Find out how you can apply custom labels to your product feed using Supplemental Feeds with example formulas covering pricing ranges, product categorization and sale labels.

Introduction

Supplemental Feeds are a powerful tool to make changes to your Shopping Feed without the need to rework your product data and main feed.

We have written previously about Custom Labels and Supplemental feeds independently which are linked below. In this article we will be covering how to implement Custom Labels with Supplemental feeds but more specifically what formulas you can use to apply these changes at scale and speed.

Custom Labels
Using Supplemental Feeds

Supplemental feeds provide additional or supplemental data that can be connected to existing product data in the primary feed. Using the existing ID attribute you can connect or update data to SKUs within your feed.

Downloading Your Current Feed

Simply head over to Merchant Center and view your Products. Filter your view with the Data Source you want to add your supplemental feed to to ensure you only download one feed which is important if you have multiple regional feeds for example or products ‘Found by Google’.

Once filtered, hit the download icon which will generate a zipped folder in which is a .tsv file of your feed. Open this as a new file within Google Feeds and you are ready to start working on your supplemental feed.

Using Formulas to create your Supplemental Feed

Pricing Categorization

Having a custom label dedicated to Pricing Tiers is important if you carry a wide range of SKUs, often we find that brands want to focus on higher value SKUs within Google or at the very least exclude low value SKUs from the campaigns.

As the price field is text within the downloaded file the formula has to extract the numerical value first. The SEARCH will find the position of the number with LEFT extracting it so that VALUE can convert the text to a number so it can be used for categorization.

Example formula below which presumes the price field is in column C and that you will start to apply this from the 2nd row. You can edit the pricing tiers as needed.

=IF(VALUE(LEFT(C2, SEARCH(" ", C2)-1))<100, "Under $100",
IF(VALUE(LEFT(C2, SEARCH(" ", C2)-1))<250, "$100-$250",
IF(VALUE(LEFT(C2, SEARCH(" ", C2)-1))<500, "$250-$500",
IF(VALUE(LEFT(C2, SEARCH(" ", C2)-1))<1000, "$500-$1000",
IF(VALUE(LEFT(C2, SEARCH(" ", C2)-1))<2500, "$1000-$2500",
"$2500+")))))

Sale Items

If your brand runs sales then this Custom Label is always useful to separate out your sale or outlet items from the rest of your campaigns. Simply using an IF function we can return ‘Sale’ as a custom label if the Sale_Price field is populated within the feed.

This simple formula below is a working example of this custom label which returns as blank if the cell is empty indicating the item is full price.

=IF(D2<>"", "Sale", "")

Priority SKUs

If you know your priority SKUs as they are your best sellers or higher margin products then you can use this data to create a priority custom label for your campaigns.

If we assume we are using your SKU (you could use other identifiers like IDs and MPNs) then this was column V on our downloaded feed. Replace and append your desired SKUs in the following formula where it reads ‘SKU1’, ‘SKU2’ for example. This will identify if the Product is one of your priority SKUs and return the ‘Priority Product’ label.

This formula can include as many SKUs as you include as long as you continue the formula in the manner (, V2=”SKU5″) before the end parenthesis. 

=IF(OR(
V2="SKU1", V2="SKU2", V2="SKU3",
V2="SKU4"),
"Priority Product", "")

Recommendations

We recommend after applying custom labels in your downloaded feed to create a new Google Sheet to build the supplemental feed in simplified version. We copy over the ID field and the paste the corresponding custom labels as VALUES ONLY. This will create a sheet with 2-6 columns only.

You can use the IF function we have used across all examples to the same effect to create your own custom labels to suit your needs. For example if your product title has information such as sizing, type or even items that relate to seasonality (Skirts, Tees = Summer etc.) you can create your own formula to return the label you define.

Uploading Supplemental Feeds

To upload your supplemental feed, go to the Data Sources section in your Merchant Center. Click across to Supplemental Sources below the Provided By You section. Select ‘Add Supplemental Product Data’ and follow the instructions on the screen providing the following pieces of information about your data:

  • Supplemental feed name: Enter a descriptive name that helps you identify the supplemental feed. The supplemental feed name doesn’t need to match the name of the file you’re submitting.
  • Input method: Select the one that fits your needs best:
    • Google Sheets: You can upload your data using a generated Google Sheets template, or with an existing Google Sheet with your product data.
    • Upload: Upload manually your created file in .tsv format downloaded from Google Sheets.
  • File name: Depending on what input method you select, you may be prompted to enter the name of the file you’ll be submitting. This name should exactly match the name of the file you created and include a valid extension.
  • Linking to primary feed: Select any primary feed and country / language combination to which the supplemental feed belongs to apply it to that feed.

Once uploaded the supplemental feed will be matched to your IDs provided and update the product data within Merchant Center.

Applying Changes to Feed Based Campaigns

Once these changes are applied to your feed you will be able to filter your Shopping and Performance Max Listing Groups by custom label within Google Ads. This will allow you to create campaigns based on the labels such as Sale Item only campaign or limit your campaigns to only $250+ SKUs for example.

Custom Labels also allow for ease of reporting over these items within the Google Ads interface either through campaigns or through the Products > Custom Labels report.

Conclusion

Utilizing Supplemental Feeds for Custom Labels is a powerful way to enhance your Shopping Feed without having to edit your primary feed or employ a third party platform. By applying formulas to categorize products you can help create a more efficient campaign and reporting structures.