Is google shopping DEAD? ☠️

With all of the changes that Google is making on its own Google Ads platform, plus the very dramatic and fast rise of AI tools like ChatGPT and Bard, the question has to be asked, is Google Shopping dead? And the answer is, well, not quite yet. And with that understanding and knowing that Google Shopping campaigns are going to be with us for a little while longer, and the next question is, do I personally still use Google shopping campaigns in 2023? So make sure you stick around to the end of this video because I'm going to be sharing with you how I currently view shopping campaigns and how or if I still use them in 2023. But right now let's get back to that first and all important question of is Google Shopping dead? And like I said, it's not fully dead yet. But when I've asked that exact question to Google, it becomes very, very clear that yes, while Google Shopping will be around in some format and you will still be able to build out specific Google Shopping campaigns for the next foreseeable years, it is also very, very clear that very quickly, and I would even suggest that over the next two years the top two dominant campaigns in Google Ads will be performance max and video campaigns. And by video campaigns we mean YouTube campaigns. And this is a really significant change that we cannot underestimate because since Google has been around, the dominant 1 and 2 campaigns have been search and shopping and they've been the go to campaigns for every type of advertiser. Obviously shopping was the domain very much for E commerce, but search was a big player in e commerce as well. And then for service based industries the default option was always search campaigns. But over the coming years, and as I said the next two years they that is going to change rapidly where the dominant campaigns are going to be performance max and video campaigns. Now I'm not saying that search and shopping won't still be relevant with search very much being the domain for service based industries and shopping still playing a role in e commerce industries. But they will not be the number one and number two campaigns in terms of what users are using and what is generating the revenue for Google. And if you take a step back and look at it get this is actually coming as no surprise. In fact, this process started back in 2018 when Google changed its name from Google AdWords to Google Ads. But more on that later. Because what has been rapidly increasing this change and speeding up this transition is the very rapid rise of tools like ChatGPT and Bard and they are right now causing a massive disruption to the way that a User uses Google search. And that'll be happening more and more over the coming weeks and months. And I'm not even going to say years, because that's just too far to predict. 2023 is going to see a massive change in user search behavior. But that's not the only change that is happening. Because as that is happening on one front, Google is also very much positioning itself to be able to take full advantage of the change which is happening in that other side of user behavior, in that social media platforms are moving faster and faster and faster towards short contact video. Now this is nothing new and we've seen the rise of apps like TikTok taking a big chunk of revenue away from Meta with their Facebook and Instagram ads now dropping revenue on previous years. And this is then on top of Meta having to deal with the fallout from not getting as much Data from that iOS 14 update. And now Google is going on the attack for that short form content market with it now monetizing shorts. Now the reason for why this is so important, and I want you to stay with me because this is highly relevant to Google shopping. And the reason for that is because when we look at the user behavior, what Google is banking on right here is that they've put a strong strategy in place that by monetizing shorts it's going to encourage more short form content creators to heavily focus on YouTube and not Facebook or Instagram as much. And then as content creators create more content specifically designed for YouTube and YouTube shorts, the followers would then follow the content creators which bringing more people and more users over to the YouTube platform. And this is a strategy which I wholeheartedly believe will ultimately win and make YouTube a main play in that short form content. Because have a think about it. If you are a content creator, especially doing reels or shorts or whichever platform you wanting to do it for, what would you prefer to choose? A platform that is highly reliant on brand deals or a platform that is going to actually give you that the lion's share of the revenue that your video content makes. So you can still get those brand deals, but you can also get that highly lucrative revenue share of those YouTube ad profits. So as I said, that is a strategy that is going to drastically change the landscape and how Google Ads will perform. And then on top of that, personally I've seen large advertisers who are now strategically making the decision to move to 30% of their TV and radio budget. So money that was assigned to more traditional forms of media and they're moving that directly over to YouTube, putting all those things together. That's why I'm saying that over the next two years, Performance Max and video campaigns will be the dominant players in the Google Ads ecosystem. But right now, let's get back to Google Shopping and that whole question of is Google Shopping dead? And the reason why I'm saying it's not dead yet and why it's moving over to performance max. Because obviously performance Max does have the ability for that shopping feed to appear in your performance Max campaigns. Because remember how I said back in 2018 that Google Ads changed its branding from Google AdWords? So Google Ads as a branding has only been around now for five years. So this move has been happening year on year. But as I said, it's getting a lot faster now and what that core change is around. So look beyond the change of moving from shopping to perform max or the inclusion of video campaigns becoming a lot more relevant inside of Google Ads. Underlying all of that is that for a long time now, Google Ads has been moving its focus away from purely focusing