In a nutshell – Google Smart Shopping campaigns have been introduced to help advertisers adapt and optimise ads in real time.

This new addition, called the New Customer Acquisition Goal, is a way to drive more new customer traffic as you add a fixed value that will be added to your total conversion value.

What Are Smart Shopping Campaigns?

Smart Shopping Campaigns were designed to help advertisers optimise goals based on real-time signals made by customers across Google. This also includes YouTube, Google Search and even Google Images. 

With millions of sites being processed by Google every second, the challenge for your ads is to be shown to the right customers at the right time.

What is The New Customer Acquisition Goal?

According to Google, the “New Customer Acquisition Goal” allows advertisers to increase traffic for new customers as you add a fixed value that will then be added to your total conversion value. This in turn will increase your overall ROAS (Return on Ad Spend) number. 

This new feature will mean that with the increase in the perceived ROAS, your bidding strategy now has a maximized conversion value and thus, the ROAS target will be easier to hit and therefore traffic will increase accordingly as the machine learning looks to find more new customers.

This is what the new customer parameter looks like when implemented:

How Do I Set This Up? 

When selecting your campaign’s Conversion goals, you will see the new option for “New Customer Acquisition”. Once you select it, you will be able to add the value that will be then added for your Total Conversion Value. 

Note: You are only allowed to assign one value per Smart Shopping Campaign.

How Will This Affect Me? 

This new feature will be able to target new customers more aggressively or rather there will be more emphasis on using your ad budget to acquire new users rather than just remarketing. 

However, here at The McGarry Agency we would like to exercise a word of caution before you go ahead and implement it. We have broken down some of the aspects of this new feature that you should pay extra attention to before implementing it. 

The Main Potential Issue That You Might Face 

Possible Inflated Conversion Metrics 

This is probably the most important thing you should keep an eye on. For example, as one of the images above, you are selling your product for $100 and your added new customer value is $50. Once a new purchase is made, this conversion value becomes $150. 

The problem here is that it’s not necessarily that your conversion value has increased, the sale value is the same, it’s just now inflated. Therefore, there is a skew of data when it comes to your customer conversion values. This can greatly change your Return on Ad Spend (ROAS) calculations and overall conversion metrics. 

This is because Google now reports your conversion value track to Smart Shopping Campaign to $150 which is $50 more than the actual sale you have made, thus inflating the “success” of Google’s Smart Shopping Campaign 

If you are looking to just hit a minimum ROAS on all sales, then this might not be a solution for you. It defeats the objective because you will be focusing on adjusting your bidding strategy to compensate for the higher ROAS that you will need to achieve. 

If you are a store that does not have a lot of repeat purchases this might not be as helpful as it has claimed to be. 

Note: Differences in data is seen when comparing actual data in Google Analytics 

All in all, to performance marketers whose primary goal is to increase sales volume and attract new customers, then this new addition is for you. 

If your goal is optimisation of ROAS then we do believe that this is not a feature that you should be using any time soon. Which is why before deciding on using this feature, we suggest that you determine the goals of your campaigns first. 

You can do this by fully understanding what your conversion values are and you have a good indication of your baselines. Then, decide on what the desired output is for the campaign. 

Google Smart Shopping is a reminder that machine learning driven, feed-based advertising is incredibly effective for growth. If you’re looking to connect with new customers, talk to us about the power of Smart Shopping.