Google Shopping App / separate ad for EVERY variation? No option for item_group_id ?

[gourmetkickz]

I see no field to enter "item_group_id" https://support.google.com/merchants/answer/6324507?hl=en

which is strange because the majority of merchants on shopify utilize variations.

it makes no sense to run a separate ad for every variation, google shopping will literally list the same item a dozen times... it looks spammy to customers and pushes other products in your store to the next page of google shopping, while also diluting click through data.

Am I missing this option somewhere?

Additionally I notice some weird behavior when ads are being served (LIVE). My products titles are prepended by my brand name (data input field on shopify "vendor", that assigned the attribute "brand" to google). So this means that my titles are truncated, omitting some descriptive parts of my titles, because my vendor name takes up the first 10+ characters.

I called google ads support and they informed me that this is an issue with the app connected to the API feed and is not related to anything on google's end.

In fact I believe I can see other seller's using shopify and google shopping app by shopify in some searches, they are easily identifiable because they too have their product titles prepended by their vendor name.

To be clear, when viewing the actual product page and SEO title, my brand/vendor name is not present in the titles. The ONLY place on my whole website where my vendor/brand name is input is the "vendor" field in the product admin page.

Can anyone speak to either of these issues?

Are there any other apps that work in a fashion better suited to sellers who have multiple variations for products?

[MDKSocks]

I want to know this as well! Google Shopping is giving me headaches!!