How to Use Ads

What is the difference between Target ROAS and GMV Max ( Automatic Bid Ads - Sales Boost Ads )?

GMV Max ( Automatic Bid Ads - Drive Sales Ads ) is an upgraded version of Target ROAS that will be available to all Shopee sellers. Sellers will be able to specify their ROAS target just like Target ROAS, however, the key difference is that sellers will be able to drive a wider range of traffic with GMV Max.

Additionally, GMV Max allows sellers to dynamically adjust spend, bids, and performance at the product level across all placements, including search results placements and featured products, within a single setting, helping sellers manage their campaigns more efficiently.

What is the difference between Auto Bidding (General Ads) and GMV Max?

By default, all campaigns created with manual product selection and automatic pricing will be adjusted to GMV Max, as seen in the “Enable target ROAS via upsell ads” section of your budget settings. All GMV Max campaigns will be specified as “ Automatically bid (upsell ads )”, and to create an Automatically bid (generic ads) ad , sellers will need to manually uncheck this checkbox.

Ad performance Auto-bid (generic ads) will be optimized by Shopee's system, while GMV Max campaigns allow sellers to set specific ROAS targets for their products, giving sellers more visibility. In addition, sellers have a better chance of increasing their sales by leveraging wider traffic volume.

What type of ads are suitable for Auto-Bid Ads (General Ads) or GMV Max?

Auto-Bid (General) ads are best for driving sales automatically without a specific ROAS target, but if you want to drive sales while maintaining your ROAS target, GMV Max is the recommended campaign feature.

GMV Max Placement and Viewing

1. How GMV Max works

GMV Max enables sellers to leverage a wider range of traffic, giving them more opportunities to increase their visibility with their target audience and drive more GMV efficiently.

2. Where will GMV Max ads appear?

GMV Max will appear on product feeds across platforms, including search, featured product, video, game, and coin pages.

Following best practices in setting up Ads across all locations, Shopee can monitor and control the bid price across multiple environments, ensuring that the overall spend is balanced with the GMV received for the product to achieve the set ROAS target.

GMV Max: ROAS Targeting

1. What is the recommended ROAS target value based on?

The ROAS recommendation value is customized based on the selected product and calculated from competitor insights for similar products and categories on Shopee. Shopee also takes into account the historical performance of the product and store when recommending a customized ROAS target.

Which recommends that sellers use the ROAS value that Shopee recommends the most.

2. How should I set my target ROAS?

Sellers can set a custom ROAS value between 1 and 50, and should look at a product's historical ROAS performance as a starting point when setting a custom ROAS target. In general, we do not recommend sellers specify a ROAS target higher than 25% of Shopee's recommended maximum ROAS value.

To advise sellers not to set unrealistic ROAS targets, an alert will appear if the submitted target is significantly higher than recommended.

3. What happens if I set my ROAS target too high?

When sellers set their ROAS targets too high, spend is tracked more strictly and GMV Max is more selective in focusing on ad performance. Because it prioritizes performance over volume, GMV Max unintentionally limits spend, limiting the potential GMV performance a product can achieve.

For example

When sellers set a high ROAS target of 14 compared to the average ROAS of 10, GMV Max will be more selective and efficient to ensure that the higher ROAS target is achieved. This means that the visibility will be affected as well, with the decline in visibility limiting Shopee's opportunity to expand the product's GMV potential.

What happens if Shopee's recommended ROAS value is lower than desired?

Shopee will provide 3 levels of ROAS target suggestions for sellers to choose from. If the options are lower than what you need, you may choose to create a custom ROAS target for your campaign. For guidance on how to set the right ROAS target, 

Suitability of GMV Max products

1. Is GMV Max more suitable for new products or best-selling products?

GMV Max can be used effectively for both new and best-selling products.

For new products, it's recommended to start with a lower target ROAS, using the store's category ROAS as a benchmark. This will help build traffic and gradually improve ROAS. Additionally, merchants can choose to set up a New Product Boost campaign for newly listed products to accelerate reach. Merchants can reference their achieved ROAS performance as a starting point for their product's GMV Max campaign.

For core products , sellers can use ROAS from past campaigns as a baseline to further target and optimize their performance. To identify similar high-potential products, sellers can use the GMV Max Product Recommendations tab via manual product selection.

GMV Max Settings

1. If a product already has an advertising campaign, can GMV Max be created for that item?

Sellers can set GMV Max for any product, including products with existing ads .

If an active ad has an overlapping campaign duration, a notification will appear informing the seller that the GMV Max campaign will automatically stop the active ad for this product.

2. If the seller has already set continuous ads for item A, can it be changed to GMV Max?

Yes, sellers can easily do this by clicking the “Upgrade to GMV Max” button on the ad listing page for the selected campaign.

Entrypoint via Ads Listing Page

Entrypoint via Ads Detail Page

3. Can I still use Target ROAS?

Target ROAS will no longer be supported with the launch of GMV Max, so merchants will not be able to enable or create new Target ROAS campaigns.

4. Can GMV Max be disabled?

To disable GMV Max, sellers can pause or stop their ads, then they can create new ads for their products.

Is there a limit on the number of items to use GMV Max?

Currently, sellers can only select one item for each GMV Max campaign.

I have an adult product listing that is showing ads, but suddenly the ads are disabled (even though I only have them enabled in search results). What is the reason?

Adult items are not allowed to run within Featured Product placements. Additionally, all GMV Max campaigns containing adult items will be automatically placed in paused mode. Sellers can only create ads in manual pricing mode or automatic pricing (generic ads) set to search result placements for such products.

Can I change my ROAS target after launching a GMV Max campaign?

It is not recommended to change the ROAS target initially as the campaign will go through a learning phase which allows the system to learn and make your campaign more stable and efficient to achieve the campaign target. Sellers will be notified when their campaign exits the learning phase via the ad details page.

Once the campaign is stable, sellers may choose to edit the ROAS. However, doing so will result in a new learning cycle for Shopee's system as Shopee needs to adjust to meet the new ROAS target.

GMV Max Performance

1. My sales figures are still low even though I have achieved my ROAS target.

The performance of a GMV Max campaign is measured by how well it achieves the specified ROAS goal. Once the ROAS goal is achieved, merchants are advised to increase campaign spend to further maximize ROAS and achieve higher GMV for the product.

If there is a limited budget for GMV Max, Shopee will not be able to effectively leverage the wider traffic opportunities to expand GMV efficiency.

Make sure you set realistic ROAS targets for your selected products.

2. I am currently running self-bid ads. If I start running GMV Max, will the GMV Max algorithm be able to learn anything from my ongoing ads?

All GMV Max campaigns are separate and have unique campaign codes, but Shopee can leverage previous data to optimize performance during the Learning Phase. 

During the learning phase, sellers should refrain from changing campaign settings as the system explores the best way to achieve the campaign goals.

3. Where can I see the performance of GMV Max?

Sellers can view the performance of all their GMV Max campaigns by going to the Listing section on the Shopee Ads homepage and filtering campaigns by type to “Auto Bidding (GMV Max)”. From here, sellers can click on individual campaigns to view their performance details.