What are Google Shopping ads?

Micky Weis

15 years of experience in online marketing. Former CMO at, among others, Firtal Web A/S. Blogger about marketing and the things I’ve experienced along the way. Follow me on LinkedIn for daily updates.

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Shopping ads (also known as Google Shopping Ads) are an ad format introduced by Google back in 2012.

You have probably seen them when searching for various products. They are the ads that appear at the top of Google when you search for a product — for example, “mountain bike.”

Sometimes they also appear on the right side of the search engine results page (SERP).

When should you use shopping ads?

Google Shopping ads are perfect for anyone who runs a webshop — especially if you have good product images.

The main difference between Google Shopping ads and “regular” text ads, aside from the format, is that with Shopping ads you do not bid on keywords.

Instead, you upload your product feed, and your products will be shown in ads that Google finds relevant.

If there are searches you don’t want your ads to appear for, you can exclude them by adding negative keywords.

Use shopping ads when it makes sense

To answer the original question: Use Google Shopping ads for all products where you believe it will be profitable.

Also, consider using Shopping ads alongside regular text ads.

A Google study showed that people who saw both Shopping ads and regular text ads were 90% more likely to click through to your website.

Advantages of shopping ads

• They are easy to set up even for webshops with thousands of products
• They generally perform very well
• Click costs tend to be low

Disadvantages of shopping ads

• Some webshops may find it difficult to create an attractive product feed
• Less control since you cannot choose keywords yourself
• It’s harder to stand out from competitors compared to text ads
• It often encourages having the lowest price to generate sales, which might not always be profitable for you

How to create shopping ads

To create Google Shopping ads, you need to upload your product feed to the Google Merchant Center.

Once your feed is uploaded, connect your Google Ads account to your Google Merchant Center account. After linking, you can go to Google Ads where a full guide is available on how to create a Shopping campaign.

Additionally, most webshop platforms like Shopify and Magento now offer direct integrations to set up feeds that work immediately.