Google Shopping Campaigns
Google Shopping campaigns display product ads directly in Google search results — with a product image, price, and store name. Ad data is pulled from the product feed connected via Google Merchant Center.
Table of Contents
- Creating a Shopping Campaign Step by Step
- Configuration: Budget, Bids, Priorities
- Product Groups and Assortment Segmentation
- Negative Keywords in Shopping
Creating a Shopping Campaign Step by Step
To create a new Shopping campaign, go to Campaigns → Create Campaign and select the Shopping type for the Google channel.
Step 1 — Configuration
| Field | Description |
|---|---|
| Campaign name | Name visible in Sembot and in the Google Ads account |
| Google connections | Select the Google Ads account linked to the project |
| Merchant Center ID | ID of the Google Merchant Center account containing your product feed |
| Data source (target country) | Feed label (e.g. target country: PL, DE, EN) — optional, used when you have multiple feeds |
Step 2 — Budget and Strategy
For a detailed description of available strategies, see the section below.
Step 3 — Products (Filters)
Specify which products from your catalog should be included in this campaign. You can narrow the selection by brand, category, custom labels, price, and other attributes.
Sembot shows in real time how many products match the defined conditions.
Step 4 — Segmentation
Define how to split the selected products into ad groups. Example: if you segment by brand, Sembot will automatically create a separate ad group for each brand in your catalog (Nike, Adidas, Puma…).
Available segmentation attributes:
- Brand
- Product type
- Google product category
- Custom label 0–4
- Google ID (most granular segmentation)
Before saving the campaign, Sembot displays a Segmentation Preview — showing how many campaigns and groups will be created along with sample names. If the number of campaigns exceeds 50, the system shows an additional warning asking for confirmation.
Step 5 — Goals
Specify the conversion goals the campaign should optimize for. Sembot retrieves available goals from the connected Google Ads account.
Step 6 — Synchronization
After confirming the configuration, click Finish. Sembot will begin syncing with Google Ads — the campaign status will change to Synchronization in progress, and then to Synchronized once complete.
The Activate campaign activation automation toggle on this screen determines whether the campaign should automatically go live after synchronization. If disabled, the campaign will appear as inactive in the account.
Configuration: Budget, Bids, Priorities
Budget
| Option | Description |
|---|---|
| Daily budget | Maximum amount spent per day by this campaign |
| Shared budget | A single shared budget for multiple campaigns; Google distributes it automatically across campaigns in the group |
| Dynamic budget adjustment | Enable to allow Google to automatically exceed the daily budget on high-demand days (balanced out over the month) |
Bid Strategies
| Strategy | Who controls the bid | When to use |
|---|---|---|
| Manual CPC | User — bid set manually | Full control; requires regular optimization |
| Sembot CPC | Sembot — based on target ROAS and historical conversion rate | When you want automation but don't yet have conversion history in Google |
| Target ROAS | Google — optimizes for a specified return on ad spend | When the account has at least 15 conversions in the last 30 days |
| Maximize clicks | Google — maximizes the number of clicks within the budget | Traffic building; does not optimize for conversions |
Campaign Priorities
Google Shopping supports three priority levels for campaigns: Low, Medium, High. If the same product appears in multiple Shopping campaigns simultaneously, Google will serve the ad from the campaign with the highest priority (provided the bid is not zero).
Sembot allows you to set the priority directly during campaign creation.
Typical scenario:
- General campaign (all products) → priority Low
- Promotional campaign (sale) → priority High
- Bestsellers campaign → priority Medium
Product Groups and Assortment Segmentation
Product groups in Google Shopping correspond to ad groups in Sembot. Each group handles one segment of the assortment and can have its own bid.
How Sembot Creates Groups
Based on segmentation rules, Sembot automatically:
- Analyzes products matching the campaign filters
- Reads the values of the selected attribute (e.g. brand)
- Creates a separate ad group for each unique value
- Assigns automatic names to the groups (e.g. "Nike", "Adidas")
Example — a campaign with 500 products segmented by Google category with 8 categories → Sembot will create 8 ad groups.
Bid Adjustments at the Group Level
After configuring segmentation, you can optionally set bid adjustments for specific groups in the Management step. Example: you can increase the bid for a bestseller group by +30% and decrease it by −20% for slow-moving products.
Manual Group Editing
After the campaign is synchronized, the group structure can be modified directly in Google Ads (adding product exclusions, changing bids at the partition level). Note, however, that these changes will not be reflected back in Sembot.
Negative Keywords in Shopping
In Shopping campaigns you do not bid on keywords — Google decides on its own which search queries will trigger your product ad. However, you can exclude phrases for which the ad should not appear.
Where to Add Exclusions
In Sembot, negative keywords are configured in the Keywords step (the Negative keywords field) during campaign creation, or after opening the campaign from the campaign list.
Exclusion Match Types
| Type | Description | Exclusion example | What it blocks |
|---|---|---|---|
| Exact match | Blocks queries identical to the exclusion | used | only "used" |
| Phrase match | Blocks queries containing this phrase | free | "free shoes", "free jacket online" |
| Broad match | Blocks queries containing every word from the exclusion (order irrelevant) | used old | "old used phone", "used and old" |
Best Practices
- Regularly review the Search terms report (menu: Marketing channels → Google → Search terms) — it shows the actual queries that triggered your ads
- Add exclusions for low-quality queries: phrases containing "free", "gratis", "manual", "reviews", competitor names (if you don't want to bid on them), or mismatched models
- Exclusions can be added at the campaign level (blocking the entire campaign) or at the level of a shared exclusion list used across campaigns