What is Google Shopping Ads?

Google Shopping Ads are a huge opportunity for all e-commerce stores and changed the landscape in online advertising over the past years.

Google Shopping Ads are product listings ads that are displayed across Google’s search and shopping results.

Google Shopping Ads is a great idea in the digital age because customers are much likely to rely on Google to find information about products.

Google Shopping Ads acts as an online price comparison platform when customers see online information about any products that deeply influence purchase decisions.

It also allows people to search for products on different online websites, and compare prices.

Google Shopping Ads campaign is different from Google AdWords’ text, and image ads. Shopping ads are useful because they show-off a product with a price and a good quality image.

Product ads appear at the top of the search engine listings, and searchers look them most.

Google Shopping Ads’ viewing format is entirely different from search ads, and it contains the name, price, and store name with a picture of the product which makes it more attractive and visible.

The cost-per-click (CPC) cost is usually low as compared to search ads and it offers better results.

Google shopping campaigns allow any e-commerce website to show ads on Google Shopping, Google Search Network, and Google Network Partners.

Shopping ads are shown on three distinct places on Google: General Search, Images, and Shopping Tab.

# The General Search comes with specific details such as Product Image, Pricing, Product Title, Merchant Center, and Promotion Message.

# The Image Search includes only Image, Price, and Merchant Center.

# The Shopping Tab is different in ad appearance from General Search such as Price, Brand, Features, Seller, etc.

Common Mistakes in Google Shopping Ads –

# No Keyword optimization

# Same product with different variations

# Manufacturer’s images with low quality

# Use of Universal product feeds

# Product information in Title

Set-up of Google Shopping Ads Campaigns –

Google’s advertising algorithm crawls the product feed within the Google Merchant Center and displays the relevant shopping ads for the given search term.

Google Shopping Ads also are known as Product Listing Ads (PLA) is based on three elements: Google Merchant Center, Product Feed, and Google AdWords.

# Google Merchant Center is your first priority area where you can control your product feed and day-to-day health check of your technical shopping set-up.

The Google Merchant Center is where your product names, information, images, and other details come from. You’ll need to claim and verify the store’s URL while setting-up your Google Merchant Center.

You need to provide your shipping information so that your ads display correctly. When your Merchant Center account is set-up, you’ll be asked to fill out some company information like business’ name, website, address, etc.

Finally, you need to accept Google’s Terms of Service, and you can begin creating shopping ads.

The Google Merchant Center carries the following functions:-

—- Inform Google about the product you want to display.

—- Gives the information to Google that allows creating an ad that works for you.

—- It allows sharing additional insights so that Google knows your exact target audiences.

# The Product Feed is a gathering of information about your product such as item names, images, special IDs, descriptions, classifications, accessibility, and more.

The product feed is a spreadsheet that lists and organizes your product catalog in a way that Google can easily read and understand.

It’s a document that contains everything Google needs to know about your product in order to advertise it through Google shopping ads.

It’s necessary to filling-up a spreadsheet that gives Google necessary information about each product while setting-up product catalog or product feed.

The product feed can be in different formats and the common formats are.CSV and.XML.

You should keep only one main feed that includes all products despite any category, or brand with all necessary details.

You should keep in mind that every Google account needs a single and primary feed.

You’ve two options to build a product feed: 1) automating a product feed from a web store, 2) manually updating.

The benefit of building an automated way out is that the product feed will stay updated with the latest pricing and product descriptions. The manual updating makes sense if you’ve only a few products with rare changes.

# Google AdWords is used for all the optimizations in your shopping campaigns.

Google AdWords is where you’ll set-up and edit your paid campaigns. The Google AdWords account must be linked to your Merchant account. It consists of the campaign structure where you set budgets, and adjust bid strategies.

Google AdWords is the place where you’ll set your financial limit, deal with your offers, gain bids, and make improvements.

You need to log-in to your Google AdWords account to set-up a Google shopping campaign.

You need to choose the Shopping campaign option, and give a name to your campaign, set a target location, and select your bid (CPC), and daily budget amounts.

Advantages of Google Shopping Ads –

Google shopping ads have some major differences compared to normal text ads of AdWords campaigns.

Shopping ads campaigns make use of images to promote your products and display them to people searching on Google.

Google shopping ads platform allows e-commerce stores to highlight and display their products in front of potential customers that are interested to buy.

Here is a list of all the benefits of Google shopping ads in a summarize manner:-

# Great Visibility – Google shopping ads enjoy great visibility because product images are published in the search results. Google shopping ads can appear for a given user’s search term along with normal text ads at the same time.

Google also selects the keyword against which to display your products, and you may discover new keywords that were not added to your list.

You can get benefit from reaching more potential customers with Google shopping ads.

It means you reach with shoppers for a single search could be double. The variable products of your collections might appear only in a single query.

Google shopping ads are the main promotions in the query items that display an image that quickly gets the attention of the customers.

Visual promotions are the key in Google shopping ads, and it pulls buyers and makes them bound to view and click on an item page.

You put the product in front of a larger audience of Google network when you have listed products on the Internet. The larger audience will automatically boost sales even without any specialized settings.

Google shopping campaigns allow increasing awareness of all the related products you are offering. Google shopping ads guarantee that your products appear above the results of organic searches.

# Qualified Leads – Shopping ads are displayed in Google’s search results (SERP), and the potential customers get all the essential details from Google shopping ads, and likely to convert by making a purchase.

You can increase the quality of leads by featuring product information directly in your shopping ads to help people make purchase decisions.

Google shopping ads increases the chances of converting audiences into buyers. When people click on your shopping ads they have a strong intent to buy.

A person coming onto your website from Google shopping ads has already compared your product to competitors. These customers have also seen the price, color, and design.

The customers can see enough data in the ads when they arrive at your website. You get more qualified traffic and leads that are more likely to convert into sales.

# Low Cost – The cost-per-click (CPC) cost very reasonable than Google Search Ads. Google shopping ads are very profitable due to their relevancy.

Google shopping campaigns will guarantee your advertisements to reach the correct and interested customers while maintaining them in line with the budget.

# Higher Traffic – When shopping on the Internet, it’s more likely that a person will click on an ad that displays a product image compared to a normal text ad.

You can enjoy a higher volume of visitors and can make your online store famous among visitors due to the relevance, and high visibility.

Many businesses experienced drastically higher click-through-rates (CTR) with Google shopping ads compared to normal text ads shown in the same location. Some advertisers have experienced double, or triple from standard click-through-rates (CTR).

# Easy Campaigning – It’s simple to create product groups for the merchandise by integrating the Google Merchant Center.

Google shopping ads are much simpler to manage and can ease your workflow. Google uses product data feed to match your product, and there are no keywords.

Google will decide when to show your product ads based on your product data feed. You can manipulate product data feed to optimize your ads with the product title, category, and descriptions.

The creating and managing a Google shopping ads campaign is much easier than the text-based PPC ads.

There is no need to insert keywords for each ad in the Google shopping campaign. Once you create a product feed with all the information, you’re done in setting the campaign.

# Brand Awareness – You can build brand awareness with Google shopping ads apart from an increase in sales. Your brand will appear in front of the people who seek what you sell since Google shopping ads show only for product-related searches.

Google shopping ads are the only advertisements that show off an image in the search outcomes and it can capture the shoppers