Google Shopping Campaigns: Standard Shopping vs Performance Max

Two ways to run Shopping ads

Everything below comes from Google Ads Help and Merchant Center Help, starting with About Shopping ads. This page covers the campaign side only. How to get products into Merchant Center is in our Merchant Center guide, and how Performance Max works in general is in our Performance Max guide.

Shopping ads show a product photo, title, price and store name. They do not use keywords. Google says Shopping ads "use your existing Merchant Center product data (not keywords) to decide how and where to show your ads." You don't write them yourself either: Google's What makes up a Shopping ad page says Merchant Center creates them from the information in your product feed.

A retailer can run these ads through two campaign types in Google Ads: a Shopping campaign (Google also calls it Standard Shopping) or a Performance Max campaign with a Merchant Center feed. Both draw on the same product data. They differ in where the ads can appear, how you bid and how much you control.

Standard Shopping and Performance Max side by side

Google's comparison table on the About Shopping ads page sets out the main differences:

• Where ads appear. A Shopping campaign reaches the Shopping tab, Google Search next to results (separate from text ads), Google Images, and Google search partner sites if you include them. Performance Max reaches most Google Ads channels: the same Shopping placements plus Search text ads, the Display network, YouTube, Gmail, Demand Gen and Maps (through local inventory ads).
• Ad formats. Shopping campaigns run Shopping ads, Shopping ads for local products and vehicle ads. Performance Max adds Display, text and YouTube ads, built from the text, images and videos you put in asset groups.
• Bidding. Shopping campaigns offer Target ROAS, Maximize clicks, Maximize conversion value and Manual CPC. Performance Max uses only automated strategies: Maximize conversion value (with an optional ROAS target) or Maximize conversions (with an optional CPA target).
• Billing. Shopping campaigns charge per click. Google describes Performance Max as paying "for the performance of your campaigns (for example, clicks or CPM)".
• Extra controls. Performance Max adds audience signals, final URL expansion and a new customer acquisition goal. Shopping campaigns offer audience targeting to serve ads to specific audiences.

In short, Standard Shopping keeps you on Shopping placements with manual bidding available. Performance Max spreads the same products across Google's channels and leaves more of the bidding and placement to Google's automation.

Before you start: requirements and the account link

Google's Requirements for Shopping ads apply to both campaign types:

• A Merchant Center account and a Google Ads account, linked together.
• Content that complies with the Shopping ads policies, which Google notes "are different from the Google Ads policies".
• Product data you can send "at least every 30 days", meeting Google's product data specification.

Merchant Center Help's page on how to link a Google Ads account to Merchant Center explains the link. You can start it from Merchant Center (Settings, Access and services, Apps and services, Add service, Google Ads) or from Google Ads (Tools, Data manager, Google Merchant Center). If you are an admin on both accounts, the link is approved automatically. Otherwise an admin on the other side has to accept the request, which is the usual route when an agency's Google Ads account is involved.

Points from the same page worth knowing early:

• Both accounts should be free of account-level policy violations before you link them.
• You can't link a Google Ads manager account to Merchant Center; link the individual ads account.
• A Merchant Center account can link to up to 500 Google Ads accounts.
• A campaign uses one Merchant Center account. To switch to another, you create a new campaign.
• If you unlink the accounts, campaigns that rely on that product information stop using it to serve ads.

In countries with the Comparison Shopping Services (CSS) programme, Google says you take part in Shopping ads through one or more CSSs of your choice.

Setting up a Standard Shopping campaign

Google's Create a Shopping campaign page gives the steps. In short:

1. Create a new campaign and choose an objective such as Sales, Leads or Website traffic, or create one without a goal's guidance.
2. Select Shopping as the campaign type. Google offers Performance Max here too; choose to continue with the Shopping campaign.
3. Select the Merchant Center account with your products. Google warns: "You can't change the linked Merchant Center account after you've created the campaign." You can also pick which data sources to use by feed label.
4. Set bidding and a daily budget (or a total campaign budget with start and end dates), and decide whether to bid for new customers only. By default, campaigns bid equally for new and existing customers.
5. Leave campaign priority alone unless the same products appear in several campaigns (see below).
6. Choose locations. If you choose "All countries and territories", the campaign only shows ads in the countries where your products are sold.
7. Networks: by default Shopping campaigns run on the Google Search Network and Google search partners. Untick search partners if you want to exclude them.
8. Create the first ad group. Its product ads are built automatically from Merchant Center. With Manual CPC you set an ad group bid here.
9. Review the summary and publish. Google then suggests checking the campaign status and the Ad Preview and Diagnosis tool to confirm the ads are running.

One change to note: Google's page still says local inventory ads "will soon run by default in Shopping campaigns", and asked advertisers to review their settings before August 2026. If you want separate online and local budgets, check your campaign settings and inventory filters now. For choosing a bid strategy and setting a budget, see our Google Ads budgets and bidding guide.

Product groups: how you bid without keywords

In a Shopping campaign, you bid on product groups instead of keywords. Google's Manage a Shopping campaign with product groups page defines a product group as "a subset of your inventory that you define", where all products inside it use the same bid.