on those bottom of the funnel or high search intent ads. So yes, Google still does play in that domain. But when Google was very much focused on search and shopping, that's what it was designed to do, is that you would give Google a search term and then your ads would appear similar specifically when someone searched that exact match keyword. But also in 2018, Google Shopping released Smart Shopping. And the advantage of that type of campaign over standard shopping campaigns was that it had inbuilt in it a remarketing function. So what would happen is, is that when someone had first engaged with one of your shopping ads or search ads, if they came back and did another related search for your product, the Smart Shopping campaign would bid more aggressively against that user because it already had some data in it knew that that person was looking. So now it was prepared to pay more for an individual click because Google knew there was a far more likely chance of that search and that user leading to a conversion. So let's just say we completed a search for Apple Watch Bands. You would see not only your search ads but also your shopping ads appearing over through here. But if I was to then click on one of these ads and then complete another search for Apple Watch Bands or something related to that inside the Smart Shopping campaign, Google would then bid a lot higher because the data had shown that I had recently performed a similar search. So it was very much in market and I was getting to that position where I was ready to buy. And now we very Much know that Google has replaced Smart shopping with those Performance Max campaigns. And what Performance Max did is it added in an extra layer to that Smart Shopping functionality. And that extra layer was that not only having inbuilt remarketing capabilities within that campaign and it also had discovery elements in that, in that your Google Performance Max campaign would go out and find potential new customers before they had even started searching for your brand or your product type. And by making this change to Performance Max, Google then upgraded its Smart Shopping campaigns so that it didn't only play in that sort of that lower middle and bottom of the funnel, in that it took people along that whole journey from taking them right, right before they even enter the funnel. So before the top of the funnel, through the top, all the way through the middle and down to that bottom of the funnel when they're ready to make that purchase. So you may ask, if Performance Max has all of this extra functionality, why did they not just do away with standard shopping in the same way that they got rid of Smart Shopping campaigns? And the reason for that is this, is that Google is well aware that there are a lot of big high spending industries that, that need really high level manual optimizations. And let me give you some examples. For advertisers who are advertising in the healthcare space or the pharmaceutical space or the alcohol space, there's very strict regulations depending on the country where you're advertising. For example, for a number of years I was the lead in optimizing a large healthcare brand, their fitness and health supplements here in Australia. And especially because they had a lot of vitamins, we had to be very, very careful and very selective on what keywords or what user search terms our ads appeared on. And in fact, if our ads appeared on certain search terms, the company would actually face huge fines. And it's because of this, because there are some companies that need high level manual optimizations so that they don't face fines in their own operating countries. Performance Max doesn't work for all advertisers. And that's because Performance Max, as you may be aware and as I've spoken about a lot on this channel, it uses a lot of automated bidding. Also had Google's Lambda, its AI technology, active on Performance Max campaigns since late 2022, around about October, November. And yes, I know I didn't make a big point about that, but if you've missed that, I want to repeat that last bit, that Lambda, Google's AI tool is actually active on Performance Max campaigns. And I've got some even better news to share with you is that over the coming weeks I'm going to be showing you how you can request some specific reports from Google so that you can see the exact search terms which you're generating in clicks and conversions within your Performance Max campaign on both your search and shopping feeds. And this goes way beyond the insights report that you currently see in Google Ads. So if you want to make sure that you get all of that data and you see it as soon as it comes out right here on my YouTube channel, make sure that you not only subscribe right now, but turn on that notification bell so that you know exactly when that video is released right here on YouTube. So after that shameless plug for you to subscribe to my channel and and me also giving you some information about the current landscape of Google Shopping and where it's going to be heading over the next couple of years. Right now I want to come to that question and give you some really clear direction on how I am currently using Google shopping campaigns. And so that I can explain this in the clearest possible way, let's now jump into a screen share. And for this part I want to explain how and when I use shopping and Performance Max campaigns. Now for existing campaigns and what I mean by existing, I mean shopping campaigns that were set up pre June 2020 2022. And the reason for why that data is so important is because we know in the middle parts of June 2022 that's when Google was starting to get rid of smart shopping and it was putting a lot more prioritization onto how Performance Max worked. So if you've got accounts that have existing campaigns prior to June 2022 and if they have standard shopping campaigns that are still performing well, with this being the key criteria, that have not seen a drop of more than two in their conversion value cost for these E Commerce accounts, these are the ones that their current shopping campaigns running along with supporting search and display campaigns with the display campaign being a remarketing campaign. However, if they have seen a drop of more than two in their conversion