You’ve got your Google Merchant Center all synced up with your Google Ads Account and you’re ready to start your first Google Shopping Ad Campaign! You’re just not sure what bid strategy to use yet.

Unlike Google Search Ad Campaigns, you’re much more limited in the type of bid strategy you can use for a Google Shopping Ad Campaign.

You’re only allowed to use one of the following bid strategies:

1. Manual CPC
2. Maximize Clicks
3. Target ROAS

For a new Shopping Ad Campaign you’re also not even allowed to use Target ROAS Bid Strategy. You can only use Target ROAS once your campaign has started to generate a minimum of about 20 conversions a month.

Once your able to switch to Target ROAs Bid Strategy though, I definitely recommend doing it. It typically will generate more consistent results for your Shopping Ad Campaign.

When starting off a new Google Shopping Ad Campaign however, your left to choose between Max Clicks or Manual CPC Bid Strategy. So which one of those should you start your campaign off with?

To be honest, they both can work. Manual CPC will give you more granular control over the bids you set for each product you’re advertising in the campaign. You can bid higher for one product than another for example. If you have a lot of products you’re advertising though, this can be a lot of work. Of course, you can also set a default bid on the ad group level which will apply to all products in that ad group.

Max Clicks on the other hand, doesn’t let you have different bids for different products. It only lets you set a maximum cost per click bid limit for the whole campaign.