The Checklist We Run Before Any Shopping Or PMax Campaign Goes Live
Shopping and Performance Max fail differently from Search. The campaign can be built perfectly and still underperform because the product feed is disapproved, the catalogue is lumped into one undifferentiated pool, or PMax is quietly eating your brand traffic and taking credit for it.
Get the checklist
No sales call required. The Excel file lands in your inbox in under a minute.
Or book a 30-minute callWith Shopping, the campaign is only as good as the feed underneath it
You can build a flawless Shopping or Performance Max campaign on top of a broken foundation and never know until the spend is wasted.
The feed looks submitted, but a chunk of products are disapproved and never show. Titles use raw manufacturer text instead of search language. Price and availability drift from the site. Every product sits in one undifferentiated pool, so best-margin items and dead stock compete for the same budget.
With Performance Max, brand searches can also get absorbed into the campaign, inflating reported numbers while incremental sales are not really there.
Feed-first, and built as a pass/fail gate.
Every applicable item has to be Pass or N/A before the campaign is allowed to go live.
Foundation before bids
Approval rates, required attributes, title quality, price and availability match, and account-level Merchant Center health come before campaign polish.
P0, P1 and P2
One P0 fail is a hard stop. You know what blocks launch and what can wait.
Controls included
Includes segmentation, Standard Shopping versus PMax decisions, asset groups, audience signals and brand exclusion controls.
Four tabs, built to run a real ecommerce launch
Overview and snapshot
Capture Merchant Center ID, feed source, target ROAS, new-customer goal and profit-tracking status before work starts.
Launch checklist
43 checks across feed foundation, Merchant Center health, conversion tracking, campaign type, segmentation, PMax asset groups, controls, bidding, budget and settings.
Launch log
Record baseline settings and sign-offs, including feed item count, segmentation model and whether brand exclusions were applied.
Post-launch cadence
What to check, what is safe to change, and what to leave alone from hour one through month one, tuned for ecommerce learning patterns.
Yes, we're an agency. This is our real launch gate, given away.
If your Shopping and PMax launches are already this rigorous, great. If not, this closes the gap.
This is the actual checklist we run before enabling client Shopping and PMax campaigns, not a teaser.
We give it away for the same reason we publish our own account research, including a study where one misconfigured setting distorted our own reported performance by five times: we would rather be useful and trusted than hold things back.
Run it on your own launches. If you would rather have a specialist run it every time, that is what we do. But the checklist is yours to keep regardless, no call required.
Launch your next Shopping or PMax campaign on a foundation you have actually checked
Get the editable 43-point launch checklist and use it before the next Shopping or PMax campaign spends its first dollar.
Get the checklist
Send me the checklistFree editable Excel checklist, no call required, yours to keep.
Questions before you download
Is this really free?
Yes, no call required. Enter your name and email and the Excel file is sent to your inbox.
What format is it?
An editable Excel .xlsx file with status dropdowns and columns for owner, due date and evidence.
Does it cover both Shopping and Performance Max?
Yes. It includes the deliberate choice between Standard Shopping and PMax, plus checks for PMax asset groups, audience signals and brand controls.
Why does the feed come first?
Because Shopping and PMax optimize toward whatever is in the feed. A disapproved or undifferentiated feed means the campaign is aiming at the wrong products.
Is there a Search version?
Yes, a separate Search campaign launch checklist.