As of 1st November, Google have rolled out Product Listing Ads to search advertisers in the UK, Germany and France, and already ecommerce websites are starting to see the advantages of having their products highlighted in the sponsored ads.
This month has seen a number of changes from Google, including Social Extensions for Google AdWords and new ad placements at the bottom of Google results.
However, Product Listing Ads could be one of the most beneficial changes for online retailers.
These ads allow you to link up a Google Merchant Center account with your AdWords account. If you’re not already using Merchant Center to generate interest in your products, you really should be. By simply submitting a data feed with details of your products to the Merchant Center, your products will start to appear in the Google Shopping listings when keywords related to your products are used.
So how does AdWords fit in with this?
Once your Merchant Center account is up and running, you can link your products with your Google AdWords account in the Ad Extensions Tab. You can divide your products up by category, so it would be a good idea to have separate groups for televisions and DVD players. You can then add keywords as you would normally for your AdWords campaign that are relevant to your products. Then when someone searches for a keyword that either matches your keywords or Google deems to be relevant, your ad has the opportunity to be shown with a picture of your product in the top right hand corner of results – see image below.
Having already set this up for several of our clients, we have seen click-through and conversion rates increase very quickly, as users have the opportunity to decide whether they are happy with the look and price of the product before they click through to your site. This helps to eliminate wasted clicks and to reduce your bounce rate.
However, there are only ever two or three spaces available in the bidding auction for Product Listing ads, meaning that as more and more advertisers start to use this option on their AdWords account, the competition and therefore price will get higher and higher. This could greatly impact businesses who sell products with small profit margins.
Advertisers should also consider the importance of high-quality product images for their website and Merchant Center, as poor quality pictures will most likely put-off potential customers. They should also be sure to conduct proper market research before using the ads. Because prices are shown in Product Listing Ads, having prices that are far higher than the competition could mean that users will ignore the ad completely.
If you’re interested in finding out how Product Listing Ads could benefit your ecommerce site, get in touch with one of our team today.
By Laura
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