AI Max for Shopping: Google's New Bidding Levers

Google Shopping strategies for more revenue, in your inbox

Every other week: what is changing in Google Shopping, what we see in our customers' accounts, and what to do about it.

How consumers search is changing fast. They move between AI Overviews, Gemini, classic search, YouTube and your shop before they buy – and expect every platform to be consistent.

At csspartner.io, we track these developments so your CSS-powered Shopping strategy stays current. Below: the three Google Ads updates that matter right now – AI Max for Shopping, Product Value Adjustments and New Prospects – and exactly how to apply them.

1. AI Max for Shopping: Getting Standard Shopping Ready for the Next Era of Search

AI Max for Shopping is in a closed beta and gets classic retail strategies ready for the next generation of search. Your product listings appear natively in AI Overviews and AI Mode as soon as these surfaces roll out in CSS programme countries.

It bundles two opt-in settings. Text Customization dynamically rewrites ad copy and product titles to match long-tail and conversational queries in AI Overviews and AI Mode — while also lifting relevance on classic Shopping placements. Final URL Expansion unlocks feed-driven text ads and dynamic landing pages — category pages, filter views — and dramatically widens your coverage on deep research queries.

csspartner.io's take: AI Max for Shopping is built for standard Shopping advertisers who want to move into AI formats without losing control. For broader cross-channel performance, Performance Max remains Google's primary recommendation. Want to try the beta? Ask your Google contact for access.

2. Product Value Adjustments: Real-Time Control Without Restructuring

One of the biggest hurdles in Shopping is having to rebuild campaign structures every time the business changes. Product Value Adjustments (PVA) solve that.

With PVA, you steer Smart Bidding more aggressively or more defensively on specific inventory slices — without touching your campaign setup. You set value multipliers directly in Merchant Center or Google Ads to optimise for real business outcomes.

01. Strategic inventory management. "Jackets are moving slowly and the new season's coming — I want to push them across several campaigns before fresh stock arrives." The fix: reliably speed up sell-through on excess inventory. Global rollout later this year.

02. Promo and seasonal alignment. "Late August, back-to-school searches are exploding — I want to ramp up electronics and school supplies now, without a new campaign." The fix: adjust bidding weight to seasonal peaks in real time.

03. Prioritising profitability. "Two similar products, but my own-brand item has a much higher margin — bid more aggressively on it." The fix: optimise for real profitability, not raw revenue.

04. Pushing high performers. "Our shop data shows a bestseller that Google Ads hasn't picked up on yet — I want to give it a boost." The fix: feed in first-party signals from multiple channels so the algorithm recognises hidden bestsellers.

3. Smarter Acquisition: New Prospects Mode & Loyalty Annotations

Finding genuinely new buyers is getting harder. That's why Google is rolling out two updates that sharpen targeting for new customers and high-value buyers.

The upcoming New Prospects mode goes beyond classic new-customer-acquisition bidding and focuses entirely on users who don't yet know your brand. Automated exclusions filter out anyone who has already bought from you (via Customer Match and tags), searched for your brand, visited your shop or app, or interacted with your ads or content across Google and YouTube. That way, budget flows specifically into cold, incremental traffic instead of already-known buyers.

Loyalty Annotations are expanding globally — member pricing and shipping benefits in organic and paid listings. Six European markets already have it; the rollout continues across the US, CA, AU, GB, DE, FR, ES, IT, NL and more. For untargeted audiences, Google shows a dual-price format with the standard price and the member price side by side — a direct incentive to join the loyalty programme.