Google Shopping is a minefield of evolving strategies, algorithm updates, and shifting best practices. One of the biggest debates in recent years has centered on whether Performance Max (PMax) and Standard Shopping campaigns can effectively coexist within your advertising mix.
Historically, advertisers leveraged Standard Shopping campaign priorities—low, medium, and high—to guide traffic within query-filtered structures. Until recently, PMax campaigns operated with an implicit, ultra-high priority, often overriding Standard Shopping. However, Google recently removed this implicit priority, meaning PMax campaigns no longer automatically dominate Standard Shopping.
Now, when both campaign types compete for the same keyword, the deciding factor is Ad Rank, a measure influenced by bid, ad quality, landing page experience, and relevance. This fundamentally changes how advertisers approach structuring their Shopping campaigns.
Priority Still Matters for Standard Shopping
While Ad Rank now determines the battle between PMax and Standard Shopping, it’s important to note that within Standard Shopping campaigns, traditional priority levels (high, medium, low) still apply. A high-priority Standard Shopping campaign will continue to serve over lower-priority Standard Shopping campaigns.
However, when a Standard Shopping and PMax campaign both qualify to serve an ad, Google will now compare their respective Ad Ranks. The campaign with the higher Ad Rank wins the auction, irrespective of Standard Shopping priorities.
Strategic Synergy Between Standard and PMax
To effectively leverage both campaign types in this new environment, marketers must focus on strategic campaign structuring:
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Top of Funnel (TOFU): Use high-priority Standard Shopping campaigns, query-filtered to intentionally target broader, less immediately convertible queries. Carefully manage bids, product segmentation, and negative keywords to influence Ad Rank indirectly and encourage discovery traffic.
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Bottom of Funnel (BOFU): Deploy PMax campaigns to capture high-intent searches and retarget previous site visitors. PMax excels here due to Google’s AI-driven automation, optimizing bids and placements to efficiently convert users who are closer to purchasing.
Navigating the New Normal
With Ad Rank now determining campaign dominance between Standard and PMax campaigns, but invisible to advertisers, the approach must shift to indirect optimization:
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Performance Monitoring: Use metrics like conversion rate, ROAS, and CPA to infer the success of your bidding strategies and campaign structures.
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Bidding and Segmentation: Adjust bids, product groups, and negative keywords based on actual performance data to encourage appropriate campaign serving.
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Continuous Testing: Experiment regularly with campaign structures and bidding strategies to find the optimal mix that achieves your desired traffic and conversion balance.
What to do?
What’s right for your products is going to depend on the terms in your funnel and if you have good assets to make PMax perform it’s best. Picking one over the other or mixing them together are all viable strategies.