Shopee ads are one of the most effective tools available to sellers in Thailand — and one of the most misused. Most sellers set up a campaign, set a daily budget, and leave it running without reviewing whether the spend is generating profitable sales. The result is consistent ad spend with inconsistent returns.
This guide covers everything you need to know about Shopee ads in Thailand in 2026 — from campaign types and budget setting to bidding strategy, performance metrics, and optimisation. It is written for sellers who are already running ads and want better results, and for sellers who are about to launch their first campaign and want to do it properly from the start.
Shopee ads are a paid advertising system that allows sellers to increase the visibility of their product listings within the Shopee platform. When a buyer searches for a product on Shopee, sponsored listings appear at the top and throughout the search results page, ahead of organic listings.
Shopee ads operate on a cost-per-click model. You pay only when a buyer clicks on your ad, not when it is displayed. The cost per click depends on your bid, your product's relevance score, and competition from other sellers in your category.
The platform algorithm determines which ads to show based on three factors: your bid amount, your ad quality score, and your product's historical conversion rate. A product with strong conversion history and a competitive bid will receive more impressions at a lower cost per click than a product with weak conversion history bidding the same amount.
This is why building an organic conversion before investing heavily in ads is consistently more efficient than the reverse.
Search ads are the most commonly used format. Your product listing appears in search results when a buyer searches for a keyword you are targeting. You can target keywords manually by selecting specific terms, or automatically by letting the Shopee algorithm choose keywords based on your product information.
Search ads are best suited for products with established conversion history — ideally ten or more reviews and a conversion rate above 2%.
Discovery ads place your products in recommended sections throughout the Shopee app — on the homepage, in the You May Also Like section, and in similar product recommendations. Discovery ads work on a cost-per-click basis and are effective for products that appeal to buyers who are browsing rather than searching for a specific item.
Discovery ads are particularly effective for sustainable and lifestyle products where visual appeal and brand storytelling drive purchase decisions.
Shop ads promote your entire store rather than individual products. They increase store follower count and drive traffic to your storefront page. Shop ads are most effective when you have a strong product catalogue and want to build long-term brand visibility on the platform.
Log in to your Shopee Seller Centre. Go to Marketing Centre and select Shopee Ads. If you have not used ads before, you will need to top up your advertising credits before launching a campaign.
For most sellers starting out, Sponsored Products with keyword targeting is the right starting point. It gives you the most control over which searches your products appear for and allows you to measure performance clearly by keyword.
Choose the products you want to advertise. As a rule, only advertise products that already have at least five reviews and a conversion rate above 2%. Advertising products with no review history or weak conversion will produce a high cost per click with low return.
Start with your two or three best-performing products by conversion rate. Once you have data from those campaigns, you can expand to additional products based on what is working.
For manual campaigns, research your keywords before setting up the campaign. Use the Shopee search bar auto-suggest to identify the terms Thai buyers use for your product category. Add both Thai-language and English keywords where relevant to your category.
Organise your keywords into three match types. Broad match captures the widest range of searches including related terms. Phrase match targets searches that contain your keyword phrase. Exact match targets only searches that match your keyword precisely. Start with phrase match for the most efficient balance of reach and relevance.
Set a daily budget that you are comfortable spending every day the campaign runs. For new campaigns, start conservatively — 200 to 500 THB per day per product — and increase based on what the data shows after the first two weeks.
For individual keyword bids, start at or slightly above the suggested bid shown in the Seller Centre interface. Review your cost per click and ROAS after the first week and adjust bids up on keywords generating profitable sales and down or pause on keywords generating clicks but no conversions.
Manual bidding gives you full control over how much you pay per click for each keyword. You set individual bids for each keyword and adjust them based on performance data. Manual bidding is more time-intensive but consistently produces better ROAS for sellers who review their data regularly.
Manual bidding is recommended for sellers with existing campaign data to work from, sellers with a clear understanding of their margin per order, and sellers targeting specific high-value keywords in competitive categories.
Automated bidding lets the Shopee algorithm set bids dynamically based on the likelihood of conversion. The platform optimises bids to maximise clicks or conversions within your daily budget. Automated bidding requires less active management but gives you less control over cost per click.
Automated bidding is appropriate for new sellers who do not yet have enough data to set manual bids confidently, and for sellers with large product catalogues where managing individual keyword bids is not practical.
For most sellers with budgets between 200 and 2,000 THB per day, manual bidding with weekly optimisation produces better results than automated bidding.
The right starting budget depends on your product price point, your target ROAS, and your margin per order.
