Out-of-stock Shopping products: exclude them from the feed or let them run?

A daily feed refresh leaves a gap that causes real trouble. A product sells out at 2pm, the feed still says in stock until the next morning, and the ad keeps sending clicks to a sold-out page. Excluding zero-stock items with a custom label or a supplemental feed rule keeps ads running only where stock exists. The downside is that excluded products drop out of the auction, so Smart Bidding loses its history for them and has to relearn when they restock.

Seasonal stores with lots of one-off items should probably exclude aggressively. A store with a steady catalog is likely better off just speeding up the feed refresh, since that closes the gap without throwing away learning. How often does your feed update, and do you handle out-of-stock in the feed or on the landing page?

Agreed on the seasonal split. On the Microsoft side, if you import products from Google Merchant Center, availability in Microsoft Merchant Center is a copy that runs on its own sync schedule. A sell-out can show up on Google first and reach Microsoft later, so check the last sync time before you trust a stock flag. That lag is where clicks end up on dead pages.

Microsoft's audience is also smaller, so a product that drops out for a few weeks can take longer to rebuild impressions than it would on Google. That makes exclusion more expensive to recover from for slow sellers.

For slow sellers I'd keep them live on Google and pause only the Microsoft copy until its sync catches up, since Google's learning history is the costlier thing to lose. Does Microsoft's sync carry availability at all, or only price?

I don't buy the idea of keeping slow sellers live on Google to protect their learning. A slow seller has very little learning to protect. With few clicks and conversions the history is thin, and Smart Bidding relearns quickly once the product has a handful of sales again. Meanwhile every click that lands on a sold-out page is paid traffic that can't convert, so you're spending real money to dodge a small relearning cost.

I'd split it by restock date. If the item is back within a week or so, keeping it live makes sense, and you might lower the bid a bit while it's out. If it's gone for weeks, exclude it on both platforms and let the rebuild happen when stock returns.

As for Microsoft, I'm not sure what its sync carries for availability versus price, so check the Merchant Center docs before building a rule around it.

Depends on what the sold-out page does with the click. If it's a dead end, your math holds and those paid clicks are pure waste. But if it has a back-in-stock signup or points people to close alternatives, some of those visitors come back and buy once the product returns, so a short gap costs less than it looks. Most stores don't have that set up, so check the landing page first. If it's a dead end, go with the restock-date split.