The setup checklist

In order, because the order matters: fix the data before you buy traffic, and lower the price of the traffic before you buy more of it.

One: the account

1. Merchant Center created, website claimed and verified.
2. Business information, shipping and tax configured per market you sell in.
3. Free listings enabled.
4. No account-level policy issues outstanding.

Two: the feed

1. Every required attribute present: id, title, description, link, image_link, availability, price, brand, gtin or mpn, condition.
2. Ids stable across exports, and never reused.
3. Variants grouped with item_group_id and differentiated by colour, size or material.
4. google_product_category set deliberately rather than guessed.
5. Colour, size, material, pattern, age group and gender filled wherever the category uses them.
6. Additional images for every product that has more than one angle.
7. Feed fetch at least daily, more often for volatile stock.
8. Product schema markup on the landing pages.

Three: the disapprovals

1. Diagnostics tab sorted by affected item count, not by list order.
2. Price and availability mismatches traced to their systemic cause.
3. Landing pages resolving, crawlable and matching the feed.
4. Images free of overlays, watermarks and text.
5. A monitor on the disapproval count, checked after every catalogue import.

Four: the CSS

1. Merchant Center associated with a CSS.
2. Association accepted, not merely requested.
3. Attribution line under live ads showing the CSS name.
4. Average CPC and impression share compared against a fixed pre-switch window.
5. No manual bid changes in the two weeks either side.

Five: the campaigns

1. Bidding strategy matched to the objective, with conversion value passed correctly.
2. Brand exclusions set on Performance Max.
3. Asset groups or product groups split by category rather than left as one.
4. One change at a time, measured before the next.

Six: the content

1. Main images corrective only, showing the product as it is.
2. A written look specification: background, light, margin, crop, shadow.
3. Category templates rather than per-product improvisation.
4. Generated output reviewed in grids, sampled by category.
5. Vertical video produced for the channels that are vertical.

Seven: compliance

1. Provenance marking written at generation and surviving your image pipeline.
2. A central record of what was generated, from what, with what, and when.
3. Visible disclosure where generated content could read as authentic.
4. Model contracts covering synthetic derivation, where people appear.
5. Category-specific advertising rules checked for the categories you sell in.