value cost, I start a Performance Max campaign and then add in a shopping remarketing campaign with a high priority feed. Now a couple of things there. What I mean by that is that with that conversion value cost, let's just say that pre2022 their conversion value cost was operating at around about a single as long as those current standard shopping campaigns still have a four in front of them, I will keep that standard shopping campaign going. And there have even been some cases where I will Break out that standard shopping campaign into separate shopping campaigns. So even last October or November we had a standard shopping campaign that was running in an account it had been running for about three years previous. And I saw there was some better segmentation options that we can use. And we actually broke that one standard shopping campaign, which was a catch all, into four individual standard shopping campaigns that were targeting different product categories. And very, very quickly we saw the performance of that total account improve. So we've kept that account on standard shopping. Even if you've got an account that has some standard shopping campaigns, but they could be set up better to target different product categories. As long as you've got some long term standard shopping campaign data in your account, you can set up those standard shopping campaigns. However, if they've seen a drop of more than two Personally, I move it over to performance Performance max. Now I'm not saying that you can't revive those standard shopping campaigns and add in new standard shopping campaigns. But the reason for why I do make that change is because remember how I've been saying throughout this video that over the next couple of years I see performance max being more and more dominant. So if you see your standard shopping starting to drop, my recommendation is just to move across to performance max. Because the faster that you can get that type of campaign working, the better it is going to be for your business. Now on the other hand, for existing campaigns pre June 2022 if they only had Smart shopping run and this has been an upgraded to performance Max campaign. So when you see that performance max upgraded from Smart shopping, I will turn this off unless the results have not dropped more than two in their conversion value cost and then I start a new performance Max campaign and then I add in a shopping remarketing campaign with a high priority feed. Now I know this part. The shopping remarketing campaign with a high priority feed was mentioned on the previous slide. What I am going to do is a couple of weeks ago right here on this channel, I released a four full video breaking down this strategy and what I'll do at the end of this video I'll share a link so that you can go through and watch this one. Now another thing that I want to note about this personally, I have not seen any Smart shopping campaigns upgraded to performance max that have maintained their results for more than four months. Now before you jump up and start screaming and say, well I've got an example. I'm not saying it doesn't happen, I'm just saying overwhelmingly of all the campaigns that I'm seeing the ones that have been upgraded from smart shopping over to performance max will generally start to lose some form. And then this brings us to the other option for new campaigns. And what I mean by this is new accounts that weren't running any Google shopping campaigns, so standard shopping campaigns in them before June 2022 and in this case I would just go straight to a new performance max campaign. And then once again I look to add in that shopping remarketing campaign with a high priority once they've had over a thousand people in their cart abandoners, product views and website visitors audience. Now I know in this video we've gone through a lot of data and a lot of scenarios and a lot of information information about it's core. What I want you to take away from this video is that yes, shopping campaigns will still be with us for the long term. But over the past 12 months there has been a significant change in Google Ads and there's a real focus away from shopping campaigns into performance max campaigns. Now, whether you agree with this or whether you like this or not, the harsh reality is is that for success in the future you are going to have to have a performance max campaign at some level. So like I said in those screens, if you have standard shopping campaigns that are still highly profitable, please keep running with them for as long as you can, because I know I am. But if you do start to see the performance in your shopping campaigns really start to drop away to where they're no longer profitable, my strong recommendation is for you to move over to performance max and to get that profitable as fast as you can. Now, underlying all of that, whether you're running shopping campaigns or performance max campaigns, one thing that is highly critical for success is is making sure that you have an optimization schedule. And that's why I want to give you a free copy of my Google Ads E Commerce Optimization Checklist. And the reason for why this is so valuable is because it breaks down all of those important optimization actions that you need to carry out and it also lets you know exactly when you need to complete them. Because there's some optimization actions that you need to complete every week, whereas there's others that you don't need to complete or review until every two or three months. And if you want to get your copy of my Google Ads Optimization E Commerce checklist, all you need to do is to follow that link in the description below. Once again, thank you for joining me. My name is Aaron Young And I'm from Define Digital Academy and I am your 15,000 hour Google Ads master. Now remember when I was going through that slides, I let you know that I was going to tell you about a video about how you can create those remarketing shopping campaigns with a high priority feed. And if you want to know the step by step process in how to complete that and also why you should do that because I release some of the amazing results we're getting with that strategy. All you need to do is to go through and watch this video right here. Once again, thank you for joining me. See you next time.