Planning your groups
A group is one budget decision with one set of rules. Everything in it shares one objective, one constraint, one budget, one Growth setting and one calendar. So the question to ask is not "are these products related?" but "should these campaigns compete for the same money, under the same rules?"
Why it matters
Each night a group moves its money toward whichever listing earns more on its next baht. That is right or wrong depending on who the listings sell to:
- The same shopper — a 10 ml and a 40 ml gel cream. The shopper buys one or the other, so backing the better earner loses nothing. This is what a group is for.
- Different shoppers — a shirt and a pair of pants. If the shirt earns more, the budget follows it, and the pants' buyers — who were never going to buy a shirt instead — stop seeing your ads. Those sales are lost, not moved.
The leader doesn't take literally everything: once its next baht earns less than another listing's first, money moves back. But on a tight budget the weaker listing can fall under ฿100 and be paused for the day.
Put substitutes together
On Shopee a campaign advertises one listing, and the listing's variations — its colours and sizes — share that campaign. So substitutes, for grouping, are separate listings a shopper chooses between:
- The same product listed separately in different sizes or packs — a 10 ml and a 40 ml gel cream, a single sheet mask and a 10-pack.
- Different products for the same need — several brightening serums, or several firming creams.
Their ads chase the same buyers, so letting the better one take the money is what you want.
A simple way to draw the lines: one group per product line or skin need — sheet masks, treatment serums, cleansing — rather than one group per listing.
Two campaigns on the same listing belong together too: the model learns from them as one product. See Product learning ready in Model training.
Keep apart what needs different rules
Split products into separate groups when they need:
| Different… | Example |
|---|---|
| Goal | A launch you want orders for, next to mature products you run for profit |
| Floor | A 15% margin constraint that a fat-margin product clears easily would cut a thin-margin one off entirely |
| Budget | Money committed to one line (Target) next to money that should only go where it pays (Ceiling) |
| Timing | A product with its own sale days — a group's calendar and Timeline apply to every member |
Give different markets their own groups
Listings that sell to different shoppers — the shirt and the pants — each get a group and a budget, so one cannot starve the other. A catch-all group for long-tail listings on Profit is fine when you are happy for the best of them to take the money.
How big
- Two campaigns or more. With one there is nothing to split.
- A budget that covers them. Shopee's minimum is ฿100 a day per campaign; a campaign the split cannot fund at ฿100 is paused for the day.
Quick check
Before adding a campaign to a group:
- Would a shopper buy this listing instead of one already in the group? Then it belongs here.
- Should it follow the same objective, constraint and budget? If not, give it its own group.
- Can the group's budget fund every member at ฿100 on an ordinary day?
Then create the group.