shopping and PMax:
PMax will take priority if its bid delivers an Ad Rank that is higher than the Ad Rank of your Standard Shopping campaign.
RESULT:
There’s a lot to think through here, but my conclusion is dead simple:
1) CPCs on clicks from Shopping Ads will increase (because of higher bids entering the auction for the same user queries/products).
2) Managing a Google Ads account that runs both Standard Shopping and PMax has become more complex (because one-dimensional prioritization is replaced with two-dimensional prioritization).
POTENTIAL RISK FOR ADVERTISERS:
Standard Shopping campaign spend goes up, without corresponding growth in revenue/profit.
FIX:
Monitor your Standard Shopping campaigns like a hawk and adjust targets and budgets to meet your goals (not Google’s).
SCRIPT: Standard Shopping Spend Alert
Join me in my effort to warn the PPC community: if we get over 100 people to like this post and add “spend alert” in the comments, I will create and share the script for free.
Here’s the link:
https://www.linkedin.com/posts/nilsrooijmans_googleads-pmax-script-activity-7255149988157042688-XuhV
Or, you can reply to this email to get the script if we reach the magic number.
– Nils