This article details how to set up and optimise a Performance Max campaign, Shopping campaign or Demand Gen to run your local inventory ads and monitor the performance of your local inventory.
Before you begin
- You need to have an active Performance Max, Shopping campaign or Demand Gen in your Google Ads account to run your local inventory ads. If you don’t have one, create one in your Google Ads account.
- To set up your campaign to promote local inventory, you'll need to complete local inventory ads implementation. If you haven't done this yet, learn more about local inventory ads to get started.
- Link your Google Ads account to the Merchant Center account to run local inventory ads. Learn how to Link a Google Ads account to Merchant Center.
Instructions
Enable local inventory ads in your campaigns
Log in to your Google Ads account and choose one of the following options:
Option 1: Performance Max campaign
- Select the name of your existing Performance Max campaign, or create a new Performance Max campaign if you don't already have one. Learn how to Create a Performance Max campaign.
- If you have a Merchant Center feed linked to the Google Ads account, then select the Merchant Center account and the country for your Performance Max campaign and select Save. If a local inventory feed is set up within the Merchant Center account, local inventory ads will serve by default.
Option 2: Shopping campaign
- Select the name of your existing Shopping campaign, or Create a new Shopping campaign if you don't already have one.
- Navigate to Settings > Shopping campaign settings > Local products, tick the 'Turn on ads for products sold in local shops' box and select Save.
Option 3: Demand Gen
Local products for Demand Gen with product feeds is a creative add-on that allows you to show local shop offers alongside online offers on YouTube, supporting an omnichannel approach.
- Set up a Demand Gen campaign with product feed or identify an existing Demand Gen campaign with a product feed where you want to run local products. If a local inventory feed is set up within the Merchant Center account, local inventory ads will serve by default.
- Select the Google Merchant Center feed containing your local products for use with the campaign.
- If your Demand Gen campaign was already linked to a Google Merchant Center account with a local inventory feed, your campaign will show local inventory ads.
- Select your products at the ad group level using the product filtering:
- Opt your whole feed into product feeds, allowing machine learning to identify the products most likely to convert using a combination of both local and online offers.
- Alternatively, you can select specific products that you want to use (minimum of four products recommended). It's recommended that you select a product with online and local product availability.
- You can check if a product has a local product by selecting
next to the product in the product filtering, verifying that at least one local product is ticked in the country that you are targeting.
- You can check if a product has a local product by selecting
- Ensure that your campaign location targeting matches where you also have local inventory available.
Display your local inventory
Your products may appear in ads in a few different ways based on the type of inventory that you submit to Google. You can specify which ad format you want to use for eligible inventory in your campaign.
Choose your ad format
| Online only inventory | Multichannel inventory | Local only inventory | |
| When the shopper is near your shop location | Shopping ad | Local inventory ad | Local inventory ad |
| When the shopper is not near your shop location | Shopping ad | Shopping ad |
Monitor local channel performance
If you promote products sold in physical shop locations and a local products feed, you can view campaign or ad group-level performance reports for your local shopping channel when you segment your reports by click type, channel or channel exclusivity.
Segment by click type
When you segment your report by click type, we’ll show you data for the two different click types
Click types (only for standard Shopping campaign)
| Name of click type | What it means |
| Shopping – Product – Online | Select an ad where an online product was shown |
| Shopping – Product – Local | Select an ad where a local product was shown |
Here’s how to view your performance data in Shopping campaigns:
- In Google Ads, select the campaign that you’re interested in.
- From either the campaign or ad group view, select Segment icon
.
- From the drop-down menu, select Click type.
.You may also download a report reflecting one or several segment options after you have added them to your campaign. To do this:
- Select Download on the top right of your screen.
- Select More options.
- Under Segments, type the names of the segments that you’re interested in.
- Tick the boxes to include titles and range and summary rows.
- Select Download.
Set up filters for channel and channel exclusivity
Now that you've enabled local products in your Shopping campaign, you can set up filters or subdivide your inventory by channel and channel exclusivity.
- 'Channel' segments products by online or local availability.
- 'Channel exclusivity' segments products by availability in one of the channels or both.
- If you set up an inventory filter for 'Channel': 'Local shops' and 'Channel exclusivity': 'Single-channel', your campaign will include products sold exclusively in local shops, not online.
Here’s how to segment your report by channel or channel exclusivity in report editor.
- Go to Insights and reports in the Campaign menu.
- Select Report editor.
- In the 'Template gallery', select Product – Channel.
Or, you can use the 'Reports' tab to build a custom report. Learn how to customise tables and charts.