In the fast-paced world of digital advertising, technical updates can often feel like background noise. But as a global leader in SEO, content marketing, and data analytics, Anastasia Braitsik understands that some changes are seismic. We’re sitting down with her to discuss one such shift: Google’s mandatory migration to the new Merchant API. She’ll break down why this is far more than a simple backend tweak, exploring the immediate risks to advertisers who fail to act. We’ll cover how to identify if you’re affected, the silent ways this change can cripple well-structured campaigns, a practical checklist for a seamless transition, and the hidden financial fallout that goes beyond just paused ads.
With Google pushing all merchants to the new Merchant API, what is the very first step an advertiser should take in Merchant Center Next to see if they’re affected, and what specific “Source” label should they look for to confirm action is needed?
The absolute first thing you need to do is stop what you’re doing and dive right into your Merchant Center Next account. Don’t assume you’re safe. Navigate to ‘Settings’ and then click on ‘Data sources.’ Your eyes should go directly to the ‘Source’ column. This is your moment of truth. You are looking for a very specific label: ‘Content API.’ If you see that next to any of your feeds, a red flag should go up immediately. That label is Google’s way of telling you that you’re using the older system that’s being sunsetted. It’s a clear signal that you are on the clock and must take action before the deadline hits, or you’re going to feel the pain when your product data stops flowing correctly.
Feed labels reportedly don’t carry over automatically during this migration. Could you walk us through a specific scenario of how this could silently break a Performance Max campaign’s bidding logic or structure, and what key metrics an advertiser might see suffer first?
This is where things get really dangerous for advertisers who aren’t paying close attention. Imagine you have a sophisticated Performance Max campaign for an e-commerce store that sells electronics. You’ve cleverly used feed labels to segment products into asset groups like ‘high-margin-laptops’ and ‘low-margin-accessories.’ Your bidding strategy is aggressive for the high-margin group and more conservative for the accessories. When you migrate and the ‘high-margin-laptops’ label vanishes without a trace, that entire asset group breaks. The campaign no longer knows which products to apply that aggressive bidding to. Suddenly, your star products stop serving, or worse, they get lumped in with everything else and are bid on incorrectly. The very first metrics you’ll see tank are impressions and clicks for that specific product group. It will look like that part of your catalog just fell off a cliff, and before you know it, your revenue from those key items will flatline. It’s a quiet killer for campaign performance.
Considering the August 18th deadline for Content API users, what does a successful migration checklist look like? Please detail the critical validation steps an advertiser must take immediately after reconnecting their feeds to ensure their Shopping campaigns are still serving correctly.
A successful migration is a proactive one, not a last-minute scramble. First, your checklist must have ‘Migrate Now’ at the top—don’t wait for August. The process itself involves reconnecting your product feeds through the new Merchant API. But the work doesn’t stop there. The most critical part is the post-migration validation. Immediately after you’ve reconnected, you need to meticulously review your feed labels in the new setup and re-apply them in your Google Ads campaigns where needed. Don’t assume anything carried over. Then, you enter a period of intense monitoring. For the next 24-48 hours, you have to live inside your Google Ads account. Are your campaigns delivering impressions? Are your top products getting clicks? Is your cost-per-click stable? You need to compare the performance hour-by-hour to the previous day or week. If you see any anomalies, you have to troubleshoot immediately. A successful migration is one where your performance graph looks like nothing ever happened.
This shift is being described as a technical cutoff that can directly harm revenue if ignored. Beyond campaigns simply stopping, what are some of the less obvious, secondary financial impacts that could result from a poorly managed transition to the new Merchant API?
Everyone is rightfully focused on campaigns shutting off, but the financial bleeding can come from other, more subtle wounds. A poorly managed transition can lead to a messy data feed where, for example, your pricing or stock availability is no longer updating in real-time. This means you could be paying for clicks on ads for products that are out of stock, which is just burning money and creating a terrible user experience. Another hidden cost is the erosion of your campaign’s historical data. If labels break and you have to significantly restructure your PMax or Shopping campaigns, you lose all that valuable performance history that the algorithm was using for optimization. This can set your performance back weeks or even months as the system has to re-learn. It’s not just about the revenue you lose today; it’s about the lost momentum and the increased costs you’ll face tomorrow to get back to where you were.
What is your forecast for Google’s API and data source management over the next couple of years?
My forecast is that this move is just the beginning of a much larger trend toward consolidation and simplification within Google’s ecosystem. Google wants a single, unified pipeline for product data—the Merchant API is becoming that pipeline. Over the next couple of years, I expect to see Google retire even more legacy systems and push advertisers toward more streamlined, integrated solutions. The goal is to create a more stable and predictable environment for their machine learning algorithms to operate in. For advertisers, this means that having clean, well-structured, and centrally managed data will no longer be a ‘best practice’; it will be a non-negotiable requirement for success. The line between technical data management and campaign performance will essentially disappear, and the most successful advertisers will be the ones who embrace this technical reality.
