Winning strategies to optimize Ads with Google Shopping Campaign Priorities

There is no doubt that Google Shopping Ads work excellently for eCommerce businesses, but what works even better for ads is a compelling enough strategy to reap positive results. While Google Shopping Ads are easier to set up, they can be quite challenging for structuring and optimizing if you don’t have the right strategy in place. If you are a BigCommerce merchant and using Google Shopping Ads campaigns to promote inventory, boost website traffic, find better-qualified leads, and ultimately, improve brand awareness? Then here’s a guide for you on how to structure your ads campaigns well based on priorities. Suppose you have the same products in multiple campaigns. Then the best way to determine the priority of which campaign should participate in the auction is to use the Google Shopping Campaign Priorities setting.

This article teaches about Campaign Priorities and how to make the most of this impactful and effective Google Shopping ad campaign optimization technique.

Table of Content!

• What are Google Shopping campaign priorities?
• Campaign Priority Options
• Why use campaign priorities for Google Ads campaigns?
• How Campaign Priorities determine bid
• How to use Campaign Priorities settings?
• Campaign priorities Best Practices

What is Google Shopping Campaign Priorities?

Campaign Priorities are a valuable yet often overlooked setting that allows you to perform organizational optimization in your Google Shopping campaigns. These will enable you to create multiple campaigns for the same products and set different levels of priorities for Google to follow when search queries match Shopping ads.

In other words, the Google Shopping Campaign Priorities setting is useful when you wish to promote the same product for the same country but in multiple shopping campaigns. Also, it is an advanced strategy for retailers who want to increase their ROI and target better.

Setting up priorities in a shopping campaign tells google that which campaign should be prioritized to showcase the products.

Furthermore, Campaign priorities are also helpful in determining the bid of the same products in the campaigns. Though the default priority for each campaign is already, “Low”; the setting allows you to change the priorities from “Medium” to “High” as per requirements.

Campaign Priority Options

As said above, Campaign priority is a tool used for telling Google where to start when it comes to campaigning multiple ads; so that each click costs the lowest possible amount. And there are three Campaign priority options available to choose from, below is a quick look-

Low Priority

Often referred to as the “Catchall” campaign priority – the one that covers all the products in a single campaign. Such campaigns are ideal for merchants with no choice or offering; instead, they want to promote all the products in a single campaign. These campaigns can target all types of audiences, whether in consideration or ready to buy. By default, the campaign priority is always set at low priority.

Medium Priority

The medium priority campaigns are often set with a slightly higher bid amount and target brand-specific terms or terms that hold greater purchase intent. These are ideal for campaigns focusing on particular product categories, region-specific items, brand-specific product lines, and so on. Merchants can use Medium priority shopping campaigns for audiences of any stage as per their preferences.

High Priority

Designed to target only generic search terms possessing low purchase intent, the High priority shopping campaigns are often set with low bids. These are usually used for newly arrived products, best-selling items, or clearance products. The campaigns with High priority are meant to target the beginner’s stage of the Buyers Journey.

Note – Any search query will reach “Low” priority only after it passes through “High” and “Medium” priority campaigns.

Why use campaign priorities for Google Ads campaigns?

Every day billions of searches are done on Google; it is the go-to place for shoppers to discover products online. And whether it is for products, watching related videos, or checking any image, it is beyond essential for you to be there to grab their attention. And to be there in front of potential customers, it is necessary to understand the importance of prioritizing campaigns according to the need of the hour.

Note: Google Shopping Campaign priorities do not influence or affect search relevance. Instead, priorities are used to determine which products and their bids are essential to you.

How Campaign Priorities determine Bid

Campaign with Highest priority will bid:

Imagine you are running multiple Shopping campaigns, and one campaign is on a higher priority than the others; then that High priority shopping campaign will Bid. In the same way, if you have the same product in different campaigns and one campaign is put on High priority and others at Low or maybe a Medium priority. Then, Google uses the Max CPC bid in the HIGH priority Shopping campaign.

Note: Even if you have a high bid in a low priority campaign and a high priority campaign has a low bid, then the bid of a High priority Shopping Campaign will also be used.

Low Shopping campaign priority bids only when the one with the highest priority runs out of budget:

Whenever the budget of the Higher Priority campaign runs low or completely exhausted, only then the campaign with low priority is used for bid.

Let’s understand this with a quick example:-

You are running an ad campaign for “summer outfits” with a budget of $100, and you’ve set High priority for the same. And there is another ad campaign for “Dressberry summer outfits,” which you are running at a budget of $70 and had set Low priority for it. As said above, the high-priority campaign will always bid, but as soon as the funding of the same campaign runs out – the next priority level, i.e., the campaign named “Dressberry summer outfits,” will start bidding.

Know More: Google Ads set up and how to allot a budget wisely!

Highest Bid campaign wins among multiple campaigns with the same priority:

Imagine running three different campaigns at the same priority, and there are same products in each campaign. Now for that particular product, the campaign with the highest bid will participate in the auction.

How to use Campaign Priorities settings?

For BigCommerce merchants using Ads campaigns to promote products on Google Shopping, and opted for CedCommerce’s Google Shopping and Ads integration solution, you get the liability of managing and optimizing ad campaigns priorities from the app itself.

To set Campaign priorities from the app, merchants need to follow these steps-

• Go to the Google AdWords tab and select “Campaign.”
• Click on “Create Campaign”
• Select the “Create shopping campaign” option
• You will find the “Campaign priority” setting on that page. Choose the desired priority for your campaign.
• And fill up all other details as needed.
• And click on the “Save” button.

Campaign priorities Best Practices

Prioritize Subset

Split products into smaller groups that are more manageable and easy to monitor. You are splitting products into groups like sales items, party outfits, clearance items groups, and so on. By doing this, you can quickly prioritize and prompt your products towards relevant search terms.

Use negative keywords

To improve the efficiency of shopping ad campaigns, negative keywords can be helpful. Negative keywords prevent your ad campaigns from appearing for search queries that are not relevant. generally, you can use these keywords to exclude search terms from the campaigns.

• For ads with High campaign priority, you can use brand-specific and product-specific negative keywords.
• Ads set with Medium priority level, you can use product-specific and generic negative keywords.
• For Low priority ads campaigns, you can use brand-specific and generic negative keywords.

Pro tips- Prioritize best sellers for generic searches, bid less for generic searches and more for product searches

Final Thoughts

When deciding the structure or strategies for ads campaigns, never overlook Google Shopping Campaign priorities setting. It is a significant consideration that determines bids, especially when you are running multiple campaigns.
Moreover, understanding how to take advantage of each priority level for your ad campaign will help your ecommerce store succeed in the long run.

To stay up-to-date with all the latest happening or wish to learn more expert tips for managing and optimizing ad campaigns, contact us!