Performance Max or Shopping Campaigns?

Ask Me Anything Q&A Googleshoppingamarepo

Topic summary

A Shopify merchant selling crafting products (mineral paint, decoupage papers, furniture transfer foils, lampshades) is questioning their Google Ads campaign setup after migration from Wix. They’re currently running three concurrent campaigns: Shopping, Performance Max, and Performance Max feed-only, all fed through Google Merchant Centre.

Current situation:

  • Averaging only 1-2 sales daily
  • Operating on a low daily budget
  • Recently cancelled Shoptimised after 3 months with no sales improvement
  • Seeking to optimize campaign structure to justify ad spend

Expert recommendation:
Emmanuel from FeedArmy advises against automated tools like Shoptimised. Key suggestions include:

  • Focus on optimizing the product data feed using Google’s requirements and recommendations
  • Consider brand-only campaigns (text + filtered Shopping) if targeting existing customers
  • For new customer acquisition, target consumers who generate actual sales
  • Prioritize feed optimization as the foundation, citing it as potentially highly impactful

The discussion remains open regarding which specific campaign type to prioritize given budget constraints.

Summarized with AI on October 24. AI used: claude-sonnet-4-5-20250929.
1

Hi Emmanuel Flossie,

I was on Wix, recently migrated to Shopify, I’ve had Google Ads all along. I had assistance in setting up Google Ads and in doing so, the ‘experts’ have set me up a Shopping campaign, a Performance Max campaign and a Performance Max feed only. I have all three running. I’m purely interested in ecommmerce selling for my site, not for new clients or engagements to search and find me.

Have I got the right campaign types going? We have low daily budget so if one was better to keep and others to drop, I’d simply adjust the budgets accordingly.

2

PS. I’ve got all my products going via Google Merchant Centre and feeding the google ads campaigns. Spent a fair bit of time getting the products configured and set up, also had 3 months running on Shoptimised to improve but didnt’ see increase in sales so literally cancelled that just this morning.

Averaging only a sale or two a day so need to improve it to justify the google ads spend.

Product type is crafting products, such as mineral paint, decoupage papers, transfer foils for furniture and handmade lampshades.

3

Hello MCWatson thank you for your question and for joining the Shopify AMA. My name is Emmanuel, founder of FeedArmy, and your host for today’s AMA.

Well first I would always setup a campaign for getting new clients, because at some point existing clients will be exhausted and not buy more. And slowly growing your business is always a good idea. But of course if you don’t want to, that is absolutely fine as well.

All campaigns except for cases where the campaign is just targeting your brand name, are for getting new clients. That is usually what advertising is for.

So if your brand is for example Blue Widget. And you only want people who search for Blue Widget to show ads to. Then you should not use Performance Max.

Instead setup a text campaign, just for Blue Widget.

And setup a standard shopping campaign, with an advanced setup to filter down just to show ads when people search blue widget following this guide: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CiRIDzRrHno

But honestly that is not what I would do, always target consumers that gets you sales.

Shoptimised and automated tools usually are not a great solution.

What I would do is first optimize your data feed, by following the requirements and recommendations mentioned here: https://support.google.com/merchants/answer/7052112

And here is an example of how powerful just improving the data feed can be: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pqFCRer5K4Y