Google Ads for eCommerce brands
How should an eCommerce brand run Google Ads?
Shopping and Performance Max, built around margin. This page answers that question in full: the auction you compete in, what I change in the first thirty days, and how an engagement runs.
The auction
The auction in ecommerce
The feed is the campaign
Most of the spend never passes through a keyword. Shopping and Performance Max match against your product feed, which means the feed is the campaign. Titles, product types, brand fields and image quality decide which auctions you enter at all. A tidy feed beats a clever bid strategy in this sector more often than anyone admits.
Blended ROAS hides it
Blended return on ad spend hides the problem. A 4× average across a catalogue usually contains a handful of products running at 9× and a long tail running under 1×, and because margin varies by line, revenue-based bidding optimises toward the wrong half. The account is buying turnover, not profit, and the reporting agrees with it.
Brand takes the credit
There is also the brand question. Performance Max will happily take credit for people who were already typing your name into Google, which inflates the numbers and obscures what new demand actually costs. Separating branded from non-branded traffic is usually the first honest look a retailer gets at their own account.
First thirty days
What I change first
- Product feed cleaned up: titles, types and attributes that match search
- Conversion value reported on margin rather than revenue
- Brand traffic separated so it is not credited to prospecting
- Loss-making SKUs excluded before budgets go up
Named proof
Named proof
Anonymised account · National · $2K/mo
4.1×
Return on ad spend
Read straight from the account, like-for-like periods, with spend stated.
A full audit of the existing account, an optimisation plan written against what it found, then day to day management.
we saw profit improvements pretty much straight away after he took over.
How an engagement runs
01
Read the account
Search terms, wasted spend and whether the tracking is honest.
02
Cut the waste
Losing queries and dead campaigns go before anything new starts.
03
Rebuild structure
Campaigns rebuilt around margin, intent and geography.
04
Report plainly
One page a month. No jargon, no theatre.
I work with businesses spending$2,000+a month on ads
Management from $1,280/month. No lock-in.
Send me your account, or tell me where you're starting from. I'll tell you what's working, what isn't, or how to get going.
- where your spend is going to waste (if you're already running ads)
- whether your tracking is telling the truth
- the three fixes that matter most, or the right way to start if you're not running ads yet
He put together a really detailed audit and plan to optimise the account, and we saw profit improvements pretty much straight away after he took over.
Jason · Oz Loading RampsAlready running ads? I'll audit the account. Just getting started? I'll tell you what to set up first. Either way, it's free.