A new campaign starts with one ad group and one product group called "All products". Google recommends splitting it into smaller groups so your bids match your goals. You can subdivide by these attributes from your Merchant Center data:

• Item ID, your identifier for each product.
• Brand.
• Category, based on the Google product taxonomy.
• Product type, your own categorisation.
• Condition: new, used or refurbished.
• Custom labels, up to five values you define. Google's custom labels page gives examples such as seasonality or sales performance, numbered custom_label_0 to custom_label_4.
• Channel and channel exclusivity, for products sold online, in a local store or both.

Rules that catch people out:

• You can subdivide up to 7 levels, but you can't set a bid on a product group that has been subdivided. Bids go on the groups at the bottom of the tree.
• Each ad group can have up to 5,000 product groups.
• Products must sit in an active product group to be eligible. Products marked "Excluded" are not part of any active group.
• New subdivisions take the bid of the group you split unless you edit them.
• Excluded products may still get impressions and clicks for 48 hours.
• If you change attributes in your data source, product groups don't update by themselves; you must update them in the ad group.

A practical starting point for a small shop is to split "All products" by category or product type, then use a custom label to pull out bestsellers or sale items that deserve their own bid.

Negative keywords in Shopping

Shopping campaigns don't target keywords, but Google's page on negative keywords for a Shopping campaign says you can add them at campaign or ad group level to stop ads showing for searches you don't want. Broad, phrase ("wine bottle") and exact ([bottle opener]) negatives all work. For broad negatives, Google says to add synonyms, singular and plural forms and other variations yourself. Our search terms and negative keywords guide covers how to find the terms to block.

Campaign priority between Shopping campaigns

Google's Use campaign priority for Shopping campaigns page explains a setting that only matters when the same product, for the same country, is in more than one Shopping campaign. Every campaign starts at Low; you can raise it to Medium or High. The rules:

• The highest priority campaign bids, even if a lower priority campaign has a larger bid.
• If the highest priority campaign runs out of budget, the next one down bids.
• Campaigns with the same priority: the highest bid for that product is used.

Google adds a caveat: because budget is spread through the day, a High priority campaign may sit out an auction to keep funds for later, and a lower priority campaign may take it. Google's own example is a summer sale campaign set to High with a general footwear campaign at Low, so sandals use the summer budget first. It recommends prioritising only a subset of products, such as items in a sale, using an inventory filter.

When Shopping and Performance Max share products

Campaign priority is a Shopping campaign setting. Google's page on how Performance Max interacts with other campaigns describes the general rule: "In situations where multiple campaigns could serve for the same impression", Google Ads "prioritizes the campaign with the highest Ad Rank". The exceptions Google lists are about Search campaigns: a Search keyword that exactly matches the query (or its spell-corrected form) is preferred over Performance Max, and Performance Max may leave brand searches to dedicated Search campaigns.

So if a Performance Max campaign with a Merchant Center feed and a Standard Shopping campaign cover the same products for the same places and times, don't count on the priority setting to decide which one serves. Plan it instead: keep the product sets separate (for example with custom labels or listing groups), or accept that the two will be chosen by Ad Rank and judge them together.

Product changes also need to happen in both places. Google's requirements page notes that to run both campaign types, you make the additions or changes "in both your Shopping campaigns and Performance Max for online sales campaigns."

Which one to start with

Google doesn't pick for you, but its own descriptions point to the trade-off:

• Standard Shopping fits when you want to see and set bids per product group, use Manual CPC, keep ads on Shopping placements and pay only per click. It suits a small catalogue, a tight budget or a period before you have enough conversion data for automated bidding.
• Performance Max fits when you have conversion tracking working, are happy to let Google bid towards conversions or conversion value, and want your products shown on YouTube, Display, Gmail and Maps as well, with your own text, images and video.

Whichever you choose, two things decide results more than the campaign type: a clean product feed and accurate conversion tracking. See our guides to Google Ads conversion tracking and the ecommerce launch checklist, and make sure the product pages your ads point to load fast and show the same price as the feed.

Frequently asked questions

Do Shopping ads use keywords?

No. Google says Shopping ads use your Merchant Center product data, not keywords, to decide how and where to show. You bid on product groups instead, and you can still add negative keywords to block searches you don't want.

What is the difference between Standard Shopping and Performance Max?

Standard Shopping shows Shopping ads on the Shopping tab, Search, Images and optionally search partners, charges per click and allows Manual CPC. Performance Max uses the same feed across most Google channels, including YouTube, Display, Gmail and Maps, with automated bidding only.

Can I change the Merchant Center account on a Shopping campaign?

No. Google says you can't change the linked Merchant Center account after the campaign is created; a campaign uses one Merchant Center account, so you create a new campaign to switch.

What does campaign priority do?

It decides which Shopping campaign bids when several Shopping campaigns contain the same product for the same country. The highest priority bids even if another has a larger bid; if it runs out of budget, the next one down bids.

Does campaign priority control Performance Max?

Campaign priority is a Shopping campaign setting. Google says that when several campaigns could serve for the same impression, the one with the highest Ad Rank is prioritised, so separate the product sets if you want control.

How deep can product groups go?

Google allows up to 7 levels of subdivision and up to 5,000 product groups per ad group. You set bids only on product groups that are not subdivided.

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