A reader wrote in after reading one of my pieces on mastering audience segments in Google Ads.
His question was simple, and it is one I hear a lot: does all of that audience segment advice apply to Google Shopping, or is it only for Google Search?
The short answer is yes, it absolutely applies to Shopping. So let me walk you through exactly how I would approach it, plus a few related things the reader raised about Performance Max that are well worth your attention.
Yes, Audience Segments Work in Shopping Too
Here is what I would do. Add a variety of good audiences to your Shopping campaign. Do not just pick one and hope for the best. I want you layering in a proper mix.
Start with your retargeting audiences. These are the people who have already interacted with your brand, browsed your products, or abandoned a cart. They are the warmest audience you have, and they belong front and centre.
Next, add some in-market audiences. These are users Google has identified as actively researching and considering buying products like yours. They are further down the funnel than a cold browser, which makes them genuinely valuable to observe.
Finally, if you have the time, create some custom segments as well. These are the ones tailored specifically to your business, and while they take a little effort to set up, they can reward you with excellent insight into who is actually converting.
The One Setting You Must Not Skip
Here is the part people forget, and it matters enormously. Put all of these audiences in "observation" mode, not "targeting" mode.
The difference is huge. Targeting mode restricts your campaign so it only shows to the audiences you have selected, which chokes your reach. Observation mode does the opposite. It leaves your reach fully intact while quietly collecting data on how each of these segments performs. That data is gold. It shows you which audiences convert, which ones waste spend, and where you might later want to layer in bid adjustments.
The reader’s message hinted that he had built something new. My immediate question back to him was whether he had decided to move over to Standard Shopping, and how that had been going. That is often the trigger for these audience questions, because when you build fresh campaigns, none of the previous groundwork carries over.
Improving Your Digital Assets in Performance Max
He then asked a really good follow-up. He wanted to improve the digital assets on his Performance Max campaign, starting with the images. Should he edit the current ones and swap in better images, or should he build a whole new campaign?
Before you touch anything, I want you to do one thing first: check how much PMax is actually spending on Display, Gmail, and YouTube.
Why? Because if PMax is barely spending on those placements, then your image assets are barely being seen. That does not mean you should ignore them entirely, but it does mean you should prioritise your tasks in order of what actually drives the most revenue. There is no sense pouring hours into image assets that are quietly receiving a trickle of traffic while your real money is being made elsewhere.
To check the exact spend of PMax across each channel, there is a very useful new-ish report in Google Ads. Click in to your PMax campaign, on the left side bar find “Channel Performance Report”. Scroll down to the bottom and you will see a “Channel Distribution” table showing you the spend and performance of each of the channels inside PMax. Make sure to add two additional columns: your “conv. value/cost” and “cost / conv.” columns. What you have now is a goldmine: a precise view of where the campaign is spending you money, and its performance level in each of those places.
Now, to answer the reader’s actual question directly: I would not build a whole new campaign. I would simply add new image assets into the existing setup. Open up your asset reports, see which images are flagged as lower performing, and replace those with images you think will do better. It is a far cleaner approach than tearing everything down and starting again, and it keeps all your accumulated learning intact.
Let PMax Do the Heavy Lifting on Channels
The reader’s next worry was one I hear constantly. He noticed his PMax was showing ads across all sorts of channels, Gmail, YouTube, Search, and so on. His instinct was that some of those channels probably were not right for his products, and he really wanted to dominate in Google Shopping instead. So could he turn the other channels down manually, or was he better off leaving the AI to it?
Leave it to the AI. PMax automatically optimises across those channels, and it will quickly learn to spend less on the ones that are not achieving the goal you have set. That is the whole point of the campaign type.
Which brings me to the single most important thing here: the goal you set is everything. If your goal is a good, realistic, well-configured one, then PMax will allocate your budget towards the channels that best meet it and pull back from the ones that do not. So rather than fiddling with individual channels, put your energy into making sure your campaign goal is a strong one. That is where your control genuinely lives.
Conclusion
Audience segment strategy is not limited to Google Search; it works just as well in Google Shopping. Add a mix of retargeting, in-market, and custom segments, and crucially, keep them all in observation mode so you gather data without restricting your reach. For Performance Max, check your channel spend before optimising image assets so you prioritise what actually drives revenue, and add new images into your existing setup rather than rebuilding from scratch. Let PMax handle channel allocation automatically by setting a strong campaign goal, and for search-led brands, pour your effort into Search campaigns backed by custom audience segments. And if managing it all becomes too much, the $500K to $1M service level at $850 per month is there when you need it.