Amongst other ideas to optimise the campaign, we identified that one of the major issues was that the average cost per click was too high for a typical shopping campaign. Shopping ads tend to drive a high volume of traffic, which in most cases means that the campaigns may have a lower conversion rate (compared to search campaigns). This is normal behavior which can be attributed to the fact that shopping ads are likely to attract users driven by price, who are also likely to consider several brands before buying.
As such, in order to make the campaign sustainable and profitable, the cost had to be reduced significantly.
Driven by our analysis of current and historical data, our approach was to reset the bid strategy and all the bids in the campaign. Additionally, we regrouped the products to align them with our new bid strategy and maximise chances to convert, but also maximise profitability focusing on the ROI we had forecasted for each category of products and items in the product feed.