Summary
With Shopping campaigns, you bid on a product group instead of keywords.
You can create product groups after you create an ad group. All inventory items in a product group have the same bid.
Ad groups within a Shopping campaign can have up to 20,000 product groups.
Manual steps
Here are the steps to create product groups through the Google Ads UI.
- Create a new Shopping campaign for All Products.
- Create a new ad group.
Click + next to All products to add a subdivision.
Products groups can be subdivided up to 6 times.
Use the following steps to manually add subdivision values as a list:
- Select Bulk add values manually.
- Add each subdivision (one item per line).
- Confirm the changes.
This is only available for some attributes.
Set a max CPC bid for each product group. If you use an automated bidding strategy, max CPC can be set for you.
For more detail, see Manage a Shopping campaign with product groups.
Automatic steps
Make sure you have already completed the following:
- Link Merchant Center to Google Ads.
- Create a new Shopping campaign.
Create a new ad group. Here are the steps to create a Listing Group through the Google Ads API:
Use the following steps to create a root node for the listing group tree:
- Create a new listing group.
Set the ID of the root to a temporary value, for example
-1
.Each subdivision must be completely partitioned when you create a listing group tree.
The tree must have a grouping for other (Everything else in the Google Ads UI). Mutate operations won't work if you don't do this correctly.
Use the following steps to create a child node:
- Create a new listing group and set the
ListingGroupType
to one of the following:UNIT
. This is a leaf node of the tree. Doesn't need to be biddable. You can't bid per unit in Smart Shopping campaigns.SUBDIVISION
. This splits the tree by another subdivision. Remember to set a temporary ID for the node.
Set the
case_value
of the node to theListingDimensionInfo
you want to subdivide by (product attribute in the Google Ads UI), for exampleproduct_brand
.To partition a product group by
ProductBiddingCategory
, set the value to a numeric ID, not the category string. You can find the ID inProductBiddingCategoryConstant
.Set the parent ID for the node to the
getId
value of the parent subdivision or root node.
A listing group tree can be no more than seven levels deep.
- Create a new listing group and set the
Repeat step five for every
UNIT
of the subdivision at the current tree level.Include a leaf node with an empty
case_value
for each subdivision. This represents all other values.For each
SUBDIVISION
at the current level:- Take note of the ID value. This is the parent ID for the next level.
- Follow the tree down a level.
- Repeat steps five to seven.
Create an
AdGroupCriterion
for everyUNIT
. This associates the listing group with the ad group.Other ad groups and campaigns with lower priority may still bid on products that fit the same criteria. Apply
negative
to exclude a product group from bidding.Enable the ad group to start bidding with the listing group structure.
See Create a new listing group and the python example for more detail.
Here's an example of a listing group tree: