User Guide

How To Create Product Search Ads

How do I choose the right products?

It is important to select the right products to advertise based on your business goals:


  1. Grow sales 

Focus on your bestsellers with high monthly sales and products with great sales potential, such as promotional products. 


  1. Boost profit 

Focus on products that sell well, especially those with high organic profit margin.


  1. Increase exposure of new products

Choose new products to boost their exposure and test their market potential.

*Tip: 

  1. Shopee Ads' product selector constantly processes the available data to identify and recommend products that have high sales potential when advertised.
  2. When creating ads on Seller Centre, prioritise advertising the recommended products highlighted with "Best Selling", "Good ROAS" or "Top Searched" tags. 
  3. To learn more about what each tag means, click here



Hint: Choose products with the 'thumbs up' icon in the product selector. These items are recommended for ads as they have high sales and conversion rates.




How do I set my budget and ad duration?

You can set your budget and time length for your Product Search Ads before publishing them.


  1. The default mode is "No Limit" for your budget and "No Time Limit"
  2. You can choose to "Set Budget" and "Set Start/End Date" for each ad. If you "Set Budget", your ad will stop running once your budget is depleted. 
  3. The minimum daily budget required is RM2.
  4. The minimum total budget required is RM20.


How do I set my keywords, match types and bid prices?


  1. Auto Selected

With Auto-Selected keywords, Shopee will select keywords relevant to your product and optimise them for you.


Use Auto Selected Keywords if you prefer to set up and manage your ads with minimal effort and time investment, or if you're unsure how to choose keywords. 

  1. Click here for tips on using Auto Selected keywords.
  2. Note that if you are setting up new Product Search Ads through Shopee app, this setting will be automatically toggled on. To turn it off or manually set keywords, please log into your Seller Center via a browser.


  1. Manually Selected

If you are an advanced user, or if you would like your ad to appear at the very top of the search results for certain keywords, you can select your own keywords, set bid prices and match types for your ads. 


You can choose either one of the two match types below for your keywords.


  1. Broad Match(default)

Your ad will appear on the search results page when buyers search for relevant variations of your keywords, even if their searches do not contain your keywords.


To deliver relevant matches, Broad Match may take into account common buyer historical search behaviours across the platform and an individual user's historical search activities. 


  1. Exact Match

Your ad will only appear when shoppers search for the exact keyword you've placed a bid for.


More information: 

All buyer searches are subject to text processing in order to ensure that your ads are displayed to maximise impressions and orders. For example, 

  1. Buyer searches are not case-sensitive 
  2. Your ad may be displayed under the ad keyword ‘Socks’ when buyers search for ‘socks’/‘sOCks’/‘SOCKS’
  3. Trailing whitespaces are removed 
  4. Your ad may be displayed under the ad keyword ‘Socks’ when buyers search for ‘Socks ’
  5. The symbols ‘-’ and ‘、’ are removed
  6. Your ad may be displayed under the ad keyword ‘Ice cream’ when buyers search for ‘Ice-cream’  


Now, you need to set a bid price for each manually selected keyword. 

  1. The higher your bid price, the more likely your ad will be shown at top positions
  2. The higher your ad's quality score, the lower you will need to bid for your ad to enter the top few positions
  3. Your ad's quality score depends on a variety of factors, including your shop rating, your item's sales, reviews and name.
  4. The system will display a suggested bid price as a guide.
  5. Using the suggested bid price helps to ensure your ad is shown in good position (i.e. closer to the top of the search results page) 
  6. Note that if you're using Auto Selected Keywords, you can still manually add selected keywords and set a competitive bid price for them to ensure your ad appears in top positions when shopper's search terms match your selected keywords
  7. The suggested bid price for Broad Match is 20% higher than for Exact Match.
  8. You can still adjust your bid price after your Product Search Ads have gone live. 

  1. Toggle on "Enhanced Bid Price" to let our algorithm optimise the bid price for you. 
  2. "Enhanced Bid Price" will automatically optimise your bid prices to generate more sales while maintaining your ads expense, by automatically (i) increasing your manual bids by up to 50% when ad clicks are more likely to generate sales and (ii) decreasing your manual bids by up to 50% when ad clicks are less likely to generate sales. 
  3. For more information about "Enhanced Bid Price", click here.



Here are some strategies for selecting keywords, match types and bid prices based on your objectives: 

  1. Increase exposure 
  2. Use at least 10 keywords per product, including synonyms or variations of keywords relevant to your advertised product. For example, for the product below, you can use “shoes”, “sneakers”, “sports shoes”, “sporty shoes”, “outdoor shoes”, “dance sneakers”, “dance shoes”, etc. 



  1. Choose all relevant keywords suggested by the Shopee system and add your own. 
  2. You can always optimise your ads afterwards by removing keywords that have performed badly.
  3. Use Broad Match for your keywords to reach a wider audience.
  4. Bid competitively and try the suggested bid price.


  1. Increase sales 
  2. Use a combination of Broad Match and Exact Match to maximise traffic to your product detail page, where shoppers make purchasing decisions.
  3. For a start, bid for popular and relevant keywords that shoppers would use to look for your product, such as "sweater" or "pullovers".
  4. For Broad Match, use generic, popular and relevant keywords that shoppers would use to look for your product, such as "sweater" and "Adidas sweater".
  5. For Exact Match, use specific and relevant keywords that shoppers would use to look for your product, such as "Adidas sporty sweater" or "Adidas blue sweater".
  6. To save costs, only bid for keywords that are directly relevant. For example, if your item is an iPhone 8 case, bid for "iPhone case" or "iPhone 8 case", not "iPhone" or "iPhone 8".
  7. Bid competitively and try the suggested bid price.


  1. Increase profit
  2. Target the most relevant keywords shoppers would use to look for your product.
  3. Include highly specific keywords such as “dark-roast coffee” instead of “coffee”. 
  4. Highly specific keywords tend to be cheaper per click and can attract more relevant shoppers to your product. 
  5. Focus on using Exact Match to drive relevant traffic to your product. 
  6. If more ad exposure is needed, use Broad Match but set to a lower bid price. 


How do I set up and edit Product Search Ads step by step?

Please refer to the user guide.


Can I set up and modify my Product Search Ads via Shopee app? 

Yes, you can now set up and modify your Product Search Ads using Seller Centre via browser or Shopee app. Please refer to the user guide.

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Content

How do I choose the right products?

How do I set my budget and ad duration?

How do I set my keywords, match types and bid prices?

How do I set up and edit Product Search Ads step by step?

Can I set up and modify my Product Search Ads via Shopee app?