A good Google Shopping agency should spend most of its time on three things: your product feed, how your products are split into campaigns, and checking what Performance Max is really doing with your budget. Bids matter less than they used to, because Google sets most of them now.
That’s the part brands often don’t see. “It’s all automated” is true of the bidding. It isn’t true of the inputs, and the inputs are where an agency earns its fee.
Here’s what that looks like week to week, and what you should expect to see reported back.
What does a Shopping agency actually do if Google automates the bidding?
It manages everything the automation depends on.
Performance Max and Shopping campaigns decide bids, placements and often creative themselves. What they can’t decide is which products deserve budget, what a sale is worth to you, or whether the information about each product is any good. Those are human jobs.
So the work shifts. Less time adjusting bids by hand, more time on the feed, the campaign structure, the conversion data and the checks that catch automation going somewhere you didn’t want it to.
If an agency describes its Shopping work mainly as “optimising bids”, that’s a sign it’s still working the old way.
Why does the product feed matter more than the bidding?
Because Google decides which searches your products appear for mostly from your feed.
There are no keywords in Shopping. Google reads your product titles, descriptions, product types and attributes to match products to searches. A title that says “Style 4471 Navy” competes badly against one that says “Men’s Navy Wool Overcoat, Slim Fit”. The bidding can’t fix a product Google doesn’t understand.
A good agency should be working on the feed regularly, not once at setup. That usually means:
- Rewriting titles so the words shoppers actually search come first
- Filling in missing attributes like brand, colour, size, material and GTIN
- Checking Merchant Center diagnostics for disapprovals and warnings every week
- Fixing price and availability mismatches between the feed and the site
- Making sure shipping costs and delivery times are set correctly, including surcharges for remote UK postcodes
- Using custom labels to tag products by margin, season, price band or stock level
That last one is what makes the next section possible.
How should products be split across campaigns?
By what you want each group of products to achieve, not just by category.
Putting every product into one campaign with one target is the simplest setup, and it usually means a few bestsellers take most of the budget while everything else barely gets a look. That’s fine if those bestsellers are also your best-margin products. Often they aren’t.
A better structure separates products that need different treatment. High-margin lines might carry a lower ROAS target so they can win more auctions. Clearance stock might get a short push and then stop. New products with no sales history might need their own campaign so they get a fair chance to show.
Custom labels in the feed are how you do this without rebuilding everything by hand. Your agency should be able to explain why each campaign exists and what it’s trying to do.
What should an agency check inside Performance Max?
More than most do, because Performance Max reports less than a standard Shopping campaign.
It runs across Search, Shopping, YouTube, Display, Gmail and Discover from one budget. That’s powerful, and it’s also where money can drift without anyone noticing. The checks we’d expect every week:
- Where the spend is going. The channel performance report shows how budget splits between Shopping, YouTube, Display and the rest. A campaign that was mostly Shopping and is now mostly video deserves a look.
- How much is your own brand name. Performance Max will happily take credit for people who searched for you by name and would have bought anyway. Brand exclusions stop that, and the agency should be reporting brand and non-brand separately.
- What it’s searching on. The search terms report shows the queries behind the spend. Irrelevant ones can now be blocked with negative keywords at campaign level.
- What creative it’s using. Google can generate its own text and videos from your feed and site. Check what’s live and whether it’s on brand. Advertisers reported this week that auto-generated videos are now appearing in product-only asset groups, which used to be a safe way to avoid them.
- Which products get nothing. Products with no impressions for weeks are often a feed problem, not a demand problem.
None of this means Performance Max is bad. It means it needs watching.
How should targets be set?
From your margins, not from a benchmark.
A ROAS target tells Google how much revenue you need back for every pound spent. The right number depends on what you keep from each sale after product cost, delivery, returns and payment fees. A brand with 70% gross margin can make money at a ROAS target that would lose a brand on 30% margin.
An agency should work this out with you before setting targets, and revisit it when your costs or pricing change. It should also check that the value Google sees for each sale is the right one. Revenue including VAT and shipping, revenue excluding it, and actual profit are three different numbers. Whichever basis you choose, it needs to be the same everywhere, or the targets don’t mean what you think they mean.
What should a Shopping agency report back to you?
Commercial results, on a basis you’ve agreed, with enough detail to see what’s working.
- Revenue and ROAS from Google Ads, ideally checked against your own platform’s sales figures
- Brand and non-brand performance shown separately
- Top and bottom products, so you can see where the money is going
- Feed health: disapprovals, warnings and products not showing
- What was changed this period and why
- What’s planned next, and what it’s expected to do
If a report is all impressions and clicks, ask for the commercial numbers. Our post on what a performance marketing agency should be measured on goes into this in more detail.
When do you need a specialist rather than a general PPC agency?
Usually once Shopping is a large share of your ad spend, or your catalogue is big enough that the feed needs ongoing work.
A general agency can run a small Shopping setup perfectly well. The difference shows with hundreds or thousands of products, several markets, frequent stock changes or tight margins. At that point most of the gains come from feed work and structure, and an agency without that experience tends to fall back on bids and budgets.
Ask any agency you’re considering how they’d approach your feed in the first month. The answer tells you a lot. If you’re comparing options, our guide on how to choose a Google Ads agency has the questions we’d ask.
- Google automates the bidding, not the inputs. The feed, structure and conversion data are where an agency earns its fee.
- Product titles and attributes decide which searches you show for, so the feed needs regular work, not a one-off setup.
- Split products by what they need to achieve, using custom labels for margin, season or stock.
- Check Performance Max weekly: channel spend, brand share, search terms, generated creative and products getting nothing.
- Set ROAS targets from your margins, and keep the value Google sees on one consistent basis.
- Expect reports on revenue, brand versus non-brand and feed health, not just clicks.
Frequently Asked Questions
What does a Google Shopping agency do?
It manages your product feed in Merchant Center, structures your Shopping and Performance Max campaigns, sets targets from your margins and reports on revenue. With bidding largely automated, most of the value now comes from the feed and the structure rather than manual bid changes.
Is Performance Max better than standard Shopping campaigns?
It depends on the account. Performance Max reaches more places and often finds more sales, but it shows less about where the money goes. Many brands run both, using standard Shopping for products or markets where they want tighter control.
How often should a product feed be updated?
Prices and stock should sync at least daily, usually automatically. Titles, attributes and labels should be reviewed regularly, often monthly, and checked whenever new products launch. Merchant Center diagnostics are worth checking every week.
What ROAS should an ecommerce brand target?
There’s no universal number. The right target comes from your margins after product cost, delivery, returns and fees. A high-margin brand can profit at a much lower ROAS than a low-margin one.
How do I know if my Shopping agency is doing a good job?
Look for regular feed work, a clear reason for each campaign, brand and non-brand reported separately, and results that match your own sales data. If reports only show clicks and impressions, ask for revenue and ROAS on an agreed basis.
Running Shopping or Performance Max for a UK brand?
We’ll look at your feed, your campaign structure and where the budget is really going, and tell you plainly what we’d change.
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