With 70% of your Google Ads conversions coming from Performance Max, you have no idea which products are actually profitable. Our audit found the average Shopify store wastes 31% of their ad budget on products with negative margin after ad costs—but PMax hides this behind aggregate ROAS numbers. At $0.89 average CPC, every wasted click adds up fast.
These problems are costing you revenue every day. Our audit finds exactly where your budget is leaking.
Without proper brand exclusions, PMax claims credit for customers who were already searching for your brand name. You're paying $2-5 CPCs for traffic that would have cost $0.50 through a dedicated brand campaign. This inflates PMax ROAS while hiding true customer acquisition costs. We've seen stores where 80%+ of PMax 'conversions' were actually branded searches.
Shopify's default Google channel app exports basic product data, but misses custom labels, product highlights, sale prices, and proper GTIN formatting. Without these, your products lose Shopping auction eligibility and show lower in results. Product titles pulled directly from your store often lack the keywords customers actually search for—like 'men's' or 'women's', material type, or size indicators.
Running 500+ products in one PMax asset group means Google optimizes for aggregate ROAS by heavily serving your top 20 products. The other 480 get almost no impressions. Worse, low-margin products can drag down your overall profitability while appearing successful in aggregate. Without product segmentation, you can't scale winners or cut losers.
How does your store compare? Source: Common Thread Collective 2025
-15% vs all ecommerce CPC • +12% vs all ecommerce ROAS vs all ecommerce
What you should run vs. what you should avoid
6 critical areas specific to Shopify stores
We check if your Shopify Google Channel is properly syncing product data, including sale prices, custom labels, and optimized titles
We analyze your asset group segmentation—are you running one group for 1000 products or properly segmented by margin tier?
We calculate what percentage of your 'conversions' are actually branded searches vs true new customer acquisition
We identify which products are getting 80% of spend but only 20% of conversions (and vice versa)
We verify your Shopify purchase tracking is using native Google Ads tags, not GA4 import which underreports by 15-20%
We compare your CPCs and impression share against Shopify stores in your vertical using industry benchmarks
"The audit revealed we were spending $3,000/month on products with negative margin. After restructuring our PMax campaigns by product tier, we increased ROAS from 3.2x to 5.1x in 60 days."
One-time payment. Results in 5 minutes. No subscription.
"Found $800/mo in wasted PMax spend" — S.M., Shopify Store
"Audit all my product stores" — T.K., D2C Brand
"Run monthly, ROAS up 40%" — R.S., Ecommerce
"Essential for my ecom clients" — M.L., Agency
Common questions about running Google Ads for Shopify stores
The minimum viable budget for Shopify stores depends on your average order value (AOV). For products under $50 AOV, start with $1,500-2,000/month to generate enough conversions for smart bidding algorithms to learn. For products $50-150 AOV, $3,000-5,000/month works well to hit the 30+ monthly conversions threshold per campaign. For high-ticket items $150+, you can start with $2,000/month due to higher conversion values compensating for lower volume. The key metric is getting 30-50 conversions per month per campaign for optimal machine learning. Our audit shows your current conversion volume and recommends the right budget level for your specific products and margins.
Deep-dive guides to optimize every aspect of your ads