How does Google Merchant Center interact with Google Ads?

Analysis of Correct Answer(s)

The correct statement describes the fundamental relationship between the two platforms. To create a Shopping campaign, the advertising platform (Google Ads) needs detailed information about the products being sold.

• Google Merchant Center (GMC) serves as the central hub for your product and inventory data. You upload and manage all product details here, such as titles, images, prices, and availability.
• Google Ads is the platform where you build, manage, and optimize your advertising campaigns.
• The essential connection is that GMC passes the approved product data to Google Ads. Google Ads then uses this rich data feed to automatically create the product-specific ads that appear in Shopping results. Without this data flow from GMC, Google Ads would have no information to build a Shopping campaign.

Analysis of Incorrect Options

• "Google Ads passes inventory data to Google Merchant Center...": This reverses the correct flow of information. Inventory data is managed in GMC and sent to Google Ads, not the other way around.
• "Google Ads passes campaign performance to Google Merchant Center...": While some performance data (like clicks) is made visible in GMC to help diagnose product-level issues, this is not the primary interaction for building campaigns. Campaign performance is generated and primarily analyzed within Google Ads to optimize bidding and targeting.
• "Google Merchant Center passes campaign performance to Google Ads...": This is incorrect because campaign performance data originates in Google Ads, not GMC. GMC's role is to provide the product data, not to track and report on ad performance.