Shopee Ads in Vietnam (2026): Latest Features, Advertising Strategies and Operational Best Practices

On Shopee Vietnam, the way brands advertise in 2026 looks very different from even a year ago: manual keyword bidding is giving way to AI-driven automation, and affiliate and content formats have moved to the centre of how products get found. This guide is for foreign brands that sell on Shopee and want to understand what has changed and how to run ads well in the new setup.

Key takeaways

• GMV Max, Shopee's AI automated bidding, is now the default. Manual keyword bidding is being phased out and survives only for Shopee Mall shops.
• Match the bidding mode to the product: Auto Bidding for new or unproven products, Custom ROAS to protect margin on proven ones.
• Do not advertise a listing that is not "sales ready." Fix reviews, images, stock and titles first, then let the 7-day learning phase run untouched.
• Affiliate and content (KOL/KOC, Livestream, Shopee Video) now work alongside paid ads, and Shopee's new Instagram affiliate tie-up with Meta widens creator reach.

1. The Ad Types Shopee Vietnam Currently Offers

According to Shopee's official Vietnam advertising portal, sellers can currently choose from these formats:

• Product Search Ads: your product appears in prominent spots on the search results page, homepage, and category pages.
• Product Discovery Ads: your product is shown in recommendation feeds like "You May Also Like" and the Discover tab, based on Shopee's algorithm matching shoppers to relevant items.
• Shop Ads: your whole shop (not a single product) appears at the top of relevant search results.
• Homepage Branding Ads: a banner placed at the top of the Shopee homepage, designed for brand visibility rather than direct clicks.
• Livestream Display Ads: boosts the visibility of your Shopee Live sessions in places like the Shopee Live homepage and the Discover section.
• Off-platform Display Ads: Shopee allows sellers to run ads across major external platforms (Meta, Google, TikTok) - that link directly back to Shopee product pages by leveraging the platform's shopper behavior data. Among these channels, Meta remains the most popular and is widely known as CPAS (Collaborative Performance Advertising Solutions now branded by Meta simply as Collaborative Ads). If you would like to set up Shopee CPAS on Meta, you can look for the instructions via **this article by Feedforce Vietnam.*

The two ad types most sellers use day-to-day are Product Search Ads (for buyers actively typing keywords) and Product Discovery Ads (for buyers who are just browsing). The key difference: Search Ads catch people who already know what they want, while Discovery Ads catch people who might want it once they see it.

2. GMV Max: The Biggest Change in Shopee Advertising

If there is one feature every Shopee seller in Vietnam needs to understand right now, it is GMV Max. This is Shopee's upgraded, AI-driven version of automatic bidding, and it has been steadily replacing manual keyword bidding across the region since 2025.

What GMV Max actually does

Instead of a seller manually choosing keywords and setting a bid price for each one, GMV Max lets the seller set a budget and, optionally, a target ROAS (Return on Ad Spend). Shopee's algorithm then automatically:

Select the keywords and audiences → Adjust bids in real time → Spread the ad across multiple traffic sources at once (search, discovery feeds, video, and even games)

GMV Max works toward maximizing GMV (Gross Merchandise Value) while trying to keep ROAS close to whatever target the seller sets.

Two bidding modes

• GMV Max Auto Bidding: you only set a budget; Shopee decides everything else, including how much ROAS to aim for. This is recommended for new products that don't have a sales or ROAS history yet.
• GMV Max Custom ROAS: you set a specific ROAS target (for example, ROAS = 5, meaning you want 500K VND in revenue for every 100K VND spent). This gives sellers more control over profit margins.

The move away from manual bidding

From July 2025, Shopee began phasing out manual keyword bidding for most Product Search and Discovery ads, effectively making GMV Max the default (not optional) path for most sellers. Additionally, only shops with Shopee Mall status still retain the option to run fully manual campaigns.

