SMART Top Performers are products with the highest performance potential that aren't getting the spend they deserve. Despite showing strong signals across ROAS, cross-sell revenue, and traffic efficiency, they receive less budget than their performance justifies — leaving their full potential untapped.
The segment identifies these products automatically, by evaluating how each one performs relative to the rest of your inventory.
How the segment is built
Every day, the model evaluates each product in the inventory across a combination of signals. No single number determines the result — products are scored holistically, so one weak metric cannot disqualify a product that performs well across the others.
Signals
Google Product ROAS — primary signal Measured from web or app analytics (GA4), not Google Ads attribution. GA4 captures real performance across sessions and devices; Google Ads attribution can miss conversions that happen outside a single session. This tells the model which products are actually generating returns, and where increasing spend would directly translate to higher revenue.
All Traffic RPDV — fallback signal For products with limited Google Ads sales data, or where attribution fails to capture real returns, the model uses All Traffic RPDV (Revenue Per Detail View) — a channel-agnostic measure of how much revenue each product detail view generates across all traffic sources.
Cross-sell revenue Captures products that may not convert on their own but reliably drive purchases of other products in the inventory. These are often undervalued by standard ROAS metrics, yet contribute meaningfully to overall campaign efficiency. (Available only for markets where cross-sell revenue data is present in Google Ads.)
CTR and CPC — supplementary signals A consistently high click-through rate signals genuine shopper interest. A low cost per click means more traffic for the same budget. Together, they identify products that are both compelling to shoppers and cost-efficient to promote.
New arrivals — automatic inclusion New arrivals are included in the segment by default. Without spend history, there is no data to evaluate their potential so rather than leaving them untested, the model gives them the visibility needed to generate meaningful performance data.
How to use them
The recommended setup is a dedicated scaling campaign running in parallel with your existing campaigns, with a lower tROAS than your account default.
Lower tROAS gives the algorithm room to bid more aggressively for these specific products — more auction wins without increasing overall budget. As spend picks up and Top Performers begin to prove their value, gradually exclude them from your other campaigns to avoid overlap.
Note: tROAS is set per campaign, not per account. The Top Performers campaign has its own, lower tROAS independent of the rest of the account.
For step-by-step setup instructions, see Recommended Setup for Google SMART Segments.
Related articles: What are Google SMART Segments? · SMART Poor Performers · Recommended Setup