A number of announcements extending and improving Google’s shopping capabilities were announced at its Marketing Live event yesterday. The new ad formats focus on visuals and extend across multiple properties, giving advertisers more points to reach potential consumers. Features for shoppers aim to offer an enhanced and increasingly frictionless experience.
Ad formats
Discovery Ads, described in Google’s blog post as “a new way to reach people across Google properties in the moments when they’re open to discovering your products and services”, will extend across the YouTube home feed, the Gmail Promotions and Social tabs, and the Discover feed (which appears on the Google app and homepage on mobile) using a single campaign.
Source: Google
Gallery Ads, a new search ads format combining search intent with a more interactive visual format, will appear in the Search results page on mobile. They will carry multiple images users can swipe through.
Google says that in tests Gallery ads had up to 25 percent more interactions, on average
Discovery and Gallery Ads will be rolling out later this year.
Showcase Shopping Ads, where advertisers can display a number of products or a whole inventory category, is being extended to Google Images, the Discover feed, and “soon” to YouTube. This means shoppers will be able to make purchases without leaving those sites.
Source: Google
Google also announced the introduction of App deep linking over the next few weeks. Shoppers who have an advertiser’s app installed will be taken directly to the relevant page in the mobile app from Search, Display and Shopping ads, meaning a much smoother process all round.
Features for shoppers
Google is extending personalisation for shoppers with their own personalised homepage on the Shopping tab, with the ability to filter, read reviews and receive product recommendations.
Shoppers will be able to buy online, in a store or directly on Google. “The blue shopping cart on the item shows shoppers they can seamlessly purchase what they want with simple returns and customer support, backed by a Google guarantee.”
Source: Google
Google said with this new experience, it was “merging the best of Google Express with Google Shopping”.
Shopping Actions merchants will be automatically included into this new purchase experience on Google Shopping, Google.com and Google Assistant, which will be expanding later this year to YouTube and Google Images.
Google says 45% of global shoppers currently buy online and pick-up in-store, and it’s testing a new buy-online, pick- up-in-store service through Shopping ads.
You just need to have product landing pages showing when pick-up-in-store is available and a local inventory feed in Merchant Center to show which items you have in stock. You can also indicate which items you can quickly ship to your store for pickup.
You can apply to join this new beta service here.