Therefore, if you want to maintain absolute control over your ad budget and manually fine-tune your bidding strategy, upgrading to a Mall store has become a strategic necessity.

To help you evaluate whether this transition aligns with your business model, you can refer to our detailed analysis here: Upgrading to Shopee Mall in Vietnam: Advantages and Disadvantages for Sellers.

Shop-level GMV Max ("Automatically Select Products")

Shopee has also rolled out a shop-wide version of GMV Max. Instead of managing ads product-by-product, a seller sets one budget and duration, and Shopee automatically selects which products to promote and how to split the budget between them based on performance.

Shop-level GMV Max

This feature was recently rebranded from "Automatically Select Product" to "Shop GMV Max" to better reflect its role as a full-shop revenue optimization tool.

"Boost": a newer accelerator for Custom ROAS campaigns

For sellers using GMV Max Custom ROAS, Shopee's Vietnam ad platform now offers a feature called "Đẩy Nhanh" (roughly, "Speed Boost"). When switched on, the algorithm is allowed to explore a lower ROAS - down to about 70% of the original target - if doing so is likely to increase total GMV (Shopee Ads FAQ). Shopee describes this as smarter than a manual ROAS cut, because the system only lowers ROAS when it expects real revenue growth in return, and it grants extra traffic support to the campaign while it is active.

“Speed Boost” feature

Practical setup notes

• As of the May 2025 update, sellers can add up to 30 products to a single GMV Max campaign.
• Shopee recommends an unlimited budget and no end date where financially possible, since limiting the budget also limits how much data the algorithm can use to learn. However, we suggest you should prioritize cash flow safety over theoretical algorithms.
• New campaigns go through a 7-day "learning phase." Vietnamese sellers are consistently advised not to edit budget, ROAS target, or products during this window, because changes reset the algorithm's data and temporarily hurt performance.

3. Content-Driven Formats: Livestream and Shopee Video

Shopping-as-entertainment ("shoppertainment") is now a defining trend in Vietnam's e-commerce market, largely because of pressure from TikTok Shop. Shopee has responded by strengthening its own livestream and short-video ad tools.

• Shopee Live Display Ads boost the visibility of a scheduled livestream in places like the Shopee Live homepage and Discovery feed, helping bring in viewers beyond a seller's existing followers.

• Shopee Video lets sellers and affiliates post short videos with tagged products; Shopee frequently attaches exclusive vouchers to video and livestream purchases as an incentive to buy without leaving the content.

Good practice for Shopee Live, based on current guidance for the Vietnamese and Southeast Asian markets:

• Announce the livestream 48-72 hours in advance through your shop feed and social channels, and turn on Shopee's reminder feature so followers are notified.
• Offer time-limited vouchers or flash bundles that only work during the livestream, to create urgency.
• Keep the stream interactive, answer comments by name and run small games, since active engagement raises watch time, which Shopee's algorithm rewards with more organic reach.
• Invest in basic production quality: stable camera, clear lighting, and good audio. Obviously, viewers will leave quickly if they can't see or hear clearly.

4. Affiliate and Creator Marketing: KOL/KOC and the New Meta Partnership

Affiliate marketing is a major growth channel on Shopee, and it works alongside - not instead of - paid ads.

• KOC (Key Opinion Consumer) accounts have no minimum follower requirement; anyone with an active, genuine social channel can apply.
• KOL (Key Opinion Leader) accounts generally need at least 5,000 followers on a platform like TikTok, YouTube, Facebook, or Instagram, and receive higher commission rates plus access to exclusive brand campaigns (Shopee Blog).
• Typical commission ranges reported by Vietnamese agencies run from about 5-10% for food, 10-15% for fashion, and 15-25% for beauty products, though exact rates are set by individual sellers and campaigns.

A very recent development: Shopee x Instagram affiliate program

In early July 2026, Shopee and Meta officially expanded their affiliate partnership to Instagram, after first launching it on Facebook. Eligible creators in Vietnam and other Southeast Asian markets can now tag Shopee products directly in Instagram Reels and feed posts and earn commission when followers complete a purchase.

