The challenge
Rich in data, poor in use: a rigid structure capped the potential.
notebooksbilliger.de (NBB) is one of the largest online retailers for notebooks, smartphones, tablets and more, with a correspondingly large product range and a strong passion for data. In performance marketing, especially in Google Shopping, that data foundation was meant to be fully usable.
Until then, the Shopping campaigns ran through a large third-party provider that imposed a rigid, barely adjustable structure. NBB had almost no room to individualize and could not tap its own data potential.
On top of that came repeated placements of the same products across different campaigns and difficulty cleanly separating promo products. A structure compatible with Smart Bidding, allowing coarse and fine-grained campaigns in parallel, was not dynamically achievable.
Our approach
A flexible, feed-driven automation, built together and agile.
Building on years of collaboration in search, we developed a Google Shopping automation with NBB along MVP principles, in several agile cycles with direct feedback. Four building blocks:
- 01
Requirements & MVP
Start with requirements analysis and market exploration, then agile development cycles with direct feedback from NBB.
- 02
Feed-driven structure
The tool reads the live product feed and generates the Google Ads campaign structure automatically, updating only what has changed.
- 03
Rule-based flexibility
Per-account configurable strategies; promo products and special focuses are split into their own campaigns via feed flags.
- 04
Smart-Bidding compatibility
Products move between coarse and fine-grained campaigns without losing their performance history.
- rigid, barely adjustable provider structure
- almost no individualization of own campaigns
- duplicate placement of the same products
- no clean separation of promo products
- not dynamically compatible with Smart Bidding
- freely configurable, rule-based campaign structure
- automatic updates straight from the product feed
- promo products cleanly in their own campaigns
- Smart-Bidding-compatible, performance history preserved
- NBB's manual optimizations are never overwritten
The results
Minimal effort, maximum benefit.
The jointly built solution transfers product-feed changes into the campaign structure fully automatically. In a test period, 25 percent of products in the feed changed within one week and 41 percent within two weeks; accordingly 43 percent of product groups were adjusted automatically within one week and 79 percent within two weeks.
Keeping this data current by hand would be barely feasible for a team. NBB gains time for data-based analysis and strategic decisions instead of maintaining campaigns manually. The first structural change was already tested ahead of Black Week 2022 and used successfully for the most important e-commerce season.
The collaboration is defined by proactive, forward-thinking input. The flexible, rule-based assignment of products to the right campaigns not only saves time but also leads to clear performance improvements.
What came next
A product that grows with everyday use.
The automation is continuously developed; every new feature comes from concrete day-to-day use cases and goes straight into practice. This lets NBB keep extending its successful campaign-structure concept without interruption and respond flexibly to every change in the catalog.
