Journal · · Rhiannon Vale
The feed is the campaign
Shopping interfaces are a costume. The file underneath is the media plan.
If the title is a SKU, the clicker learns nothing. If the price is yesterday’s, the clicker learns the wrong thing. If the SKU cannot carry CPA, the campaign is a charity.
Merchandising sits with whoever can change the file. Ads cannot compensate for a feed nobody owns. We have paused spend for a week while a title was fixed. That week was cheaper than a month of “optimising” the wrong products.
What actually moves Shopping
Titles a human would search. Availability that matches the warehouse. Exclusions for products that cannot carry the click. Diagnostics that matter: disapprovals, item updates, and the overlap between branded Shopping and text brand campaigns. We will not run both at full tilt without a reason.
When finance asks why Shopping moved, the honest answer is often “we stopped advertising the things you cannot make money on”. That sentence belongs in the pack. Reporting goes as cost per fulfilled order, not ROAS as a vibe.
Shopping starts in the feed, not in the bid.
Who this is for
Catalogues with real stock and a delivery promise you can keep. It is not for a ten-product dropshipping test with a three-week lead time you have not told the visitor. If you cannot change the file this week, we are not the desk for a Shopping retainer.