How do I advertise specific products rather than my whole store (Google)

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Topic summary

Goal: Advertise only selected products from a Shopify store on Google, not the entire catalog.

Core guidance:

  • Manage campaigns directly in Google Ads (ads.google.com) for granular control. You can manually select products by name/ID, category, or type in Shopping campaigns. The Shopify Google app is a simplified “lite” version and may not support precise product selection.

Practical steps:

  • Basic steps to create a Google Shopping campaign in Google Ads were shared (create new Shopping campaign, set preferences, choose ad group). There was also mention of site-targeted ads via AdSense, which applies to placing ads on specific websites, not core to Shopping product selection.

Tools and alternatives:

  • “Use Google Shopping” was suggested. A third‑party Shopify app (Google Ads & Google Shopping) claims it can build Shopping campaigns for specific products and automate optimization.
  • Affiliate marketing was proposed as a cost-controlled alternative, with “special product commission” to incentivize sales of chosen items; an image illustrates this feature.

Status:

  • No confirmed resolution. Actionable options exist (Google Ads direct setup, third‑party app, or affiliate program), but the OP has not indicated a chosen path.
Summarized with AI on March 4. AI used: gpt-5.
7

Hi @scottyccfc ,

From my experience, your issue will easily solve when using affiliate marketing. If you are just starting with your business, I don’t recommend you to use Fb ads or IG ads. The reason is that you might cost a lost of money to run for long term. In some specific case, if it don’t bring positive traffics for you, you also need to pay fee to maintain them. We know it because we know many customers get same issues.

My recommendation is that you should think about another safer and suitable methods for your business. Affiliate marketing could be a good option for your. Affiliate marketing is a marketing model which helps to grow your business faster and stably. This marketing campaign allows you to connect with various affiliates, and then they will use their advertising sources such as social media channels, websites, blogs, etc, to promote your products. You only need to pay affiliate commission whenever a customer makes a purchase via the unique link or coupon associated with their recommendation.

Regarding your issue, you can set special product commission for your affiliates. The Special product commission function allows merchant to set a special commission rule for each specific product or for all items in a collection. When an affiliate refers someone to purchase a product with a special commission rate, he/she would get the commission based on the special rate instead of the regular program’s commission rate.

This feature is useful for products with higher/lower price or higher/lower profit margin. Merchant can also make use of it for products they want to drive sales by offering a higher commission rate to affiliates.

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Good luck with your business!