TNOMADS / Services / Paid Search

Paid Search

Google Ads — capture demand
at every stage.

Search, Shopping, Performance Max and Demand Gen — managed alongside your retail media investment for full-funnel performance that compounds.

What is Google Ads for CPG and e-commerce brands?

Google Ads is Google's advertising platform, covering Search, Shopping, Performance Max, Demand Gen, Display and YouTube. For CPG and e-commerce brands it captures demand at the moment of intent and creates demand upstream of retail media — including demand that converts later on Amazon, Walmart or Instacart rather than on your own site.

Campaign types: Search, Shopping, PMax, Demand GenPricing: CPC, CPM, tCPA, tROASMeasurement: GA4, Amazon AttributionScope: Own site + marketplace

What is Google Ads for CPG?

Paid search that connects intent to purchase.

Google Ads remains the most powerful intent-capture platform in digital marketing — with over 8.5 billion daily searches providing unmatched visibility into what consumers are actively looking for. For CPG and e-commerce brands, Google Ads bridges the gap between consumer discovery and retail purchase, complementing retail media investment with broader reach and demand generation.

The platform has evolved significantly. Performance Max (PMax), Google's AI-driven campaign type, now serves ads across Search, Shopping, YouTube, Display, and Gmail through a single campaign — with Google's AI optimising delivery toward your conversion goals in real time. For CPG brands, the key is providing Google's AI with high-quality audience signals and creative assets to outperform generic configurations.

Google Ads and retail media work best together: Google captures the consumer early in their research journey, while Amazon or Walmart Sponsored Ads close the sale. TNOMADS manages both sides of this funnel — ensuring budget allocation, messaging consistency, and attribution are coordinated across channels.

01

Search Campaigns

Text ads that appear when consumers search for your products, category terms, or competitors. The highest-intent format in Google Ads — reaching consumers in the active consideration stage. Keyword match types, audience layers (RLSA), and smart bidding combine for maximum efficiency.

02

Performance Max (PMax)

Google's AI-driven campaign type that serves across all Google inventory — Search, Shopping, YouTube, Display, Gmail, and Maps — from a single campaign. Provides the broadest reach with the least manual management. Critical to feed it quality assets and audience signals.

03

Shopping Campaigns

Product listing ads in Google Search and the Shopping tab — showing product image, price, and name. Essential for e-commerce brands. Feed quality (title optimisation, structured attributes) drives performance as much as bid strategy.

04

Demand Gen

Google's replacement for Discovery campaigns. Runs across YouTube Shorts, YouTube In-Feed, and Gmail. Designed to generate demand earlier in the funnel — before consumers are actively searching. Ideal for new product launches and brand awareness.

What drives Google Ads performance

The levers that separate efficiency from waste.

BIDDING

Smart Bidding Strategy

Target ROAS, Target CPA, and Maximise Conversions are the three smart bidding strategies that use Google's ML to set bids in real time. The choice depends on your objective, conversion volume, and margin profile. Setting the wrong target strangles scale — setting it too aggressively wastes budget on low-quality traffic.

Target ROASTarget CPAMax ConversionsPortfolio Bidding
AUDIENCE

First-Party Data Integration

Customer Match lets you upload first-party email lists to create custom audiences — targeting existing customers, lapsed buyers, and high-LTV segments across Search, YouTube, and Shopping. Combined with Remarketing Lists for Search Ads (RLSA), this turns Google into a loyalty and re-engagement engine, not just a prospecting tool.

Customer MatchRLSASimilar AudiencesGA4 Audiences
MEASUREMENT

Conversion Tracking & GA4

Without accurate conversion tracking, smart bidding optimises toward the wrong signals. We audit and implement Google Ads conversion actions connected to GA4 — ensuring purchase events, add-to-cart actions, and micro-conversions are tracked correctly and feeding Google's bidding algorithms with quality signals.

GA4 IntegrationEnhanced ConversionsConsent Mode v2Server-Side Tagging
5T+searches processed by Google annually, its first official volume disclosure since 2016 [1]
2.5Bmonthly users of AI Overviews, with AI Mode passing 1 billion within a year of launch [2]
PMaxnow the default commerce campaign type — requiring strong asset inputs and audience signals to outperform
Full funnelGoogle plus retail media covers demand creation and demand capture in a way neither does alone

The TNOMADS approach

Google Ads and retail media work together, not separately.

🔗

Cross-channel coordination

We coordinate Google and retail media campaigns at the keyword, audience, and messaging level — so a consumer researching on Google encounters consistent brand messaging when they arrive on Amazon or Walmart.

