Key takeaways
- Google Ads is testing Product Value Optimisation, a new beta designed to give ecommerce advertisers more control over the values used by automated bidding.
- Advertisers can adjust the value Google assigns to particular products or product groups based on attributes such as brand or category.
- The feature could help businesses prioritise higher-margin products, seasonal stock and commercially important ranges without rebuilding campaign structures.
- Product Value Optimisation could make Performance Max and Shopping bidding more commercially intelligent, but only if the values being fed into Google reflect genuine business value.
- Advertisers should avoid treating higher revenue, bestseller status and higher profitability as the same thing. The strongest strategy will connect bidding decisions to margin and real commercial outcomes.
Google Ads automation has become very good at finding conversions. The harder question has always been whether it is finding the right conversions.
That distinction matters particularly in ecommerce.
Two products can generate exactly the same £100 sale while producing completely different commercial outcomes. One might deliver £45 of profit and clear ageing stock. The other might generate £8 of profit after fulfilment, discounts and returns.
Until now, automated bidding has often had limited visibility into that difference.
Google’s new Product Value Optimisation beta could start to change that.
According to Search Engine Land, Google is testing a system that allows advertisers to adjust product values and give its automated bidding technology more information about which products genuinely matter to the business.
For ecommerce advertisers, that could be a significant development.
What has changed with Google Product Value Optimisation?
Product Value Optimisation allows advertisers to apply value adjustments to individual products or groups of products using attributes such as brand or category.
Those adjusted values can then be used by Google’s automated bidding systems within Shopping and Performance Max campaigns.
The important part is that advertisers may be able to introduce these commercial priorities without having to restructure campaigns simply to influence where Google spends the money.
Google has identified several potential applications.
An ecommerce business could, for example:
- increase the value attached to products with stronger profit margins;
- give additional weight to seasonal stock that needs to sell within a particular period;
- prioritise strategically important product ranges;
- put more emphasis on bestselling products.
The bidding system then receives another piece of information beyond the transaction value recorded at checkout.
That sounds like a relatively small change.
Commercially, it could be much bigger.
Why product value changes the money flow
The weakness with revenue-based bidding is simple: revenue is not profit.
Imagine an online retailer sells two products.
Product A generates £200 in revenue and £80 contribution profit.
Product B generates £250 in revenue but only £30 contribution profit.
If Google Ads sees nothing except transaction value, Product B looks like the stronger outcome.
The business knows otherwise.
Multiply that problem across thousands of SKUs, different margins, promotional periods, stock positions and fulfilment costs, and a campaign reporting a healthy ROAS can still allocate budget in ways that make little commercial sense.
Product Value Optimisation potentially gives advertisers another mechanism for correcting that gap.
Rather than asking Google to maximise whatever conversion value happens to arrive through the conversion tag, advertisers can provide additional context about the products they actually want the bidding system to favour.
This becomes especially important in Performance Max.
PMax makes thousands of allocation decisions that advertisers never manually approve. It decides where to show, which products to push and how aggressively to bid based on the signals it receives.
If those signals treat every pound of revenue equally, Google is optimising against an incomplete version of the business.
Product Value Optimisation could make that version more accurate.
But there is a catch.
PPC Geeks’ View
The opportunity here is not simply to tell Google which products you like.
It is to give Google a better approximation of commercial value.
There is an important difference.
A bestseller might generate plenty of revenue but carry a terrible margin.
A seasonal product might need clearing quickly but still be unprofitable at certain acquisition costs.
A premium product might have excellent margin but suffer from high cancellation or return rates.
If advertisers start applying value adjustments based on assumptions rather than evidence, they risk creating another layer of distorted data for Smart Bidding to learn from.
Better bidding starts with a better definition of value. If the value going into the algorithm is wrong, making Google optimise harder towards it does not solve the problem.
— PPC Geeks
This is why Product Value Optimisation should sit alongside wider ecommerce measurement, not replace it.
For retailers with reliable margin, stock and customer-value data, this could become a useful bridge between what the finance team knows and what Google Ads currently optimises towards.
For businesses still measuring success purely through headline ROAS, the first priority should be fixing the measurement underneath it.
What advertisers should do next
1. Identify where revenue and profit tell different stories
Start with your existing Shopping and Performance Max data.
Export performance by product and compare revenue, ROAS and conversion volume against the commercial numbers available internally.
Look particularly for products with:
- high revenue but weak margin;
- strong ROAS but low actual contribution;
- excess or ageing inventory;
- seasonal deadlines;
- unusually high return or cancellation rates;
- strategically important repeat-purchase potential.