A practical starting framework is to set your daily budget at approximately 10% of your target daily revenue from ads. If you want ads to generate 3,000 THB in revenue per day, start with a 300 THB daily budget and a target ROAS of 10.
For most sellers in standard categories in Thailand, a minimum daily budget of 200 THB per product is needed to gather enough click data within a reasonable timeframe to make optimisation decisions. Below this level, campaigns often run out of budget early in the day and the data collected is too limited to be useful.
Do not increase your budget until you have confirmed that the campaign is generating a profitable ROAS. Increasing the budget on an unprofitable campaign accelerates losses rather than improving results.
ROAS is the most important metric for evaluating Shopee ad performance. It is calculated as revenue generated from ads divided by total ad spend. A ROAS of 5 means every 1 THB spent on ads generates 5 THB in revenue.
A healthy ROAS on Shopee varies by category and margin. As a general benchmark, a ROAS below 3 indicates the campaign is unlikely to be profitable after platform fees and cost of goods are accounted for. A ROAS above 5 indicates strong campaign efficiency.
However, ROAS alone does not tell you whether your ads are profitable. You need to factor in your real margin per order after all platform fees. A ROAS of 4 on a product with 40% gross margin may be profitable. The same ROAS on a product with 20% gross margin after fees may not be.
CTR measures the percentage of impressions that result in a click. A low CTR indicates that your main image or ad creative is not compelling enough to generate clicks at the search results level. If your CTR is below 0.5%, review your main product image and title.
Conversion rate measures the percentage of clicks that result in a purchase. A low conversion rate on an ad campaign indicates a product page problem — weak images, incomplete description, insufficient reviews, or uncompetitive pricing. Fix the product page before increasing ad spend.
Cost per order is the total ad spend divided by the number of orders generated. Track this metric against your margin per order to determine whether each campaign is generating profitable sales.
All Shopee ad performance data is available in your Seller Centre under Marketing Centre, then Shopee Ads, then My Campaigns. Click into any campaign to see impression, click, CTR, conversion, and spend data by keyword. Export data regularly and track trends week over week.
Thai buyers search in Thai. If you are running manual keyword campaigns, include Thai-language keywords alongside any English terms. Use the Shopee search bar to identify the exact Thai phrases buyers use for your product category and ensure these are included in your keyword list.
Review your keyword performance every week. Pause any keyword that has generated more than 20 clicks with zero conversions. These keywords are driving cost without generating sales and should be replaced with more targeted alternatives.
Identify the keywords generating your highest ROAS and increase their individual bids by 10 to 20% to capture more impressions. Do not increase budget uniformly across all keywords — concentrate additional spend behind what is already working.
Shopee Thailand sees the highest buyer activity during lunch hours (12pm to 2pm) and evening hours (8pm to 11pm). If your daily budget is running out before peak hours, consider reducing bids on low-performing keywords to preserve budget for the highest-traffic periods.
When you run a platform promotion, your conversion rate and ROAS often change significantly during the promotional period. Review your ad data separately for promotional and non-promotional periods to understand your true baseline ad performance.
Low impressions on a Shopee ad campaign are almost always caused by one of four things.
Your daily budget is too low and runs out before significant traffic is generated. Increase your daily budget or reduce bids on low-priority keywords to make the budget last longer.
Your bids are below the competitive threshold for your category. Check the suggested bid range in your campaign settings and ensure your bids are at least at the lower end of the suggested range.
Your product has a low quality score due to weak conversion history, insufficient reviews, or incomplete listing content. Improve your product page fundamentals before increasing bids.
Your keyword targeting is too narrow. Expand your keyword list with additional relevant terms, including long-tail variations and related Thai-language keywords.
Managing Shopee ads profitably requires consistent data review, systematic optimisation, and a clear understanding of how ad costs interact with platform fees and promotion costs. Many sellers find that the time required to manage campaigns effectively, combined with the complexity of Thai marketplace dynamics, makes working with an experienced ecommerce partner worthwhile.
iBoost Online works with brands across Thailand and Singapore to review ad performance, identify underperforming campaigns, and build a sustainable paid advertising strategy that generates profitable ROAS rather than just volume.
If you want to understand whether your current Shopee ad spend is generating profitable returns, the iBoost Online ecommerce store audit reviews your full ad account alongside your platform fees and margin data to give you a complete picture.
You can also learn to manage your own campaigns effectively through the iBoost Online Ecommerce Growth Program, which covers Shopee and Lazada ad strategy as part of a broader data-driven growth framework.