Do not make this mistake with Advantage+ Shopping Campaigns. I’ve seen this a few times, so I want to be sure that you’re not doing it, too…
Existing Customers
In your Ad Account Settings, you have the ability to define your Existing Customers.
This impacts your Advantage+ Shopping Campaigns in two ways.
First, it’s at least a consideration when determining who should see your ads. It’s especially important if you apply a Customer Budget Cap.
It’s also used for audience segmentation of Advantage+ Shopping Campaign results.
What to Do and Not to Do
I’ve seen advertisers not put enough thought into defining their current customers. Don’t use a website custom audience of all of your website visitors. Most of these people aren’t your customers.
I’ve even heard that an ad rep told someone to use lookalike audiences. That’s crazy. (NOTE: This advice is so bad for numerous reason, but one is that it’s not even technically possible to use a lookalike audience for this purpose).
Use website custom audiences and data custom audiences to define your current paying customers as thoroughly as possible. But only include your paying customers.
This isn’t meant to be complicated. But you could definitely screw up both how delivery is optimized and the reporting. Otherwise, your Existing Customers audience segment is meaningless.
Are you doing this right?