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Get ready for Smart Shopping and Local campaign upgrades

By January 29, 2022No Comments

New year, same trend: Consumers continue to tap into an ever-growing number of places to get inspiration and find what they need.
Performance Max uses Google’s automation to help advertisers reach shoppers as they browse for things they love.It builds on Smart Shopping and Local campaigns to deliver the same foundational features, while adding brand new inventory and automation insights. Starting in April, you can begin upgrading your Smart Shopping and Local campaigns to Performance Max to access additional inventory and formats across YouTube, Search text ads and Discover.

Performance Max allows you to grow online, offline or omnichannel sales by unlocking all of Google’s ad inventory from a single campaign with a product feed. For example, you can transform your Video ads into your digital storefront and highlight your top products on YouTube — right where valuable customers are watching relevant video content every day.

Learn how to upgrade Smart Shopping and Local campaigns to Performance Max

Here’s a preview of the upgrade process so you know what to expect and how to plan ahead to set your campaigns up for success. (Upgrading to Performance Max will not affect your ability to manage other campaign types outside of Smart Shopping and Local campaigns.)

Timeline for Smart Shopping and Local campaign upgrades to Performance Max in 2022. From left to right, animation displays the four upgrade milestones with a given start month for each.Keep these key milestones in mind as you prepare for the upgrade:

  • Create new campaigns with Performance Max: You can continue using your existing Smart Shopping and Local campaigns until you’ve upgraded them to Performance Max later this year. For any new campaigns you create in Google Ads, start using Performance Max. You’ll access ad inventory that’s already available in Smart Shopping and Local campaigns plus new inventory and formats — including across YouTube, Search text ads and Discover.
  • Upgrade with a one-click tool: Starting in April, you can easily upgrade your Smart Shopping campaigns with a new “one-click” tool in Google Ads. You’ll be able to upgrade your Local campaigns with the tool starting in June. The tool gives you flexibility to upgrade specific campaigns or all of your campaigns at once. You’ll see a notification in Google Ads when this tool is available in your account. Learnings from your existing campaigns will be used in your new Performance Max campaigns to maintain consistent performance.

  • Upgrade automatically: From July through September, your Smart Shopping campaigns will be automatically upgraded for you. Your Local campaigns will be automatically upgraded from August through September. You will no longer be able to create new Smart Shopping and Local campaigns once your existing campaigns are automatically upgraded. The automatic upgrade process will conclude by the end of September to ensure you’re well prepared to use Performance Max for the 2022 holiday season.

Leading e-commerce partners like Shopify, WooCommerce and BigCommerce are already working to support Performance Max so more merchants can benefit from new inventory and formats to connect with their customers. All merchants and partners will be able to upgrade their Smart Shopping and Local campaigns through the Google Ads API later this year. Learn more about the process in our developer blog.

Prepare for campaign upgrades with new resources

Tune in to our upcoming webinar in February, where product experts will demonstrate the one-click upgrade tool and dive into best practices for creating new Performance Max campaigns. They’ll also explain the new technology used in your campaign upgrades to help you get better results, faster.

Meanwhile, our updated Performance Max best practices guide has new recommendations geared towards achieving your online and offline goals. You can also explore the infographic below to understand how to use Performance Max with other Google Ads campaigns.

Infographic of how to use Performance Max together with other campaign types based on advertiser objectives: Lead Generation, Online Sales, Offline Sales (omnichannel) or Offline Sales (offline-only). The guidance is for advertisers to maximize performance in their Search campaigns first. At the bottom, it shows three options for how to grow performance across other channels. Advertisers can test Performance Max to access all Google Ads inventory from a single campaign, upgrade to Performance Max later this year if they’re currently using Smart Shopping or Local campaigns, and/or use Video, Display or Discovery campaigns if they want to increase performance on specific channels or reach specific audiences.

Article by Eduardo Indacochea. Read full article here.