Google Shopping Ads (Performance Max)
Google Shopping Ads are product-based ads that show an image, a price and the merchant name directly in Google Search and are fed from the product data feed in Merchant Center. They are delivered through two campaign types that, according to Google's own help pages, exist side by side: classic Shopping campaigns with access to selected channels such as the Shopping tab, Google Search, Google Images and search partner sites, and Performance Max campaigns, which additionally run automatically across channels such as YouTube, Gmail, Demand Gen and Maps.
In practice
Since 2026, Performance Max has offered channel-level reporting for the first time, so advertisers can see how much budget goes to Shopping, Search or YouTube – previously the campaign was largely a black box. New brand controls also make it possible to exclude competitor brands from campaigns or to decide whether your own brand terms trigger PMax ads. For SEO work, the decisive point remains that ad quality depends on the same product data that feeds organic Shopping listings, so good feed maintenance pays off twice.