How to Migrate from P-Max to Standard Shopping

Intro

Let’s say you’re done with P-Max. You’re tired of the inability to see search terms. You’re sick of the sudden spend spikes on Display/Video.

Now you’re asking yourself:

What do you need to know?

Where can you mess up?

How do you transition from Performance Max to Standard Shopping?

We’ve already covered why you should switch from P-Max to Std. Shopping, so in this article, we’ll tackle the nitty gritty of switching from P-Max to Standard Shopping.

Before we get started, let me address one thing: If you have no issues with P-Max, then don’t migrate to Standard Shopping. There is simply no need since Performance Max can perform super efficiently for a long time without ever causing a reason to make the switch.

3 Main Reasons to Switch from P-Max to Standard Shopping

We’ve already covered the why in the article that I linked to above, but to summarize:

1. Excess spend goes to Display / YouTube when trying to scale
2. Budget management is difficult (see above)
3. Wanting to scale Shopping Ads without Search/Display/Video

These are the three main reasons people should switch, but if you’re a bit more advanced, there’s also a fourth reason:

1. The ability to create more advanced campaign structures using priorities

This is a major part of why we switch to Standard Shopping campaigns, and it is not something to be slept on.

What You Need to Know before making the switch

• Bidding should still be Smart Bidding
• You can’t run both P-Max and Std. Shopping at the same time (P-Max will take priority)
• How to use the priority-setting
• There is no Display or Search advertising (check your spend levels before you make the switch; Dynamic Retargeting and DSA will do the trick if you have significant spend in there)
• Campaign structure is the most important thing after your feed is set up (read my article above for more insights)
• Using a fallback campaign structure is the easiest way to push Shopping
• Budget management is easier (setting high budgets is no longer an invitation for Google to spend on Display/Video ads)

Let me expand on the most important points:

Bidding Should Be Smart Bidding

I’ll go out on a limb that I’ve been hanging onto for a long time: The reason Smart Shopping outperformed Standard Shopping back in the day had nothing to do with what was inside Smart Shopping.

Instead, it was because it forced advertisers to stop doing manual bidding.

You may not remember (or it was before your time), but around the time Smart Shopping came out, there were still a lot of advertisers doing manual bidding. But Smart Bidding had caught up with manual bidding, so when advertisers “upgraded to Smart Shopping,” it simply forced them to use Smart Bidding.

This proved to be a massive leap in performance because Smart Bidding bids on the search term level, which for Shopping Ads (where we can’t select keywords) is a massive advantage over manual bidding.

So, it goes without saying that you should not switch to Standard Shopping and then run manual bidding. It’s a bad idea and will only result in poor performance.

How to Use the Priority Settings

The priority setting works internally in an account. It does not do anything to compete with competitors.

If you have two Shopping campaigns that can both show ads for the same search terms, the Shopping campaign with the highest priority (usually) wins.

This is the basic idea for Google Shopping campaign priorities.

The setting allows you to create some pretty intricate campaign structures that will set you up for success.

Here are some examples of various campaign structures:

• Bestseller vs non-bestsellers
• Brand vs. non-brand
• High-medium-low inventory products
• Private Label vs Reseller brands (high margins in high priority)

Etc.

Use a Fallback Campaign Structure

Smart Bidding bids on a segment basis to make your spend the most efficient possible.

A segment can be a combination of targeting like:

• Searches for Nike running shoes on mobile devices in California

That means that at any given time, Smart Bidding will not bid high enough for a specific segment because performance has been historically low.

Often, Smart Bidding is correct. But for high SKU eCommerce stores, we see that it’s not always correct or the circumstances have changed.

To override Smart Bidding, you should create a fallback campaign in the low-priority setting.

Simply put, you create a campaign called Fallback that has no negative keywords, no audience exclusions, etc., and on manual bidding. This last part is the most important.

Then, you play around with the bids. Usually, I’ll set it to 25-50% of the average CPC in your main Std. Shopping campaign.

The result is that when a segment has a critically low bid, the fallback campaign will have a higher ad rank (and, therefore, be shown in the auction).

Normally, when you can get clicks from relevant search terms at 25% of your normal CPCs, it’ll almost always be profitable.

For some advertisers, we have as much as 10-15% of their spend in these fallback campaigns. For others, we have 0%. It’s worth running them.