📊

Scorecard reporting

We build unified scorecards that place Google Ads performance alongside retail media metrics — giving leadership a single view of the full-funnel investment and its collective impact on revenue.

🎯

Consent Mode v2 compliance

With Consent Mode v2 required for EU advertisers, we ensure your Google Ads setup correctly implements gtag consent signals — so conversion modelling works accurately and smart bidding performance is not degraded by missing data.

The vocabulary

What are the campaign types and how do they differ?

Search
Text ads triggered by keywords. The highest-intent format and still the most controllable, which matters as automation removes levers elsewhere in the platform.
Shopping
Product listing ads driven by your Merchant Center feed. Feed quality — titles, attributes, images, pricing — determines performance more than bidding does.
Performance Max
Automated cross-inventory campaigns spanning Search, Shopping, YouTube, Display, Discover, Gmail and Maps. High leverage and low transparency, so asset quality and audience signals carry the weight.
Demand Gen
Visual, social-style campaigns across YouTube, Discover and Gmail, built for demand creation rather than capture. Judged on assisted conversions and new customer volume, not last-click return.
Merchant Center
The product data layer behind Shopping and Performance Max. Most Shopping underperformance is a feed problem misdiagnosed as a bidding problem.
Audience signals
First-party lists, customer match and in-market segments supplied to automated campaigns. In Performance Max they guide rather than restrict targeting, which is a distinction that catches most advertisers out.
Negative keywords
Terms excluded from serving. Still available in Search, and now available at account and campaign level for Performance Max — making it one of the few remaining hard controls in automated campaigns.
Smart bidding
Automated bid strategies including target CPA, target ROAS and maximise conversions. They require conversion signal to function; without reliable tracking, smart bidding will optimise confidently toward nothing.
Conversion tracking
The measurement foundation. Broken or partial tracking is the single most common cause of Google Ads accounts that spend without producing, and it invalidates every automated bidding decision downstream.
Amazon Attribution
Google's conversion tracking cannot see Amazon purchases. Amazon Attribution tags let you measure how Google traffic drives Amazon sales — essential for brands whose Google spend converts on a marketplace.

Comparisons

How does this compare to the alternatives?

Google Ads vs Retail Media

Demand creation versus demand capture — and why measuring them the same way breaks both.

Google AdsRetail media
Shopper stageResearching, comparing, deciding what to buyDeciding which brand to buy, at the point of purchase
Intent signalWhat the person searched forWhat the person has actually bought before
Conversion locationYour own site, or downstream on a marketplaceInside the retailer's environment
MeasurementGA4 and Google conversion tracking; Amazon Attribution for marketplace salesRetailer-reported, closed loop to purchase
Typical failureJudged only on own-site conversions, missing marketplace effectJudged on last-touch ROAS, missing incrementality
When to use whichGoogle creates and qualifies demand; retail media captures it at the shelf. If you measure Google only on your own site's conversions while a meaningful share of your sales happen on Amazon or Walmart, you will systematically under-invest in the channel that is feeding the one you are crediting.

Performance Max vs Standard Shopping

The trade-off between reach and control that every e-commerce advertiser now has to make.

Performance MaxStandard Shopping
InventorySearch, Shopping, YouTube, Display, Discover, Gmail, MapsShopping placements only
ControlLimited — audience signals guide rather than restrictDirect control of products, bids and negatives
TransparencyPartial; search term and placement reporting is limitedFull search term reporting
RequirementsStrong assets, clean feed, reliable conversion signalClean feed
Best forScale once measurement is trustworthyDiagnosing what actually converts, and controlling brand terms
When to use whichPerformance Max scales well when your conversion tracking is sound and your feed is clean. It scales badly, and expensively, when either is not. Brands that cannot yet explain where their conversions come from should fix that before handing bidding to automation.

Google Ads vs Amazon PPC

Two search platforms with different shopper intent and different economics.

Google AdsAmazon PPC
Shopper intentMixed — informational through to transactionalAlmost entirely transactional
Conversion rateLower, wider funnelHigher, narrower funnel
AttributionMulti-touch available via GA4Last-touch within Amazon
Marketplace visibilityRequires Amazon Attribution to see Amazon salesNative
When to use whichAmazon PPC converts better because it sits closer to the transaction. Google reaches shoppers earlier, including those who have not yet decided what to buy — and, for many CPG brands, a meaningful share of that demand converts on Amazon rather than on the brand's own site. See Amazon PPC.

Real results

What does this work look like in practice?

Industry · B2B SaaS · Corporate Travel ManagementPrior agency engagement

Optimising to qualified pipeline instead of first-touch lead volume

+123%Sales qualified leads
+204%Click-through rate
+93%Ad spend, scaled while quality improved

Challenge

Selling corporate travel software during the 2020 collapse in business travel. The objective was to grow qualified leads while holding profitable impression share against better-funded competitors in a shrinking market.

