Shopping ads are widely used by retailers to promote online and local inventory and find better qualified leads by boosting traffic to a website or a local shop. In contrast with search or display ads, shopping ads let you include a picture of your product, a title, price, shop name, and more. These ads give users a good overall impression of your product, and it ensures that you get more qualified and interested leads.
What are some of the benefits of running Shopping ads for advertisers?
- Because your ads feature specific product information, users have the opportunity to make informed purchase decisions before even clicking and costing you money. And the people who click on your ad are the ones who will most likely make a purchase, which is highly beneficial for advertisers.
- Shopping ads use the product attributes defined in the Merchant Centre data feed, and it shows your ads on relevant searches without the need for keywords. Plus, you can save a lot of time from doing your usual keyword research.
- Your reach with shoppers for a single search could be doubled since your shopping ad can be shown alongside your search ad or another one of your shopping ads.
- You have access to reports on how well your products are performing, also allowing you to filter and make comparisons.
There are 3 types of Shopping ads. Product shopping is ads created based on the data submitted in the Merchant Centre. Showcase shopping ads are created in Google Ads by grouping related products together, which allows users to compare and choose which product they want. And local inventory ads are used to engage users on the Google Display Network and help drive traffic to your local shops by showing your shop information to nearby users.
In terms of deciding between a Shopping and a Search ad, it is important to look at the differences and advantages of each and what your business goal is with advertising.
If you have multiple products and want to highlight each or most of them, a shopping ad will be suitable for the purpose. It will provide all the valuable information that users need to decide whether they want to check it out, including an image for visual representation. While you won’t be able to bid on certain keywords, you will be able to submit detailed ad accurate descriptions to your feed. However, with search ads, promoting individual products will be limited due to the lack of image availability. Instead, you can utilize ad extensions to promote products, potential promotions, physical location, opening hours, and more.
What’s new for Shopping ads?
Google has made an important decision to ban the advertisement of digital books through Shopping ads, including PDFs, ePub books, and MOBI. The reason for this change is the fact that Google didn’t feel like they have provided the best user and publisher experience to meet the high standards for digital books. The change will occur from May 18, 2021, and it will not affect physical books or audiobooks.
In our perspective, this can be an opportunity for you or for advertisers who relied on advertising their digital books on Google. Other formats not being included in the policy can provide new and innovative ideas for switching to different formats. For example, you can adapt to the rising preference of audio by users and work towards shifting to audiobooks.
If you’re looking to start with Google advertising, but you’re not sure if Shopping ads are what you need at this moment, we advise you to begin with Search ads. We can provide you with the basics to start and run your first ad within 30 minutes or less, and we are always happy to guide you further during a 1-to-1 discovery call.
