A Google Shopping (CSS) team member is helping their merchant improve the performance of their Shopping campaigns by adding extra blocks on a bar chart.

OptiScore new recommendations and key optimisation opportunities for your Shopping campaigns

ARTICLE

Camila Batalha & Camilla Ekholm, Account Managers, Google Shopping l Expertise Series [November 2021]

The Optimisation Score (OptiScore) is a great tool to enhance the performance of your Shopping campaigns within Google Ads. It uses a combination of statistics, simulations and machine learning models to provide you with relevant optimisation recommendations and to estimate the impact they’ll have on your Shopping campaigns. It’s currently segmented into four pillars, with more than 28 specific recommendations as you can see in the chart¹ below:

A chart that shows the pillars of OptiScore recommendations.

The OptiScore recommendations are available through the Recommendations tab, which you can access directly from your Google Ads account, below the Overview section.

On average, advertisers who increased their account-level optimisation score by 10 points experienced a 10% increase in conversions ². The reason behind this result is that OptiScore incorporates several parameters of a dynamic auction environment, and more specifically by:

Being instant: it reflects real-time updates and gives you access to a dynamic overview of your accounts and Shopping campaigns;
Being personalised: it’s tailored to your specific Shopping campaigns’ settings and performance and prioritises the potential impact of each recommendation from highest to lowest;
Being actionable: it reduces the amount of time spent on manual analysis and implementation by providing you with a one-click solution.

Auto-Apply Recommendations

To improve efficiency and help save you time managing your Shopping campaigns there’s a recently launched option to ‘Auto-apply’ the OptiScore recommendations. This feature will help you continuously improve your Shopping campaigns’ Optimisation Score by applying tailored recommendations to your campaigns. We suggest opting-in to recommendations which are aligned with your campaign-level strategy. You can find the ‘Auto-Apply’ button on the top right corner of your ‘Recommendations’ overview (see image below). You can currently enable this option for recommendations such as Search Partner, eCPC and Target ROAS for your Shopping campaigns.

Screenshot that shows the position of the auto-apply button.

New OptiScore Recommendations relevant for Shopping campaigns have been launched recently, which can be grouped across the following five core themes

Simplified Optimisation: Helping you spend less time optimising your Shopping campaigns and more time developing your strategic goals to help your business thrive. These recommendations are:
- Adjust your budgets: this recommendation will appear if your budget is currently limiting the potential conversion value your Shopping campaigns could achieve.
- Adjust your ROAS Targets: this new feature lets you see when you could get more conversion value at a relatively smaller target ROAS decrease.
- Seasonal Budget Raising: when the tool forecasts either a micro or macro peak which could result in an increase in demand for your products, it recommends you to adjust your budgets accordingly.
- Add Target ROAS (tROAS) to your Smart Shopping campaigns (SSc): this recommendation will be surfaced if you have an opportunity to increase the efficiency of your SSc by setting a ROAS target.
Feeds: New recommendations about feeds and product attributes are now active to enable your Merchant Center settings and the Google Ads interface be seamlessly integrated. They can be used to quickly adjust to errors and warnings that might appear in your Merchant Center account. These recommendations are:
- Fix Account Suspension: which is displayed if you have an active Merchant Center account suspension that prevents your ads from being shown, hence it should be actioned immediately.
- Prevent Account Suspension: appears if your Merchant Center account is at risk of suspension, which may cause all your products to be disapproved in the future.
- Cover All Products: which is beneficial if you have approved products in your feed that aren’t being targeted through an active Shopping campaign (as a result of a previous inventory filter, for example).
Omni-Channel Bidding: Having a consistent omni-channel presence, and integrating digital and offline spaces, is even more important now for businesses with physical stores. The following recommendations have been released to support your omni-channel strategy:
- Store Visits Bidding: this recommendation will be surfaced when you might benefit from including store visits conversion action in the conversion column to optimise for footfall and increase offline performance recommendation.
- Pickup Later: it will help you display the ‘Pickup Later’ feature to your customers (available in Shopping ads) when they can buy a product online and collect it in a physical store near them.
Privacy: Privacy has been top of mind for users and organisations over the past few years. The following recommendations are now live to help you implement changes related to privacy, as well as correctly measure the impact of your advertising efforts:
- Refresh Customer Match: appears if your Customer Match lists are outdated and aims to help you upload relevant first-party customer information to boost your Shopping campaign performance.
- Opt-in to Enhanced Conversions: it is displayed when the tool detects measurement gaps in your account's conversion tracking settings.
Tracking: The recommendations below have been added to the OptiScore tool to continuously improve how conversions are being tracked:
- Set up the Global Site Tag: helps ensure you have a durable measurement foundation.
- Fix Global Site Tag issues: shows up if your global site tag setup is incorrect or incomplete.
- Upgrade Conversion Tracking: shows where you could be more consistent when assigning value across different touchpoints of the conversion journey by enabling data driven attribution within Google Ads.

