About shopping product groups
Google Ads and Microsoft Advertising shopping campaigns only
In shopping campaigns, your product groups 鈥 not keywords 鈥 determine the products in your merchant center account for which shopping ads are displayed. Each product group is based on a single product attribute (such as category, product type, brand, condition, product ID, or custom labels) and uses the same bid for all matching products. You can include or exclude bids for the products in each group.
You configure product groups at the ad group level to determine which products in your merchant center accounts appear in the shopping ads for the ad group. Even if the ad group doesn鈥檛 include ad entities, the ad network still displays ads for the products.
When the same product is included in more than one campaign, the ad network first uses the campaign priority to determine which campaign (and associated bid) is eligible for the ad auction. When all campaigns have the same priority, the campaign with the highest bid is eligible.
For more information about Google shopping campaigns and ads, see 鈥Implement Google Ads shopping campaigns鈥 and the . For more information about Microsoft shopping campaigns, see 鈥Implement Microsoft Advertising shopping campaigns鈥 and the .
Product group hierarchy
Before you can create product groups with specific attributes for an ad group, you must first create an all-inclusive product group called 鈥淎ll Products.鈥 From this parent product group, you can create child product groups for subsets of products, and you can create grandchildren from the child product groups. Once you create the first child product group for an ad group, another product group called 鈥淓verything Else鈥 is automatically created using the default ad group bid. As you add more product groups, the 鈥淓verything Else鈥 group is adjusted accordingly so that it constitutes all products that aren鈥檛 in another product group.
Within an ad group, you can create up to seven levels of product groups (not including 鈥淎ll Products鈥) to include or exclude from bidding, with one or more product groups targeting the same attribute in each level (for example, Brand=Acme for one product group and Brand=AcmePlus for another at the same level). Parent product groups are called subdivisions, and the lowest level of subdivision is known as a unit. You can set bids and tracking templates, or completely exclude bidding, at the unit level. The entire set of active product groups for an ad group is applied hierarchically to determine the eligible products. For example, if you subdivide All Products into Brand=AcmeBasic and Brand=AcmePlus, and then you further subdivide each of those product groups into Condition=New and set bids, then only new products with the AcmeBasic and AcmePlus brands may be advertised or excluded from ads.
The Product Groups view
You can create and edit product groups, and delete product groups and their child product groups, in the Search > Campaigns > Campaigns > Product Groups view.
Tracking and performance data for shopping product groups
(Accounts/campaigns with the 鈥淓F Redirect鈥 tracking option) To allow Search, Social, & Commerce to track conversions for product groups, generate tracking URLs for product groups using the Tracking URLs tool, and then do one of the following:
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(Required for Google Ads; best practice for Microsoft Advertising) Add the tracking URL to the Tracking Template field in the account, campaign, or product group setting. For easier maintenance, add them at the highest level possible. Any append parameters specified for the account or campaign aren鈥檛 included.
note caution CAUTION (Microsoft Advertising) Use this option only when you don鈥檛 include Search, Social, & Commerce tracking URLs in a custom column within the product feed. If you do both, the URLs will include two redirects and cause broken links. -
(Microsoft Advertising only) Add the tracking URL to the product data within the Microsoft Merchant Center account. To do so, include the tracking URL, together with the value in the
linkormobile_linkfield, as appropriate, in a custom column called within the product feed. URLs generated using this method don鈥檛 include any tracking parameters specified in the account or campaign settings within Search, Social, & Commerce.
You can view data about product groups in the Product Group Report.