The BEST google ads campaign structure for eCom

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google ads has changed significantly over the past few years.

but a lot of the accounts we audit are still running setups that made sense 3-4 years ago.

and the gap between what they're doing and what's possible shows up directly in their revenue numbers.

there's a version of your google ads account where every dollar works as hard as it could.

branded traffic is protected and cheap.

prospecting campaigns are finding new customers consistently.

you know exactly which campaign is driving revenue, what it's costing you, and where to put the next dollar to grow.

scaling from $50k to $200k a month in spend doesn't tank your roas.

it just means more of the same system running at a higher volume.

that version of your account starts with your campaign structure.

and that’s what i’m going to share with you today

we've used this campaign structure to help dozens of brands get past seven figures per month on google.

it's the foundation that makes everything else work.

from protecting margin on branded searches to finding profitable scale in cold traffic.

this article will also give you a clear map of which campaign types you haven't tested yet.

that way, you always know which campaign or strategy you should try to get new customers.

so that’s the benefit. now, let’s get into the details.

the master split: branded vs. non-branded

everything in your account flows from one decision:

branded traffic and non-branded traffic must live in completely separate campaigns.

in almost every audit we run, brands aren't doing this correctly.

the most common version is letting pmax run without branded exclusions.

we've seen brands paying $10+ cpcs on their own brand name because pmax was capturing those searches.

after restructuring and adding proper exclusions, that same traffic dropped under $0.30.

they were overpaying for traffic they already owned, and their roas still looked fine because branded traffic converts so well that it masks the waste.

when branded and non-branded campaigns are mixed, your account-level numbers are inflated.

a campaign showing 4x ROAS might actually be 12x ROAS on brand & 0.5x ROAS on prospecting

you can't see what's working in prospecting, and you have no control over either side's budget.

that’s why you need to split your branded and non-branded traffic into its own campaign

from this split, two branches grow.

i - the branded branch

set up 2 branded campaigns for each region/country (depending on search volume) you target:

branded search
branded shopping

first, branded search

search campaigns are pretty straightforward since they're based on keywords.

create a negative keyword list with all brand variations:

brand name
misspellings
brand + product
domain name
product line names if they're well-known

set up your branded search campaigns to target these terms

the campaign splits into two ad groups:

exact match for your precise brand name, phrase match for brand + modifiers

bidding is usually manual cpc here.

the goal is high impression share while keeping cpcs under $0.30-$0.40 for most brands

and the ad copy should prioritize clarity and reasons to buy now.

two things to set up immediately:

an alert for when impression share drops below 80% (that's your signal that competitors are bidding on your terms)
your full brand keyword list added as negatives to every non-branded campaign in the account.

second, branded shopping

shopping campaigns rely on your product feed and google's algorithm to match searches.

so campaign priority settings are critical for controlling which campaigns serve which traffic.

we use a 3-tier structure to make sure branded traffic got served in its own campaign:

tier 1: pmax prospecting (high priority). gets first shot at all non-branded Shopping traffic

tier 2: standard shopping "wall" campaign (medium priority). acts as a safety net to capture leftover prospecting traffic

tier 3: branded shopping campaign (low priority). this is where you want branded traffic

the product feed needs brand terms in titles and descriptions for the relevant products.

then add your branded keyword list as negatives to all pmax and non-branded shopping campaigns.

here’s how it works:

when someone searches "red light therapy mask," google checks campaigns in priority order:

checks high priority campaigns first (pmax prospecting) → Brand is excluded, so it serves
if high priority passes, checks medium priority (wall) → brand is excluded, so it serves
If medium priority passes, checks low priority (brand) → serves if nothing else took it

ii - the non-branded branch

the non-branded side is your scaling engine.

these campaigns reach people who don't know your brand yet.

within this branch, campaigns run from hottest to coldest audience.

1. prospecting search

these are search campaigns targeting non-branded queries.

at this stage, the buyer is actively looking for your product category but hasn't chosen a brand yet.

this is where a lot of brands compete, and where most of the auction pressure lives.

but it's also where your highest-intent buyers are

there are 3 main types of queries worth going after here.

bucket 1: core product terms: high intent, ready to buy, also high competition

"magnesium supplement"

"standing desk for home office"

"lightweight running shoes"

bucket 2: research and best-of terms: mid funnel, still evaluating, medium competition

"best standing desk brands"

"top magnesium supplements 2025"

"most comfortable running shoes"

bucket 3: competitor terms: people searching for a competitor

"[competitor] alternative"

"flexispot vs uplift"

"[competitor name] reviews"

start with bucket 1.

this is where search volume is highest and results are most predictable.

once that's converting consistently, layer in buckets 2 and 3 to expand your reach and pick up buyers who are still evaluating options.

