Google Ads for ecommerce has transformed over the past two years. The platform that once rewarded meticulous manual control now runs on automation, machine learning, and data density. Performance Max has become the default campaign type for most brands, Standard Shopping still has a role for those who know how to use it, and the brands caught between old tactics and new realities are burning budget without understanding why.
If you’re spending £20,000 or more per month on Google and your agency is still managing campaigns the way they did in 2023, you’re likely overpaying for underperformance. Here’s what a competent ecommerce Google Ads agency should actually be doing in 2026, and what you should demand from whoever manages your account.
The Platform Has Changed. Most Agencies Haven’t Caught Up.
Google’s shift toward automation accelerated throughout 2025. According to an analysis by Smarter Ecommerce of over 4,000 Performance Max campaigns, the median PMax ROAS target increased from roughly 4.7x to 6.0x, with campaigns typically achieving 95-116% of their set target. PMax now accounts for a dominant share of Google spend for most ecommerce advertisers, with approximately 90% of PMax budget flowing to Shopping placements.
That last point matters enormously. Performance Max isn’t really a “full funnel” campaign for most ecommerce brands. It’s primarily a Shopping campaign with some YouTube, Display, and Search layered on top. Understanding this is fundamental to managing it well, and it’s a distinction many generalist agencies miss entirely.
The agencies still running Google Ads like it’s 2022, manually tweaking bids on individual keywords, building elaborate audience segments that the algorithm largely ignores, and treating Performance Max as a set-and-forget solution, are costing their clients real money. The platform rewards a different approach now, and the best ecommerce Google Ads agencies have restructured their operations around it.
Performance Max vs Standard Shopping: It’s Not Either/Or
The most sophisticated ecommerce advertisers in 2026 use both campaign types in complementary roles. The debate about which is “better” misses the point. Each serves a distinct purpose.
Standard Shopping gives you transparency and control. You can see which products drive performance at a granular level, access detailed search term data, control bids by product group, and make precise adjustments based on margin or inventory levels. For branded searches and your highest-value products, Standard Shopping often delivers stronger returns because you’re directing the algorithm rather than hoping it finds the right balance.
Performance Max gives you reach and automation. It serves ads across Google’s entire inventory: Shopping, Search, YouTube, Display, Gmail, and Discover. For prospecting, discovering new audience segments, and scaling beyond what Standard Shopping can capture alone, PMax is genuinely powerful.
The practical structure that works for most ecommerce brands spending at scale looks something like this: a Standard Shopping campaign capturing branded and high-intent product searches with tight ROAS targets, and Performance Max running alongside it to find incremental customers across Google’s broader network. The Standard Shopping campaign should carry a lower ROAS target (which means higher bids), ensuring it wins the auction on your most valuable traffic before PMax picks up the rest.
An agency that only runs PMax, or only runs Standard Shopping, is leaving performance on the table. You want a team that understands how these campaign types interact and can structure them so they complement rather than cannibalise each other.
What Your Agency Should Be Doing with Performance Max
Performance Max is deceptively simple to set up. Google’s default recommendation is one campaign, one budget, one ROAS target. That’s fine for getting started, but it’s nowhere near sufficient for a brand spending serious money.
Here’s what a genuine ecommerce PMax specialist should be managing:
Product feed optimisation. Your feed is the foundation of everything. Product titles directly influence which searches your Shopping ads appear for. Descriptions, images, product categories, and custom labels all affect how Google’s algorithm matches your products to potential buyers. An agency that isn’t actively optimising your feed is neglecting the single most important input in the system.
Brand keyword exclusions. One of the most common ways PMax wastes budget is by spending on branded search terms. Someone who already knows your brand and searches for it by name was going to buy anyway. Google now allows brand exclusions directly within PMax campaigns, and any competent agency should be using this feature to ensure PMax budget flows toward genuine new customer acquisition rather than recycling existing demand.
Product segmentation. Not all products deserve the same budget allocation. Your agency should segment products by margin, performance tier, and strategic priority. High-margin bestsellers should receive more budget. Low-margin products or items with poor conversion history should be excluded or separated into their own campaign with different targets. This segmentation can be done through asset groups, custom labels in your feed, or separate PMax campaigns entirely.
Asset quality management. PMax builds ads by combining your headlines, descriptions, images, and videos. If those assets are generic product shots on white backgrounds and uninspired copy, the algorithm has weak material to work with. Your agency should be providing lifestyle images, product demonstration videos, and varied headline angles that give the algorithm meaningful creative variation to test.
