Google Ads campaign types: Search, Shopping, PMax, Demand Gen

Google Ads has six campaign types that matter for an online store: Search (text ads in search results), Shopping (product cards), Performance Max (every placement from one campaign), Demand Gen (YouTube, Discover, Gmail), Video (YouTube) and Display (sites and apps). Search and Shopping catch people already looking for a product; Demand Gen, Video and Display create demand.

A store selling across Europe also needs to know where Shopping ads run, how cookie consent affects remarketing and how one catalog feeds several countries. For each campaign type below: where the ad shows, when you need it and what to set up in CloudCart. Your first Search campaign and purchase tracking are covered in the guide to Google Ads for ecommerce.

What are the Google Ads campaign types

In Google Ads the campaign type decides where your ad can appear and which assets you need. Google's help page on choosing a campaign type lists Performance Max, Search, Display, Video, App and Shopping. Demand Gen has its own page, and from June 2026 it also takes over Display campaigns. App campaigns promote mobile apps, so an online store works with the other six types in the table.

Campaign type	Where it shows	Job in your store
Search	Google search results	Sell to people searching for the product
Shopping	Search results and the Shopping tab	Sell with an image and a price
Performance Max	Search, Shopping, YouTube, Display Network, Discover, Gmail, Maps	Sales from every placement on one budget
Demand Gen	YouTube (in-stream, Shorts, home feed, watch next, search), Discover, Gmail, Display Network, Maps (beta)	New customers and remarketing with images and video; the new home of Display campaigns
Video	YouTube and Google video partner sites	Brand reach and views
Display	Websites, apps and Google properties such as YouTube	Banner ads and reminders for past visitors

The simplest split is by intent. Search and Shopping answer a search and bring orders fastest. Demand Gen, Video and Display put the product in front of people while they watch or read. Performance Max does both. The whole funnel with Meta, TikTok and email is in types of online advertising.

Where Google Ads show: every placement

Google Ads appear on seven kinds of placement, and each campaign type reaches only some of them.

Placement	Search	Shopping	PMax	Demand Gen	Video	Display
Google Search	Yes	Yes	Yes	No	No	No
Shopping tab	No	Yes	Yes	No	No	No
YouTube	No	No	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes*
Gmail	No	No	Yes	Yes	No	No
Discover	No	No	Yes	Yes	No	No
Google Maps	No	No	Yes	Beta	No	No
Display Network	Optional**	No	Yes	Yes	No	Yes

* Google lists YouTube among the properties where Display campaigns serve.
** A Search campaign with Display Expansion switched on also shows on sites and apps, using spare search budget. Since October 2026 this is controlled with channel priority and an optional daily budget cap per channel. For pure search, switch the Display Network off in the campaign settings.

The table shows why Performance Max is the widest campaign: according to Google it reaches YouTube, Display, Search, Discover, Gmail and Maps from a single campaign. Demand Gen is strongest where people browse content: YouTube Shorts, the YouTube home feed, Discover and Gmail, as described on Google's Demand Gen page.

Search campaign: when it is your store's first campaign

Search is the first campaign for most new stores: a text ad shown to people typing the product or category name, with every search that brought a click in the report.

If you sell into several countries, run one Search campaign per country and language, each leading to a page in that language with prices in the local currency. In CloudCart that is a language version of the store or a separate store per country, all from one admin. You also need purchase tracking (GA4 or Google Tag Manager) and fast product pages.

Shopping campaign: product cards from your feed

A Shopping campaign shows the product as a card with image, name, price and store name, in search results and in the Shopping tab. There are no keywords: Google matches the search to your products using the product feed in Merchant Center. The feed quality (exact name, price, availability, barcode) decides how well your products show.

Shopping ads do not run in every EU country. Google's table of supported countries includes Germany, Austria, Italy, France, Spain, the Netherlands, Belgium, Poland, Czechia, Slovakia, Hungary, Romania, Greece, Portugal, Ireland, Denmark, Finland and Sweden. Bulgaria, Croatia, Slovenia, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Cyprus, Luxembourg and Malta are not on it. In those countries Search, Performance Max and Demand Gen still run with text, images and video. What this means for a store selling in Bulgaria is in Google Merchant Center and Google Shopping.