Shopee and Meta are also testing a paid "Affiliate Ads" product, which would let sellers pay to boost affiliate content as regular Meta ads (with the creator's consent and clear ad labelling) (Báo Pháp Luật - Doanh Nhân). By March 2026, more than 5 million creators globally had already linked their Facebook accounts to Shopee's affiliate program, about half of them joining for the first time - a sign of how central creator-driven selling has become to Shopee's strategy against TikTok Shop.

5. Operational Best Practices for Vietnamese Sellers

A. Get the product ready before turning on ads

In our work with foreign brands on Shopee, the ceiling on ad results is almost always the listing, not the bidding. A telling pattern we see often is a healthy add-to-cart rate paired with a conversion rate stuck in the low single digits: the ads are pulling interested shoppers in, but the product page gives them too little to commit, whether that is thin review counts, a buried or missing size chart, or unclear country-of-origin labeling. Add out-of-stock SKUs to that, and no amount of campaign tuning will save the account, because ads sit downstream of merchandising. So before you turn anything on, get the product ready.

Vietnamese seller-support agencies consistently recommend a pre-launch checklist, since GMV Max performs poorly on products that are not "sales ready":

• The product should already have a stable sales history, ideally 5-10 orders per week at minimum, so the algorithm has data to learn from.
• A high proportion of 5-star ratings (roughly 90% or above) and a reasonable number of reviews.
• Sufficient stock on hand, so a sudden traffic increase doesn't lead to stockouts.
• Clean, complete images (at least 5 photos) and an SEO-friendly title containing your main keyword, ideally 70-120 characters long.
• Any unresolved negative feedback (about product quality or shipping) addressed before scaling ad spend.

B. Choose your bidding strategy based on product maturity

• New or untested products: start with GMV Max Auto Bidding, or a small manual test budget, then evaluate weekly.
• Proven, profitable products: use Custom ROAS so you can protect your margin, and only adjust the ROAS target gradually. We recommend not changing bids by more than 20-30% at a time, since large jumps can confuse the algorithm.
• Avoid stopping or heavily editing a campaign in its first 3-7 days; let the learning phase finish first.

C. Track the right metrics

Shopee Ads reporting in Vietnam typically centres on these indicators:

D. Avoid these common mistakes

• Bidding on keywords that are too broad: A seller of men's t-shirts bidding on "fashion" instead of specific, relevant terms will attract clicks from people who were never going to buy that product, wasting budget.
• Grouping every product into one campaign: This starves your best-selling products of budget while wasting spend on weaker ones. We recommend separating products into groups by role, hero products, clearance items, and new launches, each with its own campaign and objective.
• Judging ads purely by traffic, not profit: High clicks with a low conversion rate usually means the listing itself (photos, price, or reviews) needs work, advertising a weak listing harder just burns your budget faster.

E. Combine paid ads with organic and content channels

Because Shopee's own algorithm rewards products that already show signs of demand, you should also utilize external traffic (Facebook, TikTok, Instagram, Threads) to "warm up" a product's click and engagement data before or alongside running GMV Max, which can help the product qualify for more organic and paid distribution over time.

Likewise, improving on-page SEO (titles, descriptions, and keywords) reduces dependence on paid clicks and improves the conversion rate of the paid traffic you do buy.

6. Conclusion

Shopee Vietnam's advertising ecosystem is becoming increasingly AI-driven, with GMV Max and affiliate marketing now playing a central role in driving sales growth. From our perspective, sellers who combine paid advertising with strong product listings, content, and creator partnerships will be best positioned to succeed in the long term.

For foreign brands that would rather focus on product and let a local team run the day-to-day, Feedforce Vietnam manages Shopee advertising and marketplace operations end-to-end. You can see how we approach it on our E-Commerce Service page.