The correct ecommerce Google Ads Structure is critical for success. Most stores have questions such as, how many campaigns should I have? How should I group my products? Should I run Shopping or Performance Max Campaigns?
The Google Ads account structure is the cornerstone of running a successful campaign. A flawed structure can limit your growth and profitability, while a robust foundation can make scaling your account much easier.
So what’s the best Google Ads campaign structure for ecommerce stores? It really depends on your business and budget. There isn’t a one-size-fits-all formula, but this guide can help you get to your ppc nirvana.
Start your Google Structure Small
Your account structure should reflect your business size, goals, budget, and stage as an advertiser. Having overcomplicated structures in the early stages will eventually work against the algorithm.
Fresh accounts will probably benefit more from the basics. Once you start getting conversion data and have an audience tag running, you can scale. A basic structure may include:
Ecommerce Search Campaigns
Branded Search: exact match only
Non-Branded Search (with branded exclusions):
Organizing ad groups to target audiences and keywords efficiently, meaning, keywords should be grouped by product. Thoughtful structure improves quality score and lowers costs.
DSA (Dynamic Search Ads):
Start targeting selected categories that perform. Exclude out of stock products, non-performing categories, and positive keywords that you use in your dedicated search campaigns.
Shopping Campaigns - Intent Split Structure:
For more control over budgets and bids, we recommend having at least 2 Shopping campaigns: one to capture upper funnel (low intent) and a second one for mid & low funnels (mid & high intent). If you have enough budget, you can split into 3: upper, mid, and low funnels.
To create an intent split, forcing Google to show certain campaigns for certain terms versus others, use campaign priorities, bids, and negative keywords.
Your low intent shopping campaign should exclude branded terms, product types, and standard exclusions. Set it up with high priority, a low CPC bid, and the lowest budget. On the other hand, give your high intent campaign low priority, a high CPC bid, and higher budget.
This will cause all generic and irrelevant searches to be captured by your low intent shopping campaign, letting more specific and lower funnel searches end up in your higher intent campaigns.
Pro tip: automatically add converting search terms from Shopping campaign 1 to your negative keyword list to funnel them to your low funnel campaign.
Display Remarketing - Split Into:
- Display Warm Segments
- Display Hot Segments
Before setting up a display remarketing campaign, it’s important for you to know what your window to conversion is so that you can split into warm & hot segments for personalized messaging.
For instance, if your window to conversion is on average 7 days, your hot audience would include 10 days based segments. But if your window averages 30 days, then your hot segment could include up to 45 days audiences.
Scale Ecommerce Advertising with Google Performance Max
Once you have generated enough conversion data, you can switch to Performance Max. What does this mean? Before switching to Performance Max, make sure:
- You have enhanced conversion tracking set up.
- You have enough conversion data available (at least 30 conversions in the last 30 days).
- You have enough budget to achieve at least 30 conversions monthly (an average of 30 conversions every 30 days).
The most used (and proven) Performance Max structures are by profit or by product performance.
By Profit:
- Low Margin > higher tROAS
- Mid Margin
- High Margin > lower tROAS
By Performance:
- Bestsellers > higher tROAS
- Potential
- Zombies > lower tROAS
Each approach has its pros and cons. To know what works best for you, test extensively because every business is unique. To dive deeper into how to structure your PMax campaigns, check out our Performance Max ecommerce article.
Now, even if you are switching to PMax, we strongly recommend keeping a fallback shopping campaign. We find that under Performance Max campaigns, a lot of products get no traction – what on ecomm we call “zombie products”. This could happen because your bids are not competitive enough or other products are getting priority.
So, if you rely purely on PMax, you will miss out on many clicks and incremental revenue.
Level Up Your Ecommerce Advertising with Dynamic Search
Use Dynamic Search based on Product Feed + RLSA to find additional conversions. These are product-level search ads which you can customize with ad copy using Google’s “if” function to build highly relevant ads:
Navigate to your DSA campaign, create a new ad and on your description field hit “{“. Select the field IF > Audience. Select your audience and insert your text for your segment and for the remaining audiences. It should look like this:
You can also add YouTube campaigns for remarketing and prospecting segments. Make sure you have enough budget for this campaign to work.
- For Remarketing, follow the same rule as for Display and split in Warm & Hot Audiences.
- For Prospecting, build ad groups based on segments:
- Affinity
- In-Market
- Custom Segments
Overall, try not to overcomplicate things. If it’s hard to keep up with all your campaigns, you might not have the right structure for you. Need help? Rise Marketing Group is here to help with all of your e-commerce marketing needs.
Recommended Campaign Strategies Based on Monthly Ecommerce Ad Spend in Google
| Store Stage | Monthly Budget | Recommended Structure |
|---|---|---|
| New ecommerce store | Under $5k | Brand Search, Non-Brand Search, Standard Shopping, basic remarketing |
| Growing store | $5k–$25k | Brand Search, Non-Brand Search, Shopping or PMax test, DSA, remarketing |
| Scaling store | $25k+ | PMax by margin/product group, Shopping fallback, Search, Demand Gen/YouTube, segmented remarketing |
Google Ecommerce Ad Structure FAQ
What is the biggest mistake ecommerce brands make with Google Ads structure?
The biggest mistake is creating a structure that does not match the business goal. Many stores group all products together, use the same ROAS target across every product, or let automation make every decision without considering margin, inventory, seasonality, or new customer growth. A strong Google Ads structure should support profitability, not just revenue.
Do Shopping campaigns use keywords?
Shopping campaigns do not use keywords the same way Search campaigns do. Google matches your products to searches based on your product feed, including titles, descriptions, categories, GTINs, and other product data. However, you can use negative keywords in Standard Shopping campaigns to help control which searches trigger your ads.
Should I advertise all products?
Not always. Just because a product is in your catalog does not mean it deserves ad spend. Some products may have low margins, poor conversion rates, limited inventory, weak demand, or high shipping costs that make them difficult to advertise profitably.
A better approach is to prioritize products based on business value. Start with bestsellers, high-margin products, products with strong conversion rates, and items that have enough inventory to support demand. You can also create separate campaigns or product groups for testing new products, seasonal items, clearance products, and lower-performing products.
What about other advertising platforms like Meta?
Google Ads and Meta Ads can work very well together for ecommerce, but they usually play different roles. Google Ads is often stronger for capturing demand from people who are actively searching for products, while Meta Ads is useful for creating demand, reaching new audiences, and staying in front of past website visitors.
For many ecommerce brands, Google Ads should focus on high-intent traffic through Search, Shopping, and Performance Max campaigns. Meta Ads can support the account by introducing products to new audiences, testing creative, building remarketing pools, and driving repeat purchases.
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