in terms of setup, build ad groups around tight keyword themes with the same topic, same intent level, and a matching landing page.

aim for at least 15,000 total monthly searches per ad group.

anything under that and you won't accumulate enough data to optimize properly.

pull your search term report every week.

look for:

converting queries that aren't in your keyword lists
irrelevant terms eating budget
phrases worth testing in ad copy.

another major lever here is the landing page.

a page built tightly around a keyword set lowers what you pay per click across the entire ad group.

we had a brand go from $6 to $1.73 CPC just from building a dedicated page around their core terms.

for bucket 1, a standard product page is usually good enough.

but in competitive & skeptical niches like supplements or beauty, sometimes you’d need to build a 3rd party comparison page (check out my content on how to run this).

for bucket 2 & 3, send traffic to your product page to validate demand first.

run it for 30 days on a conservative daily budget. if solid conversions come in under target cpa, that’s your sign to push harder

you can build a 3rd party comparison page for bucket 2 and a us vs. them comparison page for bucket 3 to scale this further.

2. prospecting shopping

standard shopping campaigns serving product ads to people browsing for items in your category.

the product feed is where almost all the leverage lives.

google uses it to decide when and where to show your products, so feed quality directly determines your reach and cost.

merchant center’s “store quality” is also important.

google ranks your store before they rank your products

a better score means your products rank higher in google shopping results

if you take 2 brands with identical campaigns…

the one with better store quality gets better placements

which translates to more impressions, more clicks, and lower CPCs

go to 'Store Quality' in google merchant center and see how your store is graded.

google scores you on:

shipping
return
browsing
purchase

fix the areas where you’re lagging. this should be self-explanatory as google will tell you exactly what to do.

then add product reviews + seller ratings + promotions.

all of these help to boost CTR and get you better ranking.

use custom labels to tell google what each product means to your business

the 5 labels we usually use:

label_0: margin tier

label_1: product performance

label_2: seasonality

label_3: price band

label_4: stock level

once these are in the feed, structure your campaigns around them

heroes can get their own campaign with more budget

products at different price points get their own CPA target

new or promotional products get a temporary budget bump.

one advanced tactic worth running is product duplication.

take one product and create 3-5 separate listings with different titles targeting different intents:

"protein powder for weight loss,"

"protein powder for women,"

"best tasting protein powder."

each gets its own item id with a different title , description, image, and sometimes, even offers & landing pages

this lets you:

rank multiple times in the same shopping carousel
rank across more relevant searches

3. performance max

pmax runs across all of google's inventory:

search, shopping, display, youtube, gmail, discover.

it uses the algorithm to find the best placements and audiences across all of them.

and at scale, it's consistently the single biggest revenue driver in the accounts we manage.

a few things that are non-negotiable in how we set this up:

link google merchant center before anything else. shopping placements are pmax's most reliable driver and the campaign needs the feed to access them.
build one asset group per product category or margin tier, each with its own headlines, descriptions, images, and audience signals matched to that product group.
upload customer lists, add website visitors, build signals from your best buyers.
search themes are the closest thing to keyword targeting pmax offers. pull your top-converting terms from prospecting search campaigns and load them in. you get 50 per asset group.
exclude brand terms at the account level via negative keyword lists.

one small note here:

sometimes, pmax will only allocate a small portion of spend on shopping.

if that’s the case, add feed-only pmax or standard shopping campaigns to correct this.

shopping is your money placement on google and it should dominate your pmax spend split.

4. demand gen

if there’s one campaign type that i think every brand should test, it’s Demand Gen

it’s a great source of cheap but relevant traffic which can be easily scaled

before, it was something you'd test on google after you'd already figured out search & shopping.

now you can run it from day one.

one of our clients launched demand gen about a year ago and has since spent $1.8M through it.

there are a few formats we’ve seen work quite well here

IN-STREAM

these are long-form video ads that play before or during a video.

there's no supporting images or copy. the video has to do all the selling.

works best for cold audiences and products that need some explanation before someone's ready to click.

viewer can skip after 5 seconds, so those first seconds are everything.

you'll typically see around 20+ seconds of average watch time here.

best way to approach this is to study high performing vsls in your niche and use their structure as a framework.

i've also seen a lot of brands pull solid results with ai generated ads in this format.

SHORTS

vertical video ads that run inside the youtube shorts feed.

the user behavior here is similar to tiktok and instagram reels. they want fast, entertaining, organic creatives.

a lot of users won't even notice that it's an ad, as long as you lean into organic-style content.

expect around 8 seconds of average watch time in this format.

this is where many of our clients start when they come to demand gen.

you can take your best performing meta creatives and test them here first.

