How do I connect Merchant Center (product catalog) to a Google Performance Max campaign?
You can connect Merchant Center to Performance Max directly in Ads Editor, both when creating a campaign and when editing one.
New campaign: in Google Ads, click the green Create campaign button → type Performance Max. In the search themes step, the Merchant Center / Google Shopping block appears:
- Choose the Merchant Center linked to the account. Without product catalog creates the PMax campaign without products.
- Feed label (optional): use it only if your feed has a label (e.g., BR). If left empty, all Merchant products are used.
Existing PMax: open Edit asset group on the campaign. The same block appears there. Choose the Merchant Center (and the label, if you have one) and save.
What happens: the PMax campaign starts advertising Google Shopping products and includes all products in the feed. The connection applies to the whole campaign, and every asset group that had no products now gets all of them. You can refine by brand, category or specific product later in Google Ads itself.
If the Merchant Center isn't linked to the Google Ads account, Ads Editor refuses before creating or saving (this also applies to standard Shopping campaigns). To link them: in Merchant Center, go to Settings › Apps & Services and link your Google Ads account. If an invitation is left pending, accept it in Google Ads, under Tools › Linked accounts. Then just open the block again.