Google Shopping Ads for Picov’s Tack Shop: From Feed Disapproval to 4x ROAS

Client: Picov's Tack Shop, Ajax, Ontario · Scope: Google Merchant Center Management, Ecommerce PPC Campaigns · Duration: 12 months, 2022 to 2023

The Client

The Picov family has been in the horse industry for generations, opening Picov's Horsemen Centre in Ajax, Ontario in 1974. The retail arm carries western and English tack, riding apparel, grooming supplies, blankets, stable equipment and pet gear, stocking brands including Ariat, Wrangler, Stetson, Horseware Ireland and Back on Track.

Online, that translates to a Shopify catalogue running well past 700 active SKUs across deeply nested categories, sold to riders across Canada. Our Shopify SEO strategy helped structure and optimize the product catalogue for stronger search visibility.

It's an ideal Google Shopping candidate: high-intent product searches, strong brand names, considered purchases at real price points. The catalogue was ready. The infrastructure underneath it was not. This engagement grew out of a broader Digital Marketing Strategy Development process that looked at the whole account, not just the ads.

Starting From a Suspended Account

When we came in, the Merchant Center account had two compounding problems.

The product feed was disapproved

Not partially: the feed was rejected, which meant no products were eligible to serve. Whatever budget the store might have wanted to put behind Shopping was irrelevant, because there was nothing to bid on.

Account verification was unresolved

Merchant Center requires website claiming and verification, and policy checks around business identity, shipping, returns and contact details. Those were incomplete. An unverified account can't run Shopping regardless of feed quality.

It's worth being blunt about how ordinary this is. Merchant Center is unforgiving in a way the Google Ads interface isn't: a missing GTIN, a price mismatch between feed and landing page, an inaccurate availability status, or an unclear returns policy will take products or entire accounts offline with a notification that's easy to overlook. Shopify's default feed apps get a store roughly 80% of the way there, and the remaining 20% is where disapprovals live. This is exactly the kind of situation our Suspended Google Merchant Center Reinstatement Services are built for: diagnosing why an account or feed is blocked and clearing the path back to serving ads.

Why MAP Pricing Makes Shopping Ads Harder

Before the rebuild, one strategic constraint shaped everything.

Picov's is an authorized dealer for major equestrian brands. Those brands enforce Minimum Advertised Price policies, which means an Ariat boot is listed at the same price on Picov's site as on every other authorized dealer's site in the country.

In a Shopping results grid, that produces a row of near-identical tiles: same product, same photo supplied by the manufacturer, same price. You cannot undercut, and you cannot differentiate on the product itself.

So what's actually left to compete on?

• Feed quality: whether Google understands your product well enough to match it to the right query in the first place
• Title structure: the single biggest lever on Shopping match quality
• Image quality: where manufacturer photos are permitted, presentation still varies
• Availability accuracy: in-stock products outperform, and stale availability data destroys trust and performance
• Segmentation: bidding differently on products with different margins and sell-through rates

Every one of those lives in the feed. Which is why the feed rebuild was the strategy, not the setup step before it.

Rebuilding the Feed

1. Clear the account blockers first

Verification and claiming were resolved before anything else, along with the policy-side requirements: shipping settings, returns policy, contact information and business identity. No amount of feed optimisation matters while the account itself can't serve.

2. Rebuild product titles for how people search

Shopify exports product titles as merchandisers wrote them for a website. Those are rarely the terms a buyer types into Google. A title like "Bravo 12 Plus Turnout" means something to an existing customer and nothing to Google's matching algorithm.

Titles were restructured to lead with the attributes buyers actually search: brand, product type, key specification, size, colour, so that a search for a lightweight waterproof turnout blanket in a specific size could match the right product rather than a category page. Cleaner titles and product data also feed directly into Conversion Rate Optimization, since a shopper who lands on exactly the product they searched for is far more likely to complete the purchase.

3. Fix identifiers across 700+ SKUs

GTINs, MPNs and brand fields were completed and corrected. Missing identifiers are among the most common causes of disapproval, and products without them are matched far less confidently even when they do serve.

4. Map product types and Google categories properly

An equestrian catalogue is unusually deep: western tack, English tack, rider apparel, horse clothing, grooming, health care, stable equipment, pet. Correct Google product category assignment plus a consistent internal product-type taxonomy is what makes campaign segmentation possible later.

5. Add custom labels for control

Custom labels were applied for the things that determine bidding strategy but aren't visible in the standard feed: season, margin band, clearance status, brand tier. This is what allows a winter turnout blanket to be bid on differently in October than in April.

6. Synchronise availability and pricing

Feed price and availability had to match the live product page exactly and update on a schedule. Mismatches here are a leading cause of item-level disapproval, and they erode account trust cumulatively. This consistency also creates a stronger foundation for an effective ecommerce marketing strategy, ensuring shoppers see accurate product information throughout the buying journey.

The Three-Campaign Structure

The brand campaign deserves a note, because retailers often resist it: "why pay for people already searching for us?" In a MAP-priced category, competitors and marketplaces bid on your brand name precisely because they can offer the identical product at the identical price. Ceding those clicks is the most expensive form of saving money available.

The Result

Over the twelve-month engagement, the account delivered 4x return on ad spend, with our management fees counted as a cost, not the ad-spend-only figure most agencies quote.

We're not publishing spend or revenue figures; those are covered by our agreement with the client.

Putting 4x in context

For a retailer of branded goods rather than own-brand products, gross margins typically sit in the 35 to 45% range. That makes 4x a genuinely profitable outcome rather than a vanity number, and it's a strong result in a category where:

• Every competitor sells the identical SKU
• Manufacturer policy prevents competing on price
• Product imagery is largely supplied by the brand
• The addressable Canadian market for equestrian gear is finite

If you sell own-brand products at 70% margin, 4x means something different to you than it does here. That's the comparison worth making, against your own margin structure, not against a headline number from a different industry.

What Transfers to Your Store

1. Check Merchant Center before you blame the campaigns. If Shopping "isn't working," look at the Diagnostics view first. Disapproved items, account warnings and verification gaps explain more underperformance than bidding strategy ever will.
2. Your Shopify titles are not your feed titles. Website titles are written for people already on your site. Feed titles need to be written for the search that hasn't found you yet.
3. Fill in the identifiers. GTIN, MPN and brand fields aren't optional metadata. Missing values cause disapprovals and weaken matching on everything that survives.
4. Custom labels are how you get control back. Season, margin band and clearance status let you bid according to your business rather than treating 700 products identically.
5. Defend your brand terms. Especially in MAP-priced categories, where competitors can offer the same product at the same price to someone searching for you by name.
6. Judge ROAS against your gross margin. 4x is excellent for a branded-goods retailer and unremarkable for a high-margin own-brand seller. The number only means something next to your cost of goods.

Talk to us about your product feed →