Search theme inputs. Google now allows advertisers to add search themes to PMax campaigns, essentially guiding the algorithm toward the types of searches you want to appear for. Combined with negative keywords (also now available at the campaign level), this gives you meaningful influence over where your budget goes within the Search network.
The Feed Is the Strategy
This deserves its own emphasis. For ecommerce Google Ads, your product feed isn’t just a technical requirement. It’s the core strategic lever.
Consider how Google Shopping actually works. A potential customer searches “organic cotton baby blanket.” Google scans your product feed, determines whether your products are relevant to that query, and decides whether to show your listing. The quality of your product titles, the completeness of your attributes, and the accuracy of your pricing and availability data all determine whether you appear and how prominently.
An ecommerce Google Ads agency that treats feed management as a setup task rather than an ongoing optimisation process is fundamentally misunderstanding how the platform works. Your feed should be reviewed and refined regularly: titles updated based on search term data, images refreshed seasonally, and product attributes kept accurate as your catalogue changes.
The brands that consistently outperform on Google Shopping typically have dedicated feed management as part of their agency relationship. This isn’t glamorous work, but it’s often the difference between a £2 CPC and a £4 CPC for the same product.
Bidding Strategy: When to Push and When to Restrain
One of the most common mistakes agencies make with Google Ads is setting aggressive ROAS targets too early. It feels intuitive: set a high target and the algorithm will deliver efficient results. But in practice, overly aggressive targets starve the algorithm of data.
Google’s machine learning needs conversion volume to optimise effectively. If your target is so tight that campaigns can barely spend, the algorithm never gathers enough data to learn which audiences and placements work best. The result is a campaign that technically meets its ROAS target but at a fraction of the volume you could achieve.
A practical approach: set your initial target at roughly 70-80% of your actual performance. This gives the algorithm room to explore while maintaining acceptable efficiency. Once you’ve accumulated 50 or more conversions, you can begin tightening the target incrementally. The goal is to find the inflection point where efficiency and volume are balanced, not to chase the highest possible ROAS at minimal spend.
Your agency should be able to explain this dynamic clearly. If they’re setting 8x ROAS targets on campaigns with limited conversion data and then wondering why spend is capped, they don’t understand how the bidding system actually operates.
What to Ask Your Google Ads Agency
Here are the questions that separate agencies with genuine Google Ads expertise from those running on autopilot:
“How do you structure PMax and Standard Shopping to work together?” If they only run one campaign type or can’t articulate a clear rationale for their structure, that’s a gap.
“When was the last time you made a significant change to our product feed?” Feed optimisation should be ongoing, not a one-time setup. If they can’t point to recent changes and their impact, the feed is being neglected.
“What percentage of our PMax spend goes to Shopping versus Display and YouTube?” They should know this and be able to explain whether the allocation makes sense for your business. If 30% of spend is flowing to Display without a clear rationale, budget is being wasted.
“How do you handle brand cannibalisation between PMax and Search?” This is a real operational challenge. The agency should have a clear process for preventing PMax from claiming credit for conversions that branded Search campaigns would have captured anyway.
“What’s our new customer acquisition rate from Google?” Any agency can report total ROAS. The meaningful question is whether Google is finding new customers or just retargeting existing ones at a cost that makes it look efficient.
When Google Ads Matters Most
As discussed in earlier articles in this series, Meta typically dominates ecommerce acquisition budgets. But Google becomes increasingly important as brands scale. The categories where Google tends to outperform include products with strong search intent (supplements, electronics, replacement purchases), high-AOV items where the higher CPC is absorbed by a larger order value, and brands with established search volume where capturing demand is more efficient than creating it.
If your brand fits these criteria and you’re spending £30,000 or more on Google monthly, the quality of your agency’s Google Ads management has a direct and measurable impact on your bottom line. The difference between an ecommerce advertising agency that understands modern Google Ads and one still running legacy tactics can easily be 20-30% in wasted spend.
The Bottom Line
Google Ads in 2026 rewards agencies that feed the algorithm with strong inputs: clean product data, well-segmented campaigns, quality creative assets, and sensible bidding targets. The old approach of manual micromanagement is largely obsolete. The new approach requires strategic thinking about data architecture, feed quality, and campaign structure rather than daily bid adjustments.
Your agency should be spending more time on your product feed than on your bid strategy. They should understand how PMax and Standard Shopping interact. They should be able to tell you where your budget is actually going within PMax and whether it’s reaching new customers or just retargeting warm audiences. If they can’t do these things, the platform has moved past them.