What CloudCart does for Shopping

1. The Merchant Center connection. In the admin: Apps → Google Shopping, sign in with your Google account and enter the Merchant Center ID. CloudCart sends the catalog straight to Google.
2. Automatic updates. On plans that include them, switch them on and pick the fields (name, price, discount, availability and more). A new price goes to Google when you save the product.
3. Destinations. Tick the unpaid product listings, Shopping ads, Surfaces across Google and Dynamic remarketing (for remarketing in Display and Demand Gen).
4. One country per store. The feed uses the store's main language, country and currency, so for Germany and Italy with local prices you run a separate CloudCart store per country, each with its own Merchant Center ID.
5. Filtering products in Google Ads. Every product from CloudCart carries custom_label_0 = CloudCart. Use it to split product groups in Shopping or Performance Max.

Performance Max: every placement from one campaign

Performance Max (PMax) is a campaign where you set the goal, budget and assets, and Google decides where to show the ad: Search, Shopping, YouTube, Display, Discover, Gmail or Maps. It optimises for your primary conversion action, so purchase tracking is a must.

PMax is built from asset groups (headlines, descriptions, images, logos, videos) plus a Merchant Center feed, with audience signals such as your customer list and search themes.

One rule decides how PMax and Search work together. Google states that Search campaigns with an exact match keyword take priority over Performance Max, while search themes in PMax rank the same as phrase and broad match keywords. In practice, exact match keywords for your best sellers and your brand stay in Search, and PMax looks for new buyers around them.

Demand Gen: YouTube, Discover and Gmail for new customers

Demand Gen shows image, carousel and video ads on YouTube, Discover, Gmail and the Display Network. It is for people who are not searching for your product yet but look like your buyers.

Demand Gen supports a Merchant Center product feed: product formats show on YouTube, Gmail, Discover and the Display Network, and promotion assets (a discount or promo code) also need a feed. Bidding can target clicks, conversions or conversion value. For target CPA, Google suggests a daily budget of at least 10 times the target CPA.

What CloudCart does for Demand Gen

1. Your visitor audience. Apps → Google Dynamic Remarketing, with the Google Ads ID in the AW-… format, the conversion label and the "Retail" type. If you use Google Tag Manager, set remarketing up there instead, never both.
2. Your customer list. In Marketing → Segments, build a segment, for example customers who placed an order, limited to subscribers who agreed to marketing, and export it with "Generate CSV file". In Google Ads you upload it as a Customer Match list. Unsubscribed people never go into such a list.
3. The promotion. A discount or promo code from Marketing → Discounts, shown in the ad's promotion asset.
4. The goal. Google advises optimising Demand Gen for a lighter event such as add to cart. The add_to_cart event goes from CloudCart to GA4 and Google Tag Manager.

YouTube ads: video campaigns and formats

YouTube ads for an online store run through three campaign types: Demand Gen (for sales and traffic), Video (for reach, views and ad sequences) and Performance Max (where video is one of the assets). Video campaigns now have subtypes for reach (Video reach), views (Get views) and ad sequences (Ad sequence).

Format	Where it shows	Size	Length
Skippable in-stream	Before, during or after a YouTube video	16:9, 1920 × 1080	15 seconds recommended
In-feed	YouTube search, home feed and watch next	16:9, 9:16 or 1:1	15 seconds recommended
Bumper	Before, during or after a video, not skippable	16:9, 1920 × 1080	6 seconds recommended
Shorts ad	Between videos in Shorts	9:16, 1080 × 1920	6 to 60 seconds

Start with one 15-second video showing the product in use, price and delivery, in 16:9 and 9:16. If you sell in several countries, add subtitles in each shopper's language. See AI video ads and YouTube ads for ecommerce.

Display ads: banners on websites and apps

Display ads show banners across the Google Display Network. For an online store they work best as remarketing for products someone viewed and did not buy.

From June 2026 Display campaigns move into Demand Gen as the "Google Display Network" channel, according to the same Demand Gen page. Advertisers can move existing campaigns with a migration tool, after that new campaigns can only be created in Demand Gen, and the remaining ones are migrated automatically. Start a new banner campaign directly in Demand Gen with only the Display Network channel.

Dynamic remarketing shows the exact products a visitor viewed, with the price from the feed. In CloudCart it needs the Google Dynamic Remarketing app (or a remarketing tag in GTM) and your products in Merchant Center with the Dynamic remarketing destination ticked. The banner works alongside abandoned cart emails: it also reaches visitors who never left an email address.

Important: under the EU ePrivacy Directive, storing or reading cookies that a service does not strictly need requires the visitor's consent after clear information (Directive 2002/58/EC, Article 5(3), EUR-Lex). Remarketing cookies are in that group. In CloudCart consent comes from Apps → GDPR, Cookies, with the "Google Consent Mode" group switched on. More in GDPR and cookies for an online store.

