On the eve of the year’s busiest shopping period, Google has a variety of new features to help retailers get their products in front of potential buyers and increase conversions.
Help shoppers find local stores
Many shoppers conduct online research before visiting a store and Google says it’s seeing 350 times more search interest in "local" + "near me" than 10 years ago.
Google says Retailers should use Local campaigns to maximize store traffic and combine them with Shopping campaigns, where you can promote your product inventory, to help increase omnichannel reach and sales.
In new features being introduced to Google Maps in the coming weeks, retailers will be able to feature their locations as users get directions to a destination, and be added as a stop en route.
Sellers can also promote locations as buyers browse content, and display a curated selection of products in a visual catalog-like experience.
Local inventory ads help users see which products are in stock and new expanded store pickup feature will show buyers the options offered by retailers.
- Pick up today: show which products are available for immediate store pickup, with the option of paying online first.
- Pick up later: promote products that may not be available in store now, but can be quickly shipped to a nearby store within a few days.
Google says reach out to your account team if you’d like to join the beta for this feature.
More details at: https://blog.google/products/ads/local-ads/
Shopping Ads come to YouTube
Google is introducing Shopping ads to the YouTube home feed and YouTube search results, “making YouTube more shoppable and extending the reach of your Shopping campaigns”.
Retailers already using standard Shopping campaigns, and who are opted into YouTube on Display Network, will be eligible to run YouTube Shopping ads.
Google also says it’s made YouTube video ads more interactive, giving viewers useful information like store location and adding more calls to action to help drive conversions.
Addionally, In the coming months sitelink extensions will become available for TrueView for action ads, allowing viewers to easily navigate to different landing pages on your site from your video ads. Google says a beta test with 30 advertisers showed the addition of sitelinks resulted in a 23% increase in conversions.
More details at: https://blog.google/products/ads/gift-giving-ideas/
Showcase Shopping ads expanding to Google Images
Showcase Shopping ads, where retailers can display a range of related products are now going to be shown also in Google Image searches. Google says these are particularly good for attracting new customers, with around 85% of traffic going to retailer sites from these ads coming from new visitors.
People searching on a broad term such as holiday party dresses will be shown Shopping ads that group related products together.
Showcase Shopping ads which up to now have been available for apparel and furniture related searches will now be expanded to new categories such as beauty and electronics.
More details at: https://blog.google/products/ads/gift-giving-ideas/
Use Google's cart conversion reporting to keep track of sales metrics including average cart size, individual product performance, and revenue and profits from your ads.
