I’ve been watching something interesting develop in the world of paid advertising lately, and it’s refreshing in its honesty. After months of Google pushing Performance Max (PMax) as the solution to everything, industry experts are finally having a proper conversation about when you should actually say “no” to automation and stick with the tried-and-true approaches.
Let me tell you about what’s been happening this week, because it’s shaping up to be an important moment for anyone running Google Ads for their e-commerce store.
The Performance Max Reality Check
Here’s the thing about Performance Max campaigns – Google’s been positioning them as the future of advertising, using AI to automatically place your ads across all their platforms (Search, Shopping, Display, YouTube, Gmail, the lot). And look, when they work, they can work brilliantly. But that’s been the problem with the conversation so far: everyone’s been acting like they’re always the right answer.
This week, industry experts are finally talking about when Standard Shopping campaigns actually make more sense for your business. And this matters more than you might think.
Performance Max is essentially a black box. You hand Google your products, some creative assets, and a budget, and their AI decides where and how to advertise them. For many e-commerce businesses, especially smaller ones or those just starting out, this lack of control is a real problem. You can’t see which search terms triggered your ads. You can’t easily exclude products that aren’t profitable. You can’t isolate shopping traffic from display traffic to understand what’s actually working.
Standard Shopping campaigns? They’re transparent. You can see exactly what people searched for before clicking your ad. You can adjust bids by product. You can control where your budget goes. Plain and simple.
So when does it make sense to stick with Standard Shopping? When you need to learn what actually works for your products. When you have specific products you want to push or avoid. When you’re working with a limited budget and can’t afford Google’s AI learning phase eating through your cash whilst it figures things out. When you need to understand your customer behaviour patterns before letting AI loose on them.
Understanding Learning Periods (Or: Why Your Campaigns Go Quiet)
Speaking of learning phases, there’s been useful discussion this week about what these actually are and why they matter to your business. If you’ve ever made a change to your Google Ads campaigns and wondered why performance went a bit wobbly for a while, this is why.
Every time you make a significant change to a campaign – adjusting budgets substantially, changing bidding strategies, adding or removing audience targeting – Google’s AI essentially hits a reset button. It needs to gather fresh data to understand how your ads should perform under these new conditions. During this “learning period,” performance can be unpredictable. Your costs might spike. Your conversions might drop. It’s not broken; it’s recalibrating.
Here’s what this means for your e-commerce business in the real world: timing matters. Making changes right before your busy season? That’s risky. Your campaigns might still be learning whilst you need them performing at their best. Better to make strategic changes during quieter periods, giving the system time to stabilise before it really counts.
And here’s the bit that often catches people out: making too many changes too quickly can keep your campaigns in a perpetual state of learning. They never get the chance to properly optimise because you’re constantly moving the goalposts. Sometimes the best action is patience, not adjustment.
The KPIs That Actually Matter
There’s also been discussion this week about which metrics you should actually be watching in your PPC campaigns. And I’m glad this conversation’s happening, because I’ve seen too many businesses obsessing over the wrong numbers.
Yes, clicks and impressions are easy to understand. But they don’t pay your bills, do they? The metrics that matter for your e-commerce business are the ones that connect to actual money: conversion rate (what percentage of clicks turn into sales), cost per acquisition (how much you’re spending to get each sale), return on ad spend (how much revenue you generate for every pound spent), and ultimately, profit.
Here’s why this matters going forward: as AI takes over more of the campaign management, understanding these core metrics becomes more important, not less. You need to know what success looks like so you can judge whether Google’s automation is actually working for your business. You can’t just trust that the AI knows best – you need to verify it’s delivering results that make business sense.
The industry is also highlighting metrics specific to Shopping campaigns: impression share (how often your products show up when they could), click-through rate (whether your product images and prices are compelling), and search impression share lost to budget or rank. These tell you whether you’re missing opportunities and why.
New Tools and Capabilities Worth Watching
Whilst we’re talking about developments, Google’s rolled out some new technical capabilities this week – the Data Manager API and updates to YouTube Shorts advertising. I’m watching these closely because they signal where Google’s heading with product advertising.
The Data Manager API is essentially about making it easier to manage your product data at scale. For most e-commerce businesses, this is backend stuff your developer or agency would handle, but it matters because better data management means more accurate product information in your ads, which means better performance.
YouTube Shorts getting more advertising capabilities is more immediately interesting. Short-form video is clearly where attention is going (just look at TikTok), and Google knows it. For e-commerce businesses, this means thinking about how your products work in vertical video format. Not every product suits this format, but for those that do, it’s worth exploring.
What This All Means Going Forward
Here’s what I’m taking from this week’s developments: we’re moving into a more nuanced phase of AI-powered advertising. The early narrative was “automation is always better,” but the industry’s maturing past that simplistic view.
The reality is more subtle. AI and automation are powerful tools, but they’re not universal solutions. Sometimes Standard Shopping campaigns are the right choice. Sometimes you need to resist making changes during learning periods. Sometimes you need to question whether the metrics improving are actually the ones that matter to your business.
For your e-commerce business, this means being more strategic about when and how you adopt new advertising features. Don’t jump on every new AI-powered tool just because it’s new. Ask whether it solves a problem you actually have. Ask whether you’re giving up control you still need. Ask whether the results align with your business goals, not just Google’s.
The world of paid advertising is getting more sophisticated, but that sophistication should serve your business objectives, not complicate them. Keep that perspective, and you’ll navigate these changes just fine.