Note: Fallback campaigns rarely work with P-Max due to how much priority P-Max takes internally on an account.

Budget Management is Easier

I’ve talked a lot about why budget management for P-Max is horribly difficult. You have to constantly figure out what the budget should be on a given week because if you don’t, you’ll:

• Have too much budget not being spent, and P-Max will suddenly spend on Display/Video
• Have too little budget, and you’re being radically limited

With Std. Shopping, you can go back to the best way to manage your budget, and that is to set it to 50% higher than you’re spending on average.

Where Can You Mess Up?

• More buttons to click, so be a bit careful. Generally, you don’t have to make a lot of changes.
• Fewer settings, so don’t overcomplicate it. Ninety percent of your time should be spent on the campaign structure.
• Make the switch when you’re in low season, not in the middle of a high season, unless you really have to and know what you’re doing.
• Not copying your P-Max settings:
  • New Customer Acquisition
  • Excluded products
• Switching to a new, overly complicated campaign structure
  • Instead, try to just switch to Std. Shopping. Run it for a few months to get a baseline, and then start toying with different campaign structures.

Let me expand on the most important point.

Switching to a New Overly Complicated Campaign Structure

When you make bigger changes in an account, it’s important not to make too many sudden changes at the same time. The more changes you make simultaneously, the less likely you are to know what the effect will be.

And in reverse, you don’t know what went wrong if it does go wrong.

When you first set up your new Std. Shopping campaigns just mimic your existing P-Max campaign structure. If that’s just one campaign, then just set up one campaign.

How to Make the Transition from P-Max to Std. Shopping

1) Set up Your Std. Shopping Campaigns

Be careful if you’ve excluded products from P-Max. Anything that was excluded in P-max should also be excluded from Standard Shopping.

Don’t use ad groups initially. They’re only useful for seeing which search terms show up for the products in an ad group. Initially, you shouldn’t spend time here.

Most people get this part wrong. Don’t overcomplicate it. Ad groups aren’t Asset Groups. You don’t run different audiences, targeting, etc., in ad groups. They’re just a way to organize your products in groups. They have no impact on performance.

Your initial setup should be:

• High Priority campaign: All products on Smart Bidding
  • This can be structured the same way as your P-Max structure. So, if you had split P-Max into three campaigns, do the same in Standard Shopping
• Low Priority campaign (fallback): All products on manual bidding (25% of the avg. CPC)

2) Set the ROAS Target

This is the area that will most likely cause your performance to drop if you get it wrong.

• If you set a target that is too high, Std. Shopping will not bid high enough to get into the auctions and can cause a negative spiral
• If you set a target that is too low, Std. Shopping will rise too much and hit a ROAS target you can’t afford

Both scenarios will get you into trouble (or have you cursing me out for getting you to switch).

Here’s what I recommend:

• Set the targets to the same as in your P-Max, but with two caveats:
  1. If your P-Max campaign(s) are consistently hitting a lower ROAS than your target, then I’d set the target to your actual ROAS for the last 21 days minus the last seven days.
  2. If you’re spending on Display/Video/Search, then you need to calculate how much spend/conversion value comes from these channels to get the accurate ROAS target for Std. Shopping (use a script to do this).

I highly recommend using Bid Strategies to set min. and max. bids. This will help you stop the system from over or underspending.

Brand vs. Non-brand

To begin, I recommend continuing your P-Max campaign structure. So, if you didn’t split brand and non-brand in your P-Max setup, do not do it in your Std. Shopping.

Read more about Brand vs. Non-Brand: The Real Reason Nobody Agrees on Brand Bidding in Google Ads

The challenge is figuring out what the correct ROAS target should be for your non-brand campaigns.

While it is possible to calculate the ROAS targets for brand and non-brand fairly accurately, it adds complexity that you don’t initially need.

This is most likely your first time switching from P-Max to Std. Shopping. Keep it simple.

3) Run P-Max and Std. Shopping Together for About a Week

The first few days of Std. Shopping can be throttled (meaning you will get fewer clicks than you normally will), and running the campaigns simultaneously usually helps avoid this throttling – even if the new Std. Shopping campaigns get no traffic. It’s a bit strange, but it works.

Another option is to move your inventory from one campaign setup to another in stages. If you have a sufficiently large account, you can switch 25% of your inventory at a time.

1. Week 1: Migrate 25% of the inventory
2. Week 2: Migrate 50% of the inventory
3. Week 3: Migrate 75% of the inventory
4. Week 4: Migrate 100% of the inventory

Make sure you switch entire categories, not individual brands. Because P-Max takes priority over standard shopping internally on your account, when two products match a search term the P-Max campaign will be prioritized.

Suppose you migrate a high-performing brand to your standard shopping campaign but leave lower-performing brands in the same category. In that case, the lower-performing brands can take preference on generic keywords. You can solve this by simply moving all your inventory at once.

Be careful about the ROAS targets you set. If you switch a category with an ROAS that is lower than average, then you need to set the ROAS target in Std. Shopping to the ROAS of the category, not the previous campaign.

The last challenge with only switching little by little is that you’re taking data away from the system. By doing little by little, you risk having too little data for the system to get to efficiency fast.

For reference, we’ve migrated P-Max setups with $50,000/mo. spend and 500 conversions a day from one day to another. For numbers bigger than that, we’re inclined to migrate in stages — but not always.

3) Turn off P-Max, and let Std. Shopping run

When you make the switch, remember three things:

1. Conversion Lag: People clicking today are less likely to buy today. You should already know this and use it when analyzing initial performance.
2. Cookies: You should not expect the same performance in your new campaigns within the first week due to the above.
3. Data: The more data you have, the smoother the switch will be.

I’ve made the switch in the middle of a high season with no interruption to performance.

But you shouldn’t switch back for at least a month. If you feel the need to switch back, remind yourself that:

• Your P-Max spends 99% of its spend on Shopping Ads
• Standard Shopping spends 100% of the spend on Shopping Ads

There isn’t a major algorithm difference between the two, no matter what some people (including Googlers) say. Product Leads from Google are on record telling me that unless you use all of Performance Max (Search/Display/Video, etc.), there is no big difference to Standard Shopping.

I’ve included a section on when you should consider switching back and what you can do in different scenarios below.

Possible Issues and Solutions:

• Spend/traffic is lower than before → Decrease ROAS target
  • If spend is the same but traffic is lower, it might be that you’re not capturing the same Display traffic. If your CPCs in Standard Shopping are much higher than in P-Max, this is most likely the reason. It’s not a bad thing. It just means you’re not buying crappy display traffic. (However, this is part of the initial phase to research before you migrate).
• Spend/traffic is higher than before → Increase ROAS target, apply a max bid, or (as a last step) lower your budget temporarily
  • Remember the way that Smart Bidding works. If your target ROAS is lower than your actual ROAS, it will increase your bids. So, to spend less, you just need to increase your ROAS target.
  • Note that the higher spend might be a feature, not a bug. Wait a week and see what the ROAS of that spend actually is.
• ROAS / Conversions is lower than before → Give it time, review search terms (but be careful), and revise irregularities
  • In 90% of cases, this is because something is different from your P-Max campaign. Products are re-activated, targets are wrong, etc.
  • Remember that the conversion lag means you can’t review ROAS on a daily basis. It also means that for most advertisers, it can take up to a week (and for high AOV products, even longer) for all the conversions to happen.

When to Consider Switching Back

We’ve switched back in a few instances. But after making 50+ switches in the last few years, we’ve come to understand when it makes sense to run P-Max and when to switch to Std. Shopping. We rarely have to switch back anymore as long as we have switched the right case in the first place.

Generally, we see that there is little to no advantage in switching to Std. Shopping if:

• You only have a few products
• Performance is great
• There are no brand vs. non-brand keyword bidding issues
• You spend less than $10,000 per month (data quantity issues)

When is the time to consider switching back? We’ll do it if performance is substantially lower in Std. Shopping — i.e., 20% lower conversion volume or ROAS after a month.

It’s very rare though, and is often a result of:

• Not being aware of profitable spend in Search Ads
• Starting a campaign structure that wasn’t ideal anyway
• Setting the wrong ROAS targets
• Errors in the switch (activated unprofitable products again, etc.)
• Too little data

If you’ve made the switch and feel something is wrong, just reach out to me (andrew@savvyrevenue.com). I’ll gladly steer you in the right direction.

Learn More About P-Max vs Standard Shopping

I’ve gone more in-depth with reasons and potential campaign structures across P-Max and Standard Shopping in this savvysession: