How to set up a Google Shopping campaign: step by step

A Shopping ad shows your product in Google with a photo, title, price and store name ^[1]. You set up the campaign in five steps: Merchant Center and your product feed, the choice between Standard Shopping and Performance Max, a split by margin, a bid based on your break-even ROAS and weekly negative keywords.

You don't choose keywords here: Google uses your product data to decide which searches your product appears for ^[1]. So your feed is your ad. Whether you set it up yourself or with a Google Ads agency, the quality of that feed matters more than any campaign setting.

Step 1: get Merchant Center and your feed in order

1. Create the account with an email address at your own company, not one from your web developer or agency.
2. Have your website verified and claimed, for example through your e-commerce platform, an HTML tag or Google Tag Manager ^[2].
3. Set up shipping costs and a return policy. Shipping costs are required for Belgium ^[3]; you add your return policy under Shipping and returns ^[4].
4. Add your products, preferably through a connection with your online store ^[5]. If a plugin still uses the Content API for Shopping, check it: that API was shut down on 18 August 2026 ^[6].
5. Link Google Ads to Merchant Center ^[7].

With that account your products can also appear for free, as free listings on the Shopping tab, Google Images and YouTube, among others ^[8]. The Shopping campaign comes on top of that.

Three Belgian details need extra attention:

• Prices including VAT, the same as the price on your product page and at checkout ^[9]. A price mismatch can lead to disapproval and even suspension of your account ^[10].
• One data source per language. Product data in French belongs with French-language landing pages ^[11]. You cannot change the language and feed label afterwards, and a campaign selects only one feed label ^[12]: so work with separate campaigns per language.
• Discounts under the Belgian rule. As the previous price you state the lowest price from the preceding 30 days, per sales channel ^[13]. So your online store and your feed use the same reference price.

All the product attributes Google asks for, title formulas per sector and the checks before you go live are in the feed checklist.

Step 2: choose Standard Shopping or Performance Max

My rule of thumb: start with Standard Shopping until you have a few months of sales data. Then move part of your catalogue into Performance Max and compare. If you create that campaign from Merchant Center, let it run for at least 14 days before you change settings ^[15].

What you do and don't control in Performance Max is covered in what is Performance Max.

Step 3: split your products by margin

A category mixes products with a 50% margin and products with a 10% margin, and Google doesn't know that. With custom labels 0 to 4 you create your own filters for Shopping and Performance Max, which customers don't see ^[16]. An example:

• custom_label_0: margin_high, margin_mid or margin_low, for a different ROAS target per group;
• custom_label_1: bestseller or other, to give bestsellers their own budget;
• custom_label_2: season_summer, season_winter or year_round, to scale up and down in time.

If the same product is in several Standard Shopping campaigns, the campaign with the highest priority bids ^[17].

Step 4: bid from your break-even ROAS

Without sales data you start with Manual CPC or Maximize clicks, with a maximum bid ^[1]. How daily budgets and click prices work is explained in how much does Google Ads cost in Belgium. Target ROAS comes later: for Shopping, Google requires at least 15 conversions in the past 30 days ^[18].

Your break-even ROAS is 1 divided by your gross margin: at a 40% margin, every euro of advertising must bring in €2.50 in revenue. If you measure your conversion value including VAT, you are counting 21% VAT that isn't yours ^[19].

So if you set your Target ROAS at 250% while your conversion value includes VAT, you lose money on every sale. How to pass that value on correctly is explained by my colleague Cédric in e-commerce tracking in GA4.

Step 5: add negative keywords every week

Shopping doesn't use keywords, but you can add negative keywords, per campaign or per ad group ^[20]. So read the Search terms report every week and exclude what doesn't fit: brands you don't sell, "second-hand" if you only sell new, "manual" or "repair".

If your campaign is already running, the free Google Ads audit looks at your structure, search terms, bid strategy and conversion tracking, with read-only access. With very low margins or no price advantage, Shopping rarely pays off; whether Google Ads suits your business at all is covered in Google Ads for SMEs.