Shopping and PMax, run

• 01

  The feed is nobody's job

  The agency says the feed is the developer's, the developer says it is the platform's, and the platform fills the gaps with whatever it can scrape. Titles truncate, GTINs go missing, sale prices disagree with the landing page. Shopping does not fail loudly here — it just quietly stops showing the products you make money on.

• 02

  Performance Max eats the brand traffic and calls it growth

  Left alone, PMax finds the cheapest conversions in the account — people who were already typing your name. ROAS looks excellent. New customers do not appear. Without brand exclusions and a channel that can be read separately, you are paying commission on your own returning buyers.

• 03

  The account optimises revenue, the business runs on margin

  A 12× ROAS on a product with 8% margin loses money that a 4× ROAS on a 60% product would have made. If the account never receives a margin value, the bidding algorithm is optimising the wrong number with great precision.

• 04

  Returns and cancellations never reach the account

  Purchases fire on the thank-you page and stay there. Refunds, failed COD, cancelled orders — none of it flows back, so the smart bidding learns from a version of your business that is more profitable than the real one.

• 01feed included

  Feed treated as part of the account

  Titles, attributes, GTINs, availability, price parity, disapprovals. The feed is read and fixed as a first-class asset, not handed back as a screenshot of Merchant Center errors.

• 02

  Shopping segmented by what it earns

  Products split by margin and role — hero, long tail, dead stock, seasonal — so bids and budgets can differ where the economics differ, instead of one campaign averaging everything into a number nobody can act on.

• 03brand split

  Performance Max with brand held separate

  Brand exclusions, an asset group structure you can actually read, and search-terms visibility as far as the platform allows. PMax has to prove incremental sales, not re-sell people who already knew you.

• 04

  Margin sent to the account, not just revenue

  Where the platform can supply it, conversion value carries margin rather than order total, so tROAS optimises the number your P&L uses.

• 05

  Returns and cancellations reconciled

  Ads, GA4 and the backend are reconciled on the same orders. When the numbers disagree, the gap is explained in writing before any bidding decision is built on top of it.

• 06free

  Free written audit of account and feed

  Read-only access to Google Ads and Merchant Center, five working days, a written deliverable covering both. It is yours whether or not you hire anyone afterwards.

1. 01

   Audit: account, feed, measurement

   01 · 5 working days

   Campaign structure, Merchant Center, the purchase event and the reconciliation against the backend are read together. Store problems rarely live in only one of the three.

   • →Written audit
   • →Feed defect list
   • →Ads ↔ GA4 ↔ backend gap
2. 02

   Feed and measurement first

   02 · Weeks 1–3

   Disapprovals, missing attributes and price mismatches are cleared, and the purchase value is made to mean what the business means by it, before a single bid strategy is touched.

   • →Clean feed
   • →Value model agreed
   • →Refund handling
3. 03

   Structure rebuilt around margin

   03 · Weeks 3–8

   Shopping segmented by product role, PMax brought under control with brand held separate, budgets moved to where the margin actually is. Each change is entered in the decision log with its reason.

   • →Segmented Shopping
   • →PMax under control
   • →Decision log
4. 04

   Seasonality, stock and two levels of control

   04 · Ongoing

   Automation watches spend and feed health daily, the senior owner reviews weekly, and budgets follow stock and season instead of a plan written last quarter.

   • →Weekly plan
   • →Weekly report
   • →Feed health alerts

Lead-gen accounts and the general scope sit on the Google Ads management page. If you are not sure which one fits, the free audit answers that before anything is decided.

• Do you work on the feed, or only the ads?

  Both. In a store account the feed is where most of the hidden loss sits, and splitting it off from the campaigns is how it ends up unowned. If your feed is generated by an app or a developer, we specify the fixes precisely enough for them to implement, and verify the result in Merchant Center.

• Which platforms have you handled?

  Shopify, WooCommerce, Magento and custom builds. The stack matters less than whether the backend can be reconciled against the account — that question is answered in the audit.

• Can you really optimise on margin?

  As far as your data allows. If margin per product is available, conversion value can carry it. If it is not, we say so and work with a proxy, stated openly, rather than implying a precision that does not exist.

• Will you switch off Performance Max?

  Not by reflex. PMax works in plenty of stores. What it needs is brand held separate and a structure you can read, so the reported ROAS is about new demand rather than repeat buyers finding you again.

• Our store is small. Is this worth it?

  Below roughly €5,000 a month in ad spend, a one-off audit plus a feed cleanup usually beats a retainer — the management fee eats the improvement. We will tell you that before you sign anything.

• What access do you need for the audit?

  Read-only on Google Ads and Merchant Center, plus GA4 if it exists. We reply to your request with the exact list.