Is it possible to have a shopping campaign on Google Ads without an e-commerce website ?
I have a client who have several stores and they want to push theirs products on Google with a shopping campaign without a e-commerce website. They want to put a reservation button so people can take their product in the store. Is it possible
I ask a google account manager, who tell me that it was possible but i can’t see how.
Sorry for my english, it’s not my first language
The short answer is:
Yes, it is possible to run a Shopping campaign on Google Ads without a traditional e-commerce website using Local Inventory Ads (LIA), which directly addresses your client’s need to advertise products with an in-store reservation option.
This is achieved by linking your Google Merchant Center account, which houses your product and local inventory data feeds, with your Google Business Profile (which provides the physical store location information).
The reservation functionality is enabled by correctly setting the pickup_method attribute to reserve in your product data.
For highly automated, real-time updates of product, price, and inventory across multiple stores, you should implement the Merchant API (the successor to the Content API for Shopping), which allows for programmatic, high-frequency data synchronization, ensuring accuracy and cost-effectiveness by reducing manual overhead and preventing ad disapprovals due to stale data.
The long answer is:
Your Google Account Manager was correct; this is entirely possible and is the precise function of Local Inventory Ads (LIA), which is a feature set within Google Shopping campaigns designed for multi-store, brick-and-mortar retailers.
The core challenge is not having an e-commerce checkout, but LIA overcomes this by directing users from the ad to a Google-hosted Local Storefront page instead of your own e-commerce site, which is where the in-store information and reservation flow are presented.
The solution requires a robust, integrated martech stack centered on three key Google services and the powerful API that connects them: Google Ads, Google Merchant Center, and Google Business Profile (for store location data).
You must first link your Merchant Center with both your Google Ads and your Google Business Profile accounts.
The product information is managed through two main feeds submitted to Merchant Center: the Primary Product Feed, which contains static details like item_id, title, and description, and the Local Product Inventory Feed, which contains dynamic, store-specific information like quantity, price, sale_price, and, crucially, the pickup_method and pickup_sla (Service Level Agreement, i.e., pickup time).
To fulfill the reservation requirement, you must set the pickup_method attribute in your feed to reserve.
This value signifies that the item is reserved online and the full transaction occurs in-store, replacing the need for an online checkout.
After a user clicks the LIA, they are taken to the Google-hosted Local Storefront, where they see the in-store availability, the reservation button, and store details, ultimately driving foot traffic to the physical location for purchase.
For a client with several stores, manual feed management is neither scalable nor cost-effective, which is where the Merchant API becomes essential for true technical efficiency.
The Merchant API allows your client’s inventory management system (or POS/ERP) to programmatically insert and update the local inventory data for all store codes in near real-time.
This server-side integration is highly cost-effective because it eliminates manual file uploads and drastically reduces errors from out-of-date stock, preventing wasted ad spend on unavailable products.
Specifically, you would use the localinventory.insert or localinventory.custombatch methods of the API to push immediate updates for stock and price changes tied to each unique storeCode and item_id.
This level of automation ensures that the ads are always accurate, maximizing the chances of a successful in-store reservation and subsequent purchase.
Furthermore, once you have this data stream, integrating the Google Ads API can be beneficial for managing campaign creation and bid strategies across the multitude of local campaigns, optimizing performance based on real-time store-level insights.
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