Our approach

  • Moved budget allocation and bid optimisation onto MQL and SQL signals rather than first-touch lead volume
  • Concentrated spend on the keywords that converted down-funnel, not those that converted first
  • Diagnosed poor Quality Score on head terms inflating CPC and suppressing impression share
  • Tested landing page and ad copy combinations to improve message match on those terms
  • Rebuilt non-brand campaigns into intent themes reflecting how buyers actually searched

Business impact

Optimising to down-funnel qualified pipeline rather than raw lead volume let the account scale investment while improving lead quality — growth in qualified pipeline outpaced growth in spend.

Industry · D2C Beauty · HaircarePrior agency engagement

Scaling a launch-phase beauty brand into new channels and markets

+587%Revenue
+169%Return on ad spend
+348%Ad spend, with ROAS still improving

Challenge

The brand had launched successfully on paid social but was running Meta only, in the US only, across fragmented ad accounts. It needed to move from launch to sustained scale in a highly competitive category.

Our approach

  • Expanded beyond Meta into Google, Bing and TikTok
  • Opened several new geographic markets beyond the US
  • Built funnel-specific creative strategy rather than a single creative pool
  • Optimised the product feed for Shopping and granular targeting
  • Segmented targeting by hair and scalp concern rather than by broad demographic

Business impact

The brand moved from a single-channel, single-market launch business to a multi-channel, multi-market scaling one, with revenue growth substantially outpacing the increase in media investment.

Industry · Nonprofit · Dance and Arts Education

Restoring delivery on a dormant Google Ad Grants account

Challenge

The account was showing effectively zero impressions and zero spend. Every keyword had been flagged by Google as ineligible and rarely served.

Our approach

  • Diagnosed geographic qualifiers appended directly to already-narrow keyword phrases
  • Rebuilt keywords using campaign-level geo-targeting instead
  • Rewrote responsive search ads
  • Remediated conversion tracking
  • Completed a Google Ad Grants compliance review

Key findings

  • Search volumes were too low to serve because geo terms had been appended to keywords
  • The bid strategy had no conversion signal to optimise against
  • Account moved from zero delivery to serving

Business impact

Delivery restored and conversion tracking issues documented for the client's web team, giving the organisation a functioning acquisition channel within its grant allocation.

Case studies are presented by industry rather than by client name. Figures are drawn from live account analysis. Engagements marked prior agency engagement were delivered by Ana Perez Ibarz in a previous agency role; the work and results are hers, the client relationships were the agency's. TNOMADS does not identify clients or publish client performance data without written consent.

Frequently asked questions

Common questions, answered directly.

