What is a Catch-All Campaign in Google Ads? (+ Strategies)

If you run Performance Max or Shopping campaigns, you may have seen this recommendation:

Target all eligible Shopping products: You may achieve a higher conversion value if you advertise all your Shopping products with a universal campaign (Catch-All campaign). You see this recommendation because your Shopping feed contains online products without targeting.

Google Ads recommendation

The term Catch-All campaign may have come up elsewhere too. But what does it mean?

In this post, you’ll learn everything you need to know. I’ll also show you strategies for how to use this campaign type for your shop.

What is a Catch-All campaign?

In Google Ads, campaigns are called Catch-All or universal campaigns when they advertise all available products. There are no restrictions to specific product types, categories, etc.

A Catch-All campaign can be a Performance Max (PMax) or a Standard Shopping campaign. Both campaign types can advertise your products with Shopping ads.

Why does Google recommend Catch-All campaigns?

If you see the Catch-All recommendation in your account, it’s a sign that you’re not yet advertising all your available products with Shopping ads.

And is that a problem? Not at first.

If you decided that deliberately, because you want to take some products out of advertising, that’s no problem. If not, the recommendation is a good hint that there are settings like product filters in your campaigns that restrict some products.

Catch-All campaign not necessarily required

In most cases, it’s not the best choice to advertise all products in the same campaign, especially not if it’s the only campaign.

Often the products in an online shop are so different (e.g., in price, margin, or conversion rate) that it makes more sense to divide the inventory into subcategories and create a separate campaign for each. Then you can adjust budget and bidding strategy to the product properties.

In short: A Catch-All campaign isn’t necessarily required. Still, there are strategies where exactly this campaign type is very helpful.

As often, you shouldn’t blindly follow Google Ads recommendations here either. By the way, that also applies to the „Remove redundant keywords” recommendation for Search campaigns.

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Catch-All strategies: How can you use this campaign type?

The term Catch-All only stands for covering the entire inventory with a single campaign. For how to implement that concretely, there are different approaches.

Important: Don’t blindly adopt any of these tips. All businesses and accounts are different. Test what works for you.

1. As a supplement to existing campaigns

In many cases, a Catch-All campaign serves as a supplement to the existing campaign mix. Often you have main campaigns segmented by product categories, margin, or product performance.

With this setup, it often happens that many products aren’t considered by the campaigns. That can be due to product filters used or the Google algorithm’s tendency to focus on a small group of well-performing products.

A Catch-All campaign can be a good supplement. It advertises the products not considered by the others.

Tip: As a supplement, the Catch-All campaign should only get a small budget (e.g., 10 percent of the total). Additionally, I would recommend a higher Target ROAS than for the other campaigns.

2. A Catch-All campaign as main campaign for data basis

If you want to run Shopping ads, it can be a good idea, especially at the start, to advertise all products in a single campaign. A supplementary Search campaign is additionally recommended.

The idea: leverage the Google Ads algorithm’s tendencies. It’s good that Google focuses on the best products. After the campaign has run for some time, you can identify which of your products are worth advertising and which aren’t.

Structure the Catch-All campaign properly

Structure is important so you can recognize how your product groups work. Divide the campaign by product properties into different asset groups (for PMax) or ad groups (for Standard Shopping).

How to do that for PMax campaigns: Structure PMax Asset Groups Properly

Catch-All: Best as temporary main campaign only

In most cases, it makes sense to use the gained insights and further segment your campaigns.

If your budget allows, further structure your campaigns based on the data.

3. Feed-Only Performance Max as Catch-All variant

Unlike Standard Shopping, Performance Max campaigns by default run not only Shopping ads, but also Search, Display, or YouTube ads.

There’s a way to use PMax to only run ads based on your product feed. The campaign then only runs Shopping and dynamic remarketing ads.

In this article in detail: Feed-Only Performance Max Campaigns.

In short: Create the campaign via Google Merchant Center (so you can create it without asset requirements), then deactivate auto-generated assets in Google Ads.

Catch-All hygiene: Channel Distribution and Negative Keywords

Catch-All campaigns advertise broadly. Therefore, it’s important to check whether the channel distribution matches what you expect.

Use the Channel Performance Report: Regularly check the Channel Performance Report (PMax → Insights → Channel Performance). With Catch-All, it’s not uncommon for Display or YouTube to get disproportionately much budget without leading to conversions. When that happens, it’s a signal for adjustments (asset quality, audience signals, or negative keyword maintenance).

Negative Keywords as required hygiene: Since end of 2025, you can store up to 10,000 negative keywords directly in the campaign. With Catch-All, full use is worth it: clean up brand cannibalization, irrelevant search queries, and weak competitor terms. More in the article PMax Negative Keywords.

Catch-All campaign: Pros and cons

Pros of Catch-All

• Simple and uncomplicated: Simplifies campaign management since all products are in one campaign. Saves time and resources, especially with large product catalogs.
• Data collection: Catch-All campaigns make it possible to recognize which products resonate with users.
• Complete coverage: You ensure that all products have the opportunity to be advertised.

Cons of Catch-All

• Little control: Without product restrictions, you have little control over how your budget is used or which products are ultimately advertised.
• Same bidding strategy for all products: With an expensive product with good margin, the CPA can be higher or the ROAS lower than for a cheap product with tight margin. Catch-All doesn’t account for that.
• Few optimization options: With all products in one campaign, there are few optimization options.

Catch-All campaigns: No silver bullet

I hope I could explain the concept of the Catch-All campaign clearly. It’s important to understand that in most cases it’s not a good idea to have only one campaign that advertises all products equally.

And if that works for you: Great. But for me, that would also be a sign that you could get even more with a different campaign structure.

I keep seeing accounts with only a Catch-All Performance Max campaign. That may work at the start, but my recommendation is usually clear:

• Split the campaign (when enough data and budget available)
• Search campaigns as supplement

As a supplement to the campaign mix, a Catch-All campaign can be very helpful. It’s worth testing.

Thanks for reading.

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