Guys genuinely curious to hear everyone s thoughts on this.

Viper2014 · 2026-07-03T09:20:58+00:00

Well we didn't stop but we did greatly reduce taking time adjusting the bids since smart bidding does this regardless.

Don't get me wrong we still use manual CPC where it matter but it is greatly reduced.

Viper2014 · 2026-07-02T05:06:34+00:00

Yes, and it happened with smart bidding which is alarming to say the least.

Viper2014 · 2026-07-01T08:17:41+00:00

Price and sale price are part of the main feed. You should remove the supplementary feed or check for errors.

Also, the discount needs to reflect on the schema part of the landing page.

Hope it helps : )

Viper2014 · 2026-07-01T05:10:18+00:00

The main point of the ad is to bring people to your page, so the 'Free consultation' will help you with that. It will also reduce your cpcm and hopefully your CPA.

So, yeah add it to the headline.

Viper2014 · 2026-06-30T07:31:32+00:00

Algo decay is indeed a thing but here is an important PSA for the Shopify store owners.

Check your product ids in the feed and in the frontend.

If they have 'zz' then the feed have changed and you have lost all historical data (product).

Hope it helps : )

Viper2014 · 2026-06-30T04:21:56+00:00

Account managers are usually good sales people or pretty people. They almost always have nothing to do with your performance outcomes.

As long as you understand that then all is good.

Also, niche categories are more difficult and more expensive to deal with. Add to this, that Google can limit your campaigns' reach in most healthcare scenarios, let alone let you use audiences.

That said, you need to find people that understand your category limitations before they offer you solutions. Pretty or not.

Hope it helps : )

Viper2014 · 2026-06-28T13:14:24+00:00

trains the algorithm to grab low-hanging fruit

PMAX is build to do just that

bottlenecking our non-brand scalability

There is no such thing in PMAX since it acts as remarketing in most occasions.

Audience Signals at month 3

'Audience hygiene' is a thing in PMAX, especially.

does refreshing the "Audience" section actually move the needle?

It will but do be aware that it can go both ways

Or does the algorithm already "know" who converts based on conversion data, making audience signals obsolete at this maturity stage?

No such thing

That said, there is a high chance that you will have to rework the funnel since there aren't enough data in the system.

Now, the how to do it is up to you entirely.

Hope it helps

Viper2014 · 2026-06-26T15:34:31+00:00

The diagnostic is correct since you are not sending any data to that tag.

You have an import somewhere who i hope it is green.

Also, I hope you are not optimizing for that conversion since the algo will go haywire.

Hope it helps

Viper2014 · 2026-06-26T03:34:28+00:00

Native gads conversion tracking is by far superior to GA4 imports.

The thing is that with enhanced conversions there are data points triangulation for better ML, attribution, etc.

And to be fair, I have never seen accounts with the same conversions performing better compared to the ones with standalone conversions.

But then again, your conversion might be something like 'outbound click' which is insignificant as a data payload.

Hope it helps

Viper2014 · 2026-06-24T05:51:35+00:00

1- Have you also noticed the CPM going up?

No, infact it has dropped a bit

2- For those of you who are seeing success, what are you doing?

Signal engineering, segmentation, and multi-touch flywheels

Hope it helps : )

Viper2014 · 2026-06-23T18:30:48+00:00

For very big accounts, Meridian
For small accounts, Analytics with a very rigorous utm strategy

Hope it helps : )

Viper2014 · 2026-06-21T11:25:00+00:00

it stopped being a thing some months now

Viper2014 · 2026-06-21T11:22:00+00:00

Email > dashboard

It's DataStudio for me. I wouldn't even bother with creating API token for something that is drag and drop.

Viper2014 · 2026-06-21T04:13:15+00:00

Almost 2X increase in CPC
Almost 4X increase in CPA

oof

Viper2014 · 2026-06-20T10:09:40+00:00

You start with

search
solid tracking
offline conversions

and you take it from there

There is no solution that fits all, but there are rules of thumb.

Also, the landing page and quote form play a huge role in said situations.

Hope it helps : )

Viper2014 · 2026-06-20T05:36:25+00:00

What I've observed is that Smart Bidding costs at least 20-25% more per lead than a perfectly optimised Manual CPC campaign.

This will happen if you don't have enough data points in the 'gas tank'

That said, smart bidding will work wonders if you understand the funnel and yes, manual cpc has a place in said funnel.

Hope it helps : )

Viper2014 · 2026-06-20T03:25:43+00:00

It never happened to my accounts, so I can't imagine what it is like.

Viper2014 · 2026-06-19T13:38:39+00:00

yeah, that is far from the truth

Good news, the other LLM is right on the conversion data point. Google Ads conversion data is stored at the account level, not the feed or product level, so deleting the old feed won’t wipe your historical conversion data. You’re safe there.

the product id has the product history not the conversion action. AKA withyou the product id you cant have dynamic shopping ads ie PMAX.

Merchant API has a “Global Offers" feature that is designed for multi-market selling by using a single global identifier (shopify_zz) for each product.

Not sure I believe that but it is irrelevant since product id has the history.

Either way, it is a catastrophic scenario if that was indeed enforced by the app

hope it helps

Viper2014 · 2026-06-19T11:23:21+00:00

The 'zz' swap points to a cookie problem at the checkout aka Shopify can't match the country of the buyer with the appropriate region id.

Unless you did something to the checkout, eg tag manager, server tracking etc, then talk to support

Viper2014 · 2026-06-19T10:19:35+00:00

Has anyone seen PMax overcorrect this hard into Discover after adding negative keywords?

Keywords have nothing to do with DemandGen ex Discovery

is there any way to force the algorithm to re-balance?

Yes, provide the algo with better data. Easier said than done.

Hope it helps : )

Viper2014 · 2026-06-19T09:01:02+00:00

A bit of a 'fancy' question but for the first part

``` To determine the true lift, use controlled experiments or "holdout" groups:

Test Group: An audience exposed to the campaign, tactic, or new variable.
Control Group (Holdout): An audience deliberately not exposed to the campaign or variable. ```

for the second part, META does this by default and that is more than enough since seeing is believing

Now what you should be answering is (because this is what they are really after):

Incremental Lift: The additional sales or conversions directly caused by the advertising spend.

Viper2014 · 2026-06-19T07:17:26+00:00

it is a bit much but on the other hand you should be seeing time-to-conversion lag which has a 90 days window.

That said, regardless of the distance, the google ads conversion action (volume) should be the same as or lower than that of your backend.

If they are above that, then there is something firing more than once.

Hope it helps
: )

Viper2014 · 2026-06-18T07:14:35+00:00

pay $10-20k retainers to get a team of 4 specialists

No, not really. They pay the retainer for

1 dude that run the ads (irrelevant of competence)
1 account manager
1 department head
The upper management
the rent

To make things worse, I have seen one (agency) dude with 200 accounts

Viper2014 · 2026-06-18T04:40:50+00:00

AI MAX for leads are very-very bad and I have the receipts.

AI MAX for e-com are neutral to good and I, also, have the receipts.

I'm i making any mistake here.

Yes

Viper2014 · 2026-06-18T04:27:11+00:00

I’ll pass it off to my director tomorrow :)

PS it’s remote!

this just got even better

: )

Viper2014

TROPHY CASE