Because shoppers research before they buy, and much of that research happens on Google. If you only advertise where the transaction closes, you cede the decision stage entirely to competitors and to whatever Amazon's algorithm surfaces.
Google's own conversion tracking cannot see Amazon purchases. Amazon Attribution tags let you measure how Google traffic drives Amazon sales. Without it, Google will appear to underperform because you are only counting the conversions it did not produce.
An automated campaign type that runs across Search, Shopping, YouTube, Display, Discover, Gmail and Maps from a single campaign. Google's automation handles targeting and bidding; you supply assets, audience signals, budget and goals.
Not universally. Performance Max scales well when conversion tracking is reliable and your feed is clean. When either is weak, it spends efficiently toward the wrong outcome with limited visibility into what happened. Standard Shopping gives you diagnosis and control.
Yes. Account-level and campaign-level negative keywords are available for Performance Max, making them one of the few remaining hard controls in an otherwise automated campaign type. Use them, particularly for brand terms you want handled elsewhere.
Usually not without control. Performance Max will happily absorb branded search, which inflates its apparent performance by capturing demand that would have converted anyway. Excluding brand terms and handling them in a dedicated Search campaign gives a cleaner read on both.
Google's visual, social-style campaign type across YouTube, Discover and Gmail. It is built for creating demand rather than capturing it, and should be judged on new customer volume and assisted conversions rather than last-click return.
Most often the feed rather than the bidding. Incomplete titles, missing attributes, poor images, wrong product categorisation and pricing mismatches all suppress Shopping performance in ways no bid adjustment will fix.
Automated bid strategies including target CPA, target ROAS and maximise conversions. They need reliable conversion signal and sufficient volume to work. Applied to an account with broken tracking, smart bidding will optimise confidently toward a measurement artefact.
More than most small accounts have. Below roughly thirty conversions a month, automated strategies have little signal to learn from and results become volatile. Manual or semi-automated strategies are often more reliable at low volume.
Substantially and continuously. AI Overviews now reach over 2.5 billion monthly users and AI Mode passed 1 billion within a year of launch. [2] The practical effect is that more queries are answered without a click, which shifts value toward high-intent commercial terms and toward being present in the surfaces AI systems draw on.
Google disclosed more than 5 trillion searches annually in March 2025, its first official volume update since 2016. [1] Daily figures quoted elsewhere vary widely because they are derived from that annual figure using different assumptions.
It depends on margin, category, campaign type and whether marketplace sales are being counted. A brand measuring only own-site conversions while half its demand converts on Amazon will see a ROAS that understates reality. Fix the measurement before setting the target.
Almost always. Branded search converts at a far higher rate and will inflate blended performance, hiding weak acquisition. Separating them is the only way to see what new customer acquisition actually costs.
Conversion tracking records the actions you count as success. It breaks when checkout moves to an external domain, when consent management blocks tags, when tags are duplicated, or when site changes are made without telling whoever manages the account. It is the first thing to check in any underperforming account.
Yes. Consent mode and privacy regulation reduce observable conversions, which affects both reporting and the signal automated bidding relies on. Correct consent mode implementation matters for performance, not just compliance.
Google creates and qualifies demand; retail media captures it at the shelf. Sequenced correctly, Google spend increases branded search and new-to-brand rates on Amazon, Walmart and Instacart.
It depends on whether your product needs explanation or inspiration before purchase. YouTube and Demand Gen work well for products with a story or a usage occasion; they work poorly as direct response channels for commodity replenishment items.
Google Ad Grants provides eligible nonprofits with in-kind search advertising budget, subject to strict policy requirements including account structure, click-through rate thresholds and destination URL rules. Accounts frequently underperform because compliance constraints are handled as an afterthought rather than designed for.
Common causes: broken or partial conversion tracking, keywords too narrow to serve, bid strategies with no conversion signal, budget spread across too many campaigns, or a landing page that does not match search intent. Diagnose tracking before touching bids.
You need whoever manages them to measure them together. The most common cost of separating them is that nobody is accountable for the interaction — Google gets cut for weak own-site ROAS while the marketplace sales it drove get credited to retail media.
It is the demand creation and qualification layer above retail media. See retail media strategy for allocation, and incrementality for how to test whether it is genuinely additive.

Why TNOMADS

Why run Google Ads with a retail media specialist?

13+years across paid search and retail media, not one or the other
Bothsides measured together — Google spend against marketplace sales
Feedand tracking fixed before bidding is handed to automation
1:1direct access to the consultant running the account

About the author

Who wrote this page?

Ana Perez Ibarz

Senior Retail Media Consultant

Amazon AdsAmazon DSPAmazon Marketing Cloud Walmart ConnectInstacartRetail Media Strategy

Last reviewed 16 August 2026

Ana Perez Ibarz is the founder of TNOMADS Consulting and has spent 13+ years in retail media and performance marketing. She manages live campaign operations across Amazon Ads (Sponsored Products, Sponsored Brands, Sponsored Display, DSP and Amazon Marketing Cloud), Walmart Connect, Instacart, Kroger Precision Marketing, Target Roundel, Loblaws Advance, DoorDash, Criteo, Google Ads and Meta.

On Google Ads, Ana manages Search, Shopping, Performance Max and Demand Gen alongside retail media programmes for the same brands — which is the point. Most Google Ads underperformance she sees in CPG accounts is not a bidding problem but a measurement one: the channel is being judged on own-site conversions while a large share of the demand it creates converts on a marketplace.

She works as a subcontracted specialist for agencies as well as directly with brands, and writes on retail media measurement, incrementality and commerce media architecture. Based in Granada, Spain; operating across North America and Europe.

More about Ana and TNOMADS →

Sources

Where do these figures come from?

A note on these sourcesPublished figures for Google's daily search volume range from roughly 8.5 billion to over 16 billion, because they are derived from Google's annual disclosure using different assumptions — treat any single daily figure with caution. Campaign type capabilities, bid adjustment limits and Performance Max controls change regularly, so verify current behaviour in your account rather than relying on published specifications.

Related services

What should you read next?

Retail Media Strategy

How Google budget should sit alongside retail media, not compete with it.

Amazon PPC

The demand capture layer that Google Ads feeds.

Incrementality

Testing whether Google spend is genuinely adding sales.

Amazon DSP

The comparison point for Google's display and video inventory.

Retail Media Audit

Cross-channel structural review including paid search.

Amazon Marketing Cloud

Where Amazon-side measurement of externally driven demand happens.

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