smec earns Google Retail Expert 2026 certification

Google's new unified retail certification recognizes smec's expertise across Comparison Shopping, Performance Max, feed orchestration and Local Inventory Ads, helping brands and retailers grow profitably on Google.

Linz, Austria, 21. October 2026 – Smarter Ecommerce (smec) has been awarded the Google Retail Expert 2026 badge. Google grants the accreditation to Comparison Shopping Service (CSS) partners whose teams have proven advanced expertise in retail advertising on Google. For brands and retailers, it is a clear signal that a partner can manage product feeds, Shopping and Performance Max to Google’s highest standards.

How the badge is earned

Google has brought its separate retail certifications, previously split into tracks for Performance Max, feed management and omnichannel, into one path: the Google Retail Expert certification. It is tied to CSS Academy NEXT, a six-month learning program Google runs for its partner organizations. smec’s specialists completed its in-depth tracks and passed Google’s examinations to earn the company badge.

Earning and keeping the certification is also a core requirement for Google’s CSS Partner and CSS Premium Partner tiers.

What the certification covers

• Performance Max: campaign steering, AI-driven bidding, first-party audience signals and asset group optimization.
• Feeds and Merchant Center: technical feed setup, compliance troubleshooting, attribute mapping and catalog optimization across markets.
• Omnichannel and visual commerce: Local Inventory Ads that connect online ads with brick-and-mortar stores, plus visual formats such as YouTube Shoppable feeds.

Why product feeds matter more than ever

Product feeds used to power Shopping ads. Today they shape how products appear across Google’s AI experiences: in organic answers in AI Mode and Gemini, and in the ads Google shows in and around its AI answers, which mainly draw on Shopping and Performance Max campaigns. They also feed agentic commerce, such as Google’s new Universal Cart, now rolling out in the US. Whether a product is found, understood and recommended increasingly depends on the quality of its product data.

That’s why smec manages paid and organic AI search as one. The team that runs Shopping and Performance Max also works on how brands and products are represented in AI answers, optimizes product feeds for AI engines and manages feeds for agentic checkout protocols such as UCP. The feed expertise behind the Retail Expert badge is the foundation for all of it.

For brands and retailers, the products are the business. That’s why product data, Shopping and Performance Max have been at the heart of our work since 2007

Roman Doppler, VP Marketing & Growth at smec

What it means for brands and retailers

• Lower click costs. Shopping ads placed through a CSS can run at up to 20% lower CPCs than through Google Shopping Europe, so more of the budget goes into growth.
• A partner Google has checked. The badge confirms expertise through Google’s own curriculum and exams, not self-description.
• Product data ready for AI search. Feeds that stay compliant, complete and visible across markets, and ready for AI answers, AI-driven ad formats and agentic checkout.
• Performance Max with depth. Advanced campaign steering, bidding and audience signals from a team trained on Google’s latest retail standards.
• Online and in store. Expertise in connecting digital ads with physical stores through Local Inventory Ads.

This badge is Google’s confirmation that our team works at the level it expects from retail experts. And as shopping moves into AI answers and agents, that expertise matters more than ever. For our clients, it means lower click costs and a partner who turns a product catalog into profitable growth, online and in store.

Roman Doppler, VP Marketing & Growth at smec

Retail, inside out

Smarter Ecommerce (smec) helps brands and retailers turn paid media into profitable growth, online and in store. Since its founding in 2007, its work has started catalog-driven campaigns, from CSS and Shopping to Performance Max, often on assortments of 100,000+ products. Today smec manages over €620M in annual ad spend and has generated more than €7.8B in ecommerce revenue for 300+ brands and retailers, including THG, Snipes, REWE and Decathlon.

Working with catalogs at that scale is also why smec builds its own software. Beyond lower click prices through a CSS, the smec Campaign Orchestrator lets brands and retailers steer Shopping and Performance Max by their own business goals, using margin, stock and returns, so spend goes to the products that grow the business profitably.

The Retail Expert badge joins smec’s other partner credentials: Google Premier Partner continuously since 2016, Google Ads Impact Awards finalist in 2025 and 2026, and three-time Microsoft Retail Partner of the Year.