Before starting, make sure you set up Shopping Booster and add the Supplemental feed to Google Ads first. See this set of articles.
Why use Shopping Booster with Demand Gen?
Demand Gen Feed-only campaigns serve product ads across YouTube Home Feed, YouTube Shorts, YouTube Watch Next, Discover, and Gmail. Without profit-based segmentation, Google's algorithm allocates budget equally across your entire catalog at launch, then optimizes toward conversion volume regardless of margin.
Shopping Booster solves this by passing your existing profit bucket labels into Demand Gen as a product filter at the ad group level. Each ad group sees only the products assigned to its bucket. Combined with bucket-specific bid targets, the algorithm learns to spend more on products that generate actual profit and less on products that erode it.
Step 1: Create the Demand Gen campaign
Create a new Demand Gen campaign and set up a separate ad group for each Shopping Booster bucket.
Within each ad group, filter the product feed using the corresponding custom label and Shopping Booster bucket. For example, the Highly Profitable ad group should only include products with the custom label bucket set to “Highly Profitable.”
Use Product-only ads as the ad format. Set a fallback URL at the campaign level pointing to your store homepage. The actual destination for each product will be the final URL from your shopping feed, not the fallback.
Headlines + Descriptions might show alongside your Shopping Title & Description attributes.
We recommend using generic assets that describe your store and encourage users to shop.
Step 2: Set bid targets on ad group level to steer spendings
Each ad group needs its own bid strategy target. Use tCPA or tROAS depending on your account's conversion volume. In most accounts, tROAS only becomes available after sustained conversion volume and spend history. Start with tCPA if tROAS is not yet available.
To set your starting tCPA targets, use your account's average purchase CPA as the baseline and adjust per bucket:
Highly Profitable: increase tCPA by up to 30% above baseline. You are willing to pay more to acquire these customers because the margin justifies it.
Profitable: use baseline tCPA.
Unprofitable: decrease tCPA by up to 30% below baseline. The algorithm needs to work harder to justify spend here.
Low Traffic: set a conservative tCPA. These products have no conversion history yet and should receive minimal investment until data accumulates.
Note: these are starting points. Adjust after two to three weeks once conversion data per bucket is visible.
Where Demand Gen Feed-only product ads appear
Mobile: YouTube Home Feed, YouTube Shorts, Discover, Gmail
Desktop: YouTube Home Feed, YouTube Search, YouTube Watch Next, Gmail
What to monitor after launch
Check impression share distribution across buckets after the first week. The Highly Profitable and Profitable ad groups should attract the majority of impressions over time as the algorithm learns the bid signal. If Low Traffic or Unprofitable buckets are consuming a disproportionate share of budget in the first days, adjust bids accordingly.
Related articles
How to Set Up Shopping Booster for Google Ads