Which campaign you need: by your store's stage

Your store's situation	Campaign	Why
New store, products people search for by name	Search	Full control of keywords and budget, a report on every search
Large catalog approved in Merchant Center, a target country on Google's list	Shopping or PMax with a feed	Image and price in search, no keywords for every product
Tracked purchases and a steady flow of orders	Performance Max	The system has data to learn from and splits budget across placements
New product or brand nobody searches for	Demand Gen	Shows the product on YouTube, Discover and Gmail to people similar to your buyers
Many visitors, few orders	Demand Gen with remarketing (Display Network)	Reminds visitors of the products they viewed
Selling into a country without Shopping ads	Search plus PMax or Demand Gen without product formats	Text, images and video run where product cards do not

Bidding strategies: where to start

The bidding strategy tells Google what to buy with your budget.

Goal	Strategies	When in your store
Clicks	Maximize clicks, manual CPC	A new campaign with no purchase data
Conversions	Maximize conversions, target CPA (tCPA)	Purchase tracking works and orders come in regularly
Conversion value	Maximize conversion value, target ROAS (tROAS)	Products at different prices, when the goal is revenue
Visibility	Target impression share, CPM	Your brand in search, video and display for reach
Views	Cost per view (CPV)	Video campaigns for views

Conversion and value strategies rely on the primary "Purchase" action. CloudCart sends the purchase event once per order, with the value and currency, so tROAS is calculated from real revenue.

Ad sizes and assets for every campaign: the table

Each campaign asks for a different set of assets. The table collects the main requirements from Google Ads ad format specifications.

Asset	Search	Performance Max	Demand Gen	Display (responsive)
Headlines	up to 15, 30 characters each	3 to 15, 30 characters each	1 to 5, 40 characters each (at least one up to 30)	1 to 5, 30 characters each
Long headline	none	1 to 5, 90 characters each	none	1, up to 90 characters
Descriptions	up to 4, 90 characters each	2 to 5, 90 characters each	1 to 5, 90 characters each	1 to 5, 90 characters each
Landscape image 1.91:1	1200 × 628 (min. 600 × 314), optional	1200 × 628 (min. 600 × 314), up to 20	1200 × 628 (min. 600 × 314), up to 20	1200 × 628 (min. 600 × 314), up to 15
Square image 1:1	1200 × 1200 (min. 300 × 300)	1200 × 1200 (min. 300 × 300), up to 20	1200 × 1200 (min. 300 × 300), up to 20	600 × 600 (min. 300 × 300), up to 15
Portrait image 4:5	none	960 × 1200, optional	960 × 1200, optional	none
Logo	1:1, 1200 × 1200 (min. 128 × 128)	1:1, 1200 × 1200 (min. 128 × 128); 4:1 optional	1:1, 1200 × 1200 (min. 144 × 144)	1:1 or 4:1, optional
Video	none	16:9, 1:1, 9:16, from 10 seconds, up to 15	16:9, 9:16 or 4:5, 1:1; 10 to 60 seconds recommended	16:9, 1:1, 2:3, optional, up to 5

Performance Max images are JPG or PNG up to 5 MB. Without your own video Google may generate one, so upload videos in all three orientations. A Demand Gen carousel has 2 to 10 cards. Headlines in German or Polish run longer than in English, so write each language's headlines within the 30-character limit from the start. Sizes for Facebook and Instagram are in Meta Ads placements and sizes.

How to see in your store which campaign sells

Google Ads counts conversions by its own model; your store sees the real orders. In CloudCart, orders by traffic source are in the store reports, and GA4 receives each purchase with its value. Connecting GA4 and Google Tag Manager is covered in GA4 and Google Tag Manager for an online store.

Video and Demand Gen often lead to a later purchase, so check assisted conversions in GA4 too. The comparison can also be done by an AI assistant connected to your store with a PAT token (Claude Code, ChatGPT or Gemini CLI): it matches Google Ads spend with CloudCart orders by campaign type and by country.

Mistakes when choosing a campaign type

• Performance Max without purchase tracking. The campaign optimises for whatever goal you give it. Without purchase as the primary action it chases clicks and cheap impressions.
• One campaign for all of Europe. Each country is its own auction, so split campaigns by country.
• A customer list without consent. Upload only people who agreed to marketing messages to Customer Match.

CloudCart gives you the Google Analytics, Google Tag Manager, Data Layer, Google Dynamic Remarketing and Google Shopping apps in one admin, with 0% commission on sales, so your target ROAS does not have to cover a platform share. Feed limits per plan are on pricing. Questions: support@cloudcart.com.

Frequently asked questions