Check these six things after Smart Shopping becomes Performance Max
Google is finishing the automatic upgrade of Smart Shopping campaigns to Performance Max this month. Here is a post-upgrade checklist covering overlap, assets, budgets and how to read the first weeks.
Google said automatic upgrades from Smart Shopping to Performance Max would run on a rolling basis from July and finish in September for most advertisers. Each advertiser gets a notification two to three weeks before their upgrade date. Once your campaigns are upgraded, the old Smart Shopping campaign is set to Removed, can't be edited or reactivated, and its history stays visible. You can no longer create new Smart Shopping campaigns.
If your upgrade already happened, or is about to, here is what to check. Google says conversion goals, budget, creative assets and bid strategy carry over, so the risk is in what doesn't carry over: your structure around the campaign.
1. Look for overlap with other Shopping campaigns
Google states that Performance Max is prioritized over Smart Shopping, standard Shopping and Dynamic Remarketing campaigns when they target the same products, and it advises against overlapping targeting. If you run a standard Shopping campaign for your best-selling products on purpose, perhaps with its own bids, a Performance Max campaign that includes those same products can take over their traffic. List the products in each campaign and decide, deliberately, which campaign owns which product.
2. Confirm the budget and the bidding target
An upgraded campaign starts with the budget you had. Check that it still matches your plan, and that the bid strategy and any target return on ad spend are what you expect. Google's own guidance is to match the budget of any new Performance Max campaign to the campaigns it replaces if they target the same products, to maintain volume. Resist large changes in the first week; the system needs time to settle.
3. Add assets, especially video
Smart Shopping ran mostly from your product feed. Performance Max can show on more surfaces, including YouTube, Search and Discover, and Google recommends adding headlines, descriptions, images and videos after you upgrade. It notes that your own video assets matter most for YouTube. Upload a small, deliberate set of assets for each product group that matters.
4. Review the feed, not just the campaign
Since the product feed is the backbone of the campaign, errors in titles, prices, availability and product types carry straight through. Check Merchant Center for disapprovals and confirm that the product groups and listing groups in the campaign still reflect how you want to report and bid. Google lists bulk editing of listing groups among the new Performance Max features, which makes cleanup faster.
5. Use the Insights page
Google points advertisers to the Insights page, including diagnostic insights and performance shifts, to find setup problems and see what is driving results. Check it weekly in the first month. It won't answer every question, but it is the main place the product shows its reasoning.
6. Set expectations for the first weeks
Google's guidance for ramp-up is about two to three days for online or omnichannel goals, and three to four weeks for offline-only goals. Treat those as the earliest time for a first look, not as the time to conclude. Compare against the Smart Shopping history you can still see, using the same date ranges and the same metrics. Google's own early-testing figure was an average 12 percent increase in conversion value at the same or better return on ad spend. That figure is Google's, from beta testing of Smart Shopping upgrades, and it's an average, so don't treat it as a promise for your account.
What if your upgrade hasn't happened
You can still upgrade yourself using the tool in Google Ads. The advantage is timing: you choose when it happens, for example outside a major promotion, and you can prepare assets first. Google also notes that some Smart Shopping campaigns using features not yet available in Performance Max, such as vehicle ads, will complete their automatic upgrades in early 2023.
Avoid upgrading in the middle of your busiest sales period unless you have no choice. A system in its first days is a poor partner for a peak week.
A short routine
- Day 1: check overlap, budget and bid settings.
- Week 1: upload assets and clean the feed.
- Weeks 2 to 4: read Insights weekly and compare against the old campaign on matching dates.
- Month 2: decide whether to restructure product groups, now that you know where the spend goes.
The takeaway: the upgrade is automatic, but the surrounding decisions aren't. Check for overlap first, add assets second, and judge results only after the system has had time to settle.