How to Use Ads

About Auto Product Ad and Selecting Products for Ads

This feature is still in beta mode, and is only available to selected sellers. 

Shopee Ads currently offers 2 ways to promote your products: 

1. Automating your product promotion with an Auto Product Ad
2. Creating individual Product Ads for specific products

This article will explain the difference between creating an Auto Product Ad and creating individual Product Ads, as well as offer tips to optimise these options.

What is an Auto Product Ad?

An Auto Product Ad dynamically curates high potential products from your shop and showcases these products to relevant shoppers in high-traffic areas. Your Auto Product Ad is a one-stop advertising solution that takes care of everything, from product selection to bidding to performance optimisation.

Note: Your Auto Product Ad operates at the shop level and is a one-time setup. This means that your shop can only run one Auto Product Ad at any given time. You can pause, resume, or stop your Auto Product Ad anytime.

How do I set up an Auto Product Ad?

Setting up an Auto Product Ad is easy and can be done in a few clicks. To set up a new Auto Product Ad:

1. Go to create a new Product Ad.

2. Ensure that all placements are chosen and that the "Automatically select best products" option in the Products section is selected.

3. (Optional) Set a budget, duration, or ROAS (if applicable).

4. Click “Publish” to publish your Auto Product Ad.

Note: An Auto Product Ad is active in all placements by default. It is not possible to specify the Search placement or the Discovery placement for an Auto Product Ad. If you select “Search” or “Discovery” for Placement during setup, you will not be able to set up an Auto Product Ad.

What happens after I set up an Auto Product Ad?

After you publish your Auto Product Ad, Shopee's system will spend the first 2 weeks exploring different ways to promote your products to shoppers. It does this in order to learn about which products, placements, audiences, and delivery methods perform best. Products that are undergoing this learning process are labelled with a "Learning" tag.

During the initial "learning phase", it is normal and expected for the Auto Product Ad's performance to fluctuate. However, as the system accumulates more information about your products and shoppers, performance gradually stabilises and the ROAS typically improves.

To facilitate the learning process, we recommend letting your Auto Product Ad run normally during the first 2 weeks of delivery without pausing, stopping, or making significant edits to it; this lets you enjoy stable and reliable ad performance as soon as possible.

Why is the "Automatically select best products" option unavailable for me?

If the “Automatically select best products” option is greyed out for you when you try to create new Product Ads, ensure the following: 

1. The “All” option for the Placement setting must be currently selected.
2. You currently do not already have an Auto Product Ad that is ongoing, paused, or scheduled.

If your shop has fewer than 5 eligible products, you will not be able to run an Auto Product Ad.

What’s the difference between creating an Auto Product Ad and creating individual Product Ads for specific products?

With an Auto Product Ad, there is no need for you to actively manage which products are being promoted at a given time – the Auto Product Ad automatically prioritises products that have high potential for sales and conversions based on real-time traffic and shopper data. 

On the other hand, creating individual Product Ads for specific products allows you to selectively target which products you want to promote at certain schedules. Having individual Product Ads also gives you control over where and how each product is advertised.

The following table summarises more key differences between having an Auto Product Ad and having individual Product Ads.

Should I run an Auto Product Ad and individual Product Ads at the same time?

For complete coverage of your products, we recommend running an Auto Product Ad even if you already have individual Product Ads for your products, as your Auto Product Ad can help to fill in the gaps.

The following scenarios help to illustrate how our system allocates ad delivery when you have an Auto Product Ad running at the same time as individual Product Ads.

1. A product is already being advertised by my Auto Product Ad. What happens when I create a new Product Ad for this product?

When this new Product Ad and the Auto Product Ad are ongoing at the same time, the Product Ad will take priority over your Auto Product Ad. Your Auto Product Ad will temporarily exclude this product from its scope and prioritise other high-potential products that do not have active Product Ads.

2. I am already running Product Ads for most of my products. What happens when I create a new Auto Product Ad for my shop?

In this scenario, your Auto Product Ad will promote the remaining high-potential products that do not already have ongoing Product Ads.

Choosing the right products to advertise using individual Product Ads

Our algorithm constantly processes the available data to identify and recommend products that have high sales potential when advertised.

1. When creating ads on Seller Centre, the recommended products are highlighted with "Best Selling", "Good ROAS" or "Top Searched" tags. 

What are "Best Selling", "Good ROAS" and "Top Searched" products?

1. "Best Selling" products are the best-sellers within their categories, and have high potential to generate even more sales with ads. 
2. "Good ROAS" products have potential to achieve healthy Return on Advertising Spend (ROAS) when advertised, based on their organic sales and the average ads expense of their categories.
3. "Top Searched" products are associated with top searched keywords, and have potential to generate even more impressions and sales with ads.

Can I set up multiple Product Ads for each product?

Yes, it’s possible to have multiple Product Ads for each product. This allows you to run both bidding method (Manual Bidding and Auto Bidding) for a product at the same time, for example.

Note: If you create duplicate Product Ads that are active in the same placements and have the same bidding method, Shopee’s system will apply a queue system to the ad delivery such that no two duplicate ads are being delivered to shoppers at the same time.