The purpose is to identify where Google’s current view of value differs most sharply from the business’s view.
That is where Product Value Optimisation is likely to be most useful.
2. Do not automatically prioritise bestsellers
Bestselling products are an obvious candidate for value adjustments, but sales volume alone is not enough.
Sometimes the product selling most frequently is already receiving plenty of traffic.
Increasing its bidding value further could simply push additional budget towards demand you were already capturing.
Look instead at the economics.
Ask whether additional sales of that product are genuinely more valuable than additional sales elsewhere in the catalogue.
If the answer is no, bestseller status alone is a weak reason to increase its value.
3. Bring margin data into PPC decisions
This update makes margin data more important, not less.
If your product catalogue contains materially different gross margins, PPC teams should understand those differences before experimenting with value adjustments.
A £500 order carrying £150 of margin should not necessarily be treated the same way as a £500 order carrying £40.
That is one reason we increasingly encourage ecommerce advertisers to look beyond headline ROAS and towards profit-based measures where the underlying data supports it.
The closer your bidding signals get to actual business economics, the more meaningful Google’s automation becomes.
4. Use seasonal adjustments carefully
Seasonality is another obvious use case.
A retailer may legitimately place greater short-term value on selling summer inventory in August, Christmas stock in December or products approaching the end of their commercial season.
Product Value Optimisation could allow those priorities to influence bidding without forcing advertisers to repeatedly rebuild campaigns.
But temporary commercial priorities need temporary rules.
Any value adjustment linked to stock position or seasonality should have a clear review date. Otherwise yesterday’s urgent stock-clearance strategy can quietly become tomorrow’s permanent bidding signal.
5. Test before applying adjustments across the catalogue
Do not turn hundreds of value rules on at once.
Start with a clearly defined product group where the commercial case is strong and where sufficient conversion data exists to assess what happens.
Record the baseline first.
Compare:
- spend;
- conversion value;
- ROAS;
- product mix;
- gross margin or contribution;
- units sold;
- average order value;
- overall profitability.
The aim is not simply to prove that Google can generate more adjusted conversion value.
The aim is to establish whether the business actually makes more money.
What this means for your campaigns
Google Ads has been steadily moving towards value-based automation.
Product Value Optimisation is another step in that direction.
The interesting part is that it gives advertisers a potential way to influence automation before completely changing their campaign structure.
That could be particularly useful for retailers with large product catalogues where margin, stock position and strategic importance vary significantly between products.
But this feature will not make poor measurement disappear.
If your ecommerce tracking is inaccurate, product feeds are weak or commercial values are based on guesswork, Product Value Optimisation can simply encourage Google to optimise more aggressively towards the wrong objective.
The businesses most likely to benefit will therefore be the ones that already understand the economics behind their catalogue.
Know which products make money.
Know which customers create value.
Know which sales you genuinely want more of.
Then give the bidding system signals that reflect those priorities.
That is a far stronger approach than asking Google to maximise revenue and hoping revenue eventually translates into profit.
If you are unsure whether your Google Shopping or Performance Max campaigns are prioritising the right products, our free PPC audit can identify where budget is being wasted, where conversion values may be misleading and where your bidding strategy could better reflect the commercial reality of your business.
Frequently asked questions
What is Google Ads Product Value Optimisation?
Product Value Optimisation is a Google Ads beta that allows advertisers to adjust the value associated with particular products or product groups. These adjustments can provide automated bidding with additional information about which products are commercially more important.
Which campaigns can use Product Value Optimisation?
The beta has been reported as working with Google’s automated bidding across Performance Max and Shopping campaigns.
Can Product Value Optimisation help improve profit?
Potentially, yes. If advertisers use accurate margin or commercial data to adjust product values, automated bidding may be steered towards products that create stronger business outcomes. The feature itself does not guarantee increased profit.
Should I increase the value of my bestselling products?
Not automatically. High sales volume does not necessarily mean high profitability or incremental value. Check margin, stock position, acquisition costs and wider commercial objectives before making an adjustment.
Does Product Value Optimisation replace profit-based tracking?
No. It is better viewed as another input into Google’s bidding system. Accurate conversion tracking, product data, margin information and wider business measurement remain essential.
Why does this matter for Performance Max?
Performance Max automatically makes bidding and inventory decisions across Google’s advertising channels. Giving the system more accurate information about which products matter commercially could help steer that automation towards outcomes that better match the advertiser’s objectives.
Should advertisers use Product Value Optimisation immediately?
As the feature is currently being tested, availability may be limited. Advertisers who gain access should begin with controlled tests against clearly defined product groups rather than applying broad adjustments across an entire catalogue.
