Microsoft Shopping for Food and Pet Catalogues

Where the catalogue should actually go: For a French brand, Microsoft Shopping is an export channel. In the accounts I run, the same catalogue placed in the United Kingdom and the United States returns a fraction of Google Shopping volume at a materially lower cost per click, while the same catalogue in France returns a rounding error. So the first deliverable is a decision about which markets receive the feed at all, and that decision is usually two markets, not five. Feed strategy, and why I rarely use the Google import: Microsoft Merchant Center will pull your Google feed. That is convenient and it copies French truths into markets where they are false: prices carrying TVA, delivery promises based on domestic carriers, availability driven by a warehouse that does not ship there. I run a separate file per store where pricing, shipping and availability differ by market, and use the Google import only for catalogues genuinely identical across borders. Disapprovals that actually bite are GTIN and MPN mismatches, landing page prices that disagree after currency conversion, and restricted categories. An economic difference worth knowing before you model this: There is no Comparison Shopping Service on Microsoft. The margin European advertisers get through a CSS partner on Google does not exist here, so cost per click comparisons built on Google economics will be wrong in both directions. I model Microsoft on its own numbers. Structure, and what it is for: Product filters at campaign level, listing groups split by a custom label carrying margin band and shelf life rather than by product type. Best sellers separated from the tail so the tail cannot quietly absorb the budget. I run standard shopping wherever the product and query reports are readable, and move to Performance Max only when conversion volume justifies losing that visibility, which in Microsoft is later than most people assume. Food and pet catalogues have physical constraints that decide the account: Shelf life determines which items can be advertised into a market at all once transit time is counted. Cold chain removes whole ranges from export. A multipack of wet pet food has shipping economics that fail outside France before any bidding decision is made. Alcohol brings Loi Evin into French-facing creative and a separate set of category restrictions abroad. I go through the range against these before writing the account, and the usual outcome is that a minority of items carry the spend. Measurement: Margin-weighted return, not revenue return. Cost of goods or margin bands carried through a custom label so bidding optimises toward something you actually keep. Product-level reporting reviewed monthly against stock, because a shopping account bidding on items your warehouse cannot supply is the most expensive fault in this channel and the slowest to notice. Not included: Feed generation out of your PIM or CMS. Product photography. Catalogue-wide translation; I write the title and attribute rules and apply them to the products carrying the spend, and a translator applies them across the rest. Google Shopping management. Marketplace listings. Who this is not for: Brands whose cross-border shipping, duties and returns are not resolved. Microsoft Shopping will find you customers in markets you cannot serve profitably, and I will not build the account that does it. Also anyone wanting a France-only Microsoft Shopping account: the volume is not there, and I would rather say so now than bill for discovering it together over a quarter. How the engagement starts: Merchant Center store setup and feed diagnosis, then a written market recommendation before any campaign exists. If the recommendation is that only one market is worth the catalogue, that is the recommendation you get.