Pmax automated: How to revive zero-click products and turn them into gold

Who are the zombie products

The issue with Performance Max is that it tends to focus primarily on a few products that have historically performed well, repeatedly displaying them across all Google Networks. As a result, many potentially strong products are overlooked by the algorithm and remain untested by Google. There's no guarantee that these products will ever be tested. Some specialists refer to these items as "zero-clicks" or "ghost products," while others simply call them "zombies."

With this automation strategy, we'll show you how to revive these products and make them shine.

Case study

One of our clients specializes in fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG). While they maintain strong profit margins, their primary challenge has been selling products quickly to make room for new inventory. Among all products, the majority had zero clicks, indicating slower sales and occupying valuable warehouse space. By implementing the 'No-Click' campaign, they revitalized these products, achieving rapid sales and a solid ROAS of up to 220% for the overall campaign. This approach also allowed them to categorize revived products more accurately according to their primary ROAS strategy.

6 reasons why you should promote zombie products

1. Make your products work. Right now, they’re just sitting on your shelves, doing nothing.
2. Revive seasonal products: Seasonal items often go unnoticed by the algorithm, even during their peak periods, and may be considered "dead." Including them in your zero-click campaign increases the chances that the algorithm will boost them at the right time, ensuring they reach their full potential during key seasons.
3. Uncover hidden potential. They could be better or worse. But you will never know unless you promote them. 
4. Diversify revenue streams. Promoting zero-click products helps diversify your portfolio, reducing reliance on a small number of items and spreading risk.
5. Better results of PPC. You may find niches with less competition and thus a higher chance for conversion.
6. Long-term growth. As these products gain traction, they could become your future bestsellers.

TIP: Before we begin, you might wanna check our Knowledge base for basic Performance Max setup or Data enrichment guide for Google Ads product stats.

First step: Import data you need

Google's product filtering options are quite limited. You can only segment your products by brand, category, product type, or custom label in your Listing groups. With these options, it's impossible to segment only zombie products. With Dotidot, you can select any value from your data source and use it to create conditions. 

So let's now import the data we need: 

1. Navigate to “Data Sources,” select your data source for the future campaign, go to Data enrichment section and select Google Ads product stats
2. Choose your Google Ads account and, in the “Data Selection,” ensure that the “Clicks” metric is selected.
3. Don’t forget to select time ranges—longer periods will provide more valuable insights. For this example we need a 30 days time range.

TIP: While we mainly focus on zero-click products, you can apply a similar strategy to products with low or no impressions.

Second step: Segment products in your campaign

Let’s return to your campaign and to the “Product selection” step. We need to identify products that had zero clicks in the last 30 days, but we should exclude new products that haven't had the opportunity to participate in auctions. For this, we need two variables:

• Variable “ads_clicks_30days”: This variable was generated after you enriched your data source with Google Ads product stats in the previous step.
• Variable “first_seen_on”: This timestamp records when each new product first appeared in the feed. This variable is generated automatically.

Use the combination of these two variables to identify the products you need. Use these conditions:

ads_clicks_30days → equals to (including) → 0

first_seen_on → older or equal than → 7 days

We have now created a product set that includes items with zero clicks in the last 30 days while excluding products that have been in the feed for less than 7 days. This ensures the products in the set are no longer new and have had a chance to be tested by Google.

Important: Don’t forget to name and save this new product set, as you’ll need it in the next step.

You can now launch your campaign.

TIP: We suggest setting the bidding strategy to 'Maximize conversion value' and setting the target ROAS to twice the expected value.

Third step: Exclude zombie products from active campaigns

To effectively revive your zombie products, you’ll need to exclude them from active campaigns to avoid having them included in multiple campaigns simultaneously. The advantage of product sets is that I can quickly exclude a specific set from the listing group associated with the asset group. Just move to your active automated Performance Max campaign and

1. Navigate to “Product selection”
2. Click “Add product set”
3. Find the product set with zero clicks
4. And click toggle on “Exclude”.

And your zero-click products are now excluded.

You're now done

That's it, you've done and it only took several minutes. Automation will now take care of it and optimize your campaign 24/7.

TIP: You can combine multiple conditions at once. If you want to run zero-click campaigns for specific products of a particular brand, return to the second step and add additional conditions such as brand, category, or any other criteria you need.