Key recommendations from your Google Shopping (CSS) Team

However well your Shopping campaigns are performing, there are always OptiScore recommendations that can help you improve your results and achieve your business goals. We’ve found that some recommendations are particularly effective in enhancing Shopping campaign performance, so we have summarised them below for you in three categories based on your key strategic objectives:

A. Objective - Shopping campaign efficiency goals:

If you’re trying to find new ways of spending your available budget more efficiently, we recommend keeping track of the following two recommendations:

Move unused budgets: for optimal budget allocation, this recommendation will propose moving budgets within the account, from Shopping campaigns with budget surplus to campaigns that are budget limited. This way, you can benefit from performance improvements without an increase in your total, account-level budget.
Adjust your budgets: based on Google Ads constant simulations, this recommendation can show you if your Smart Shopping campaign can receive more conversion value within a relative increase in overall ROAS.

B. Objective - Shopping campaign performance improvement:

If your goal is to identify ways to optimise your Shopping campaigns to meet your business goals, we are suggesting the following recommendation:

Upload Customer Match lists: appears if you’re not using this type of audience segmentation. Customer Match lists let you use your data from your online and offline channels to reach or re-engage your customers across different networks, including Shopping. Customer Match is important to power Smart Shopping campaigns and it’s a requirement for New Customer Acquisition bidding.

C. Objective - Improve your diversification:

If you’re looking for new ways to improve your Shopping campaign performance, we suggest checking out the following recommendation:

Switch to SSc: this will appear when conversion tracking is set up and there is enough conversion data to benefit from Smart Shopping. Its main aim is to simplify campaign management and help you get more conversion value at a similar cost. (Read here for more SSc tips).

Note: Check if any of our key aforementioned recommendations are indicated for your Shopping campaigns and enable them if they are aligned with your business goals. Keep in mind that applying some OptiScore recommendations discussed in this article might also have an impact on other campaign types in your Google Ads account.

A magnifying glass that zooms-in an sheet.

3 Key Actions & Takeaways

Review the Recommendations tab in your Google Ads account(s) to see if any of the new recommendations are available for your Shopping campaigns, and the potential results they might bring to your business.
Opt-In to ‘Auto-Apply’ OptiScore Recommendations to simplify campaign management and ensure optimal account performance by activating the recommendations you believe are aligned with your business strategy.
Check if any of our key aforementioned recommendations are indicated for your Shopping campaigns and enable them if they are aligned with your business goals.

¹ This chart and the information in some sections of this article are based on the ‘Shopping Optimisation Score Playbook’ and other related playbooks shared by Google with CSS Premium Partners on the CSS Education Hub (CSS Program).

²‘Optimisation Score, Shopping Playbook’ by Google - EEA. These are learnings derived from search campaigns and provided for illustration of the impact of the recommendations surfaced by OptiScore.

This article was published by Google Shopping (CSS). Google Shopping is Google's CSS and a Premium CSS Partner.

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OptiScore new recommendations and key optimisation opportunities for your Shopping campaigns

New OptiScore Recommendations relevant for Shopping campaigns have been launched recently, which can be grouped across the following five core themes

Key recommendations from your Google Shopping (CSS) Team

3 Key Actions & Takeaways

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Enhancing your Shopping campaigns’ performance with OptiScore

The benefits of using Smart Shopping campaigns

How to optimise your Shopping campaigns to meet your business objectives in the year ahead