IN-FEED

these are thumbnail + headline ads that sit inside the organic youtube browse feed and search results.

there's no audio unless a user actively chooses to watch (which happens less than 1% of the time)

in this format, your competition isn't just other ads

the user is scrolling thumbnails looking for something worth watching

which means you're up against creators in your niche for that attention

so you need to match the dopamine seeking intent of people browsing.

study what's performing organically in your niche and match that in your thumbnail

long copy is visible here. spell out who this is for and what they're getting

GOOGLE DISCOVER

this is google's news feed where people scroll through articles (screenshot below).

the audience skews older.

they treat it like a newspaper. they slow down, read headlines, and actually engage with the content.

listicles & 3rd party comparison pages are the perfect fit for that placement, because it looks exactly like something you'd find inside a real publication.

from our audits, most brands aren't running demand gen in any meaningful way.

they're putting everything into meta and not even bothering to test demand gen.

the few running it are doing it poorly, without the budget, effort, or execution it needs to perform.

that leaves a wide open lane for smart brands to exploit.

5. top of funnel search

these are search campaigns targeting informational queries

on google, 99% of brands compete over mof and bof search terms on google.

almost everyone avoids tof queries on google.

but the highest volume searches aren't transactional. they're informational:

"how to lose weight"

"what causes bloating"

"best way to get more protein"

"natural ways to lower blood pressure"

"how to improve gut health"

these queries get 10x more searches at 1/10th the cost of commercial keywords.

the key is to direct the audience to an advertorial/listicle page.

there are 2 ways to go after this keyword type.

option 1: standard search campaigns targeting the keywords mentioned above

option 2: dynamic search ads targeting the advertorial/blog pages (i.e., "url contains /blog/," "url contains /guides/," "url contains /articles/," etc)

the budget split

80-95% of your spend should go toward prospecting.

keep branded campaigns lean and efficient, then push every available dollar toward finding new customers.

we've scaled a lot of brands past $500k/mo spend.

none of them would have gotten there without making prospecting the priority.

the scaling roadmap

phase 1: ($0-$20k/mo ad spend)

this phase is about getting the foundation in place

you’re setting up the account so data is clean, signals are usable, and spend isn’t being wasted.

conversion tracking is reliable with a backup system in place
customer lists are synced and feeding into campaigns
brand and prospecting campaigns are cleanly separated
proper product feed & gmc setup
landing pages align with search intent of each ad group
account structure is simple with little wasted spend

phase 2: ($20k - $50k/mo ad spend)

branded campaigns holding high impression share at less than $0.30-$0.40 CPCs
pmax has assets, search themes, and audience signals wired up
high-intent keywords in your niche are covered across search & shopping
campaigns moved to tCPA/tROAS after hitting 30-50 conversions/month
GMC shows "exceptional" store quality with highly optimized feed (especially titles & images)
each product theme has a dedicated landing page
dsa campaigns live, targeting SEO-optimized pages (brand excluded)
60-80+% of spend goes toward prospecting

you want to gradually scale up while optimizing every area of your account.

goal is to tap into more demand and let google’s smart bidding & algorithm work harder.

phase 3: ($50k - $150k/mo ad spend)

in this phase, you’ll add more advanced, but higher leverage strategies.

demand gen campaigns are live and profitable
product duplication strategy running, one product ranking multiple times in Shopping
weekly cleanup routine removing dead weight (pmax assets, products, keywords, etc)
new landing pages being tested regularly to improve quality scores
search term reports consistently revealing new keyword opportunities
advertorials, listicles, and comparison pages are being prepared/tested

phase 4: ($150k - $300k+/mo ad spend)

now, you’ll expand your reach across the entire customer journey

you’ll tap into more placements, keywords, channels, which means you’ll have more ways for customers to find you.

TOF search campaigns targeting informational keywords (traffic goes to advertorials/listicles)
conquesting campaigns targeting competitor traffic with comparison pages
demand gen has a continuous testing loop, always finding new winning creatives
acquiring customers from the top to bottom of the funnel

now, the spend ranges for each phase here are just rough markers, not hard rules.

results will always depend on external factors

your brand awareness, search volume in your niche, and whether the unit economics support more aggressive scaling.

so don’t get hung up on whether you’re spending $37k or $52k a month and think that means you should be in a different phase.

instead, look at your account to see which phase you’re operating in, and start implementing the actions outlined there.

so that’s the campaign structure we’ve used to scale brands past 7 figures/month on google ads.

go through it step-by-step, save it, and actually run the plays I’ve mentioned here.

the more optimizations & campaigns you stack, the more profits you’ll make

if you need some help setting this up, my DMs are open.

Jackson

The BEST google ads campaign structure for eCom | 2026