Get ready for Smart Shopping and Local campaign upgrades

New year, same trend: Consumers continue to tap into an ever-growing number of places to get inspiration and find what they need. This past holiday season, 54% of shoppers used five or more channels, like video and social media, to shop over a two-day period.[ec0303]

Performance Max uses Google’s automation to help advertisers reach shoppers as they browse for things they love — online and in stores.[053cc9]It builds on Smart Shopping and Local campaigns to deliver the same foundational features, while adding brand new inventory and automation insights. Starting in April, you can begin upgrading your Smart Shopping and Local campaigns to Performance Max to access additional inventory and formats across YouTube, Search text ads and Discover.[d34fff]Based on early testing, advertisers who upgrade Smart Shopping campaigns to Performance Max see an average increase of 12% in conversion value at the same or better return on ad spend (ROAS).[7cb4f9]

Performance Max allows you to grow online, offline or omnichannel sales by unlocking all of Google’s ad inventory from a single campaign with a product feed. For example, you can transform your Video ads into your digital storefront and highlight your top products on YouTube — right where valuable customers are watching relevant video content every day.

Learn how to upgrade Smart Shopping and Local campaigns to Performance Max

Here’s a preview of the upgrade process so you know what to expect and how to plan ahead to set your campaigns up for success.[c7f14c]

Keep these key milestones in mind as you prepare for the upgrade:

• Create new campaigns with Performance Max: You can continue using your existing Smart Shopping and Local campaigns until you’ve upgraded them to Performance Max later this year. For any new campaigns you create in Google Ads, start using Performance Max. You’ll access ad inventory that’s already available in Smart Shopping and Local campaigns plus new inventory and formats — including across YouTube, Search text ads and Discover.[d34fff]
• Upgrade with a one-click tool: Starting in April, you can easily upgrade your Smart Shopping campaigns with a new “one-click” tool in Google Ads. You’ll be able to upgrade your Local campaigns with the tool starting in June. The tool gives you flexibility to upgrade specific campaigns or all of your campaigns at once.[076e64]Learnings from your existing campaigns will be used in your new Performance Max campaigns to maintain consistent performance.

• Upgrade automatically: From July through September, your Smart Shopping campaigns will be automatically upgraded for you. Your Local campaigns will be automatically upgraded from August through September. You will no longer be able to create new Smart Shopping and Local campaigns once your existing campaigns are automatically upgraded. The automatic upgrade process will conclude by the end of September to ensure you’re well prepared to use Performance Max for the 2022 holiday season.

Leading e-commerce partners like Shopify, WooCommerce and BigCommerce are already working to support Performance Max so more merchants can benefit from new inventory and formats to connect with their customers. All merchants and partners will be able to upgrade their Smart Shopping and Local campaigns through the Google Ads API later this year. Learn more about the process in our developer blog.

Prepare for campaign upgrades with new resources

Tune in to our upcoming webinar in February, where product experts will demonstrate the one-click upgrade tool and dive into best practices for creating new Performance Max campaigns. They’ll also explain the new technology used in your campaign upgrades to help you get better results, faster.

Meanwhile, our updated Performance Max best practices guide has new recommendations geared towards achieving your online and offline goals. You can also explore the infographic below to understand how to use Performance Max with other Google Ads campaigns.

In the coming months, we’ll share tools and tips to help you at each milestone and make your upgrade process as smooth as possible. In the meantime, share your questions and comments and we’ll address them in our upcoming webinar. You can also follow @AdsLiasion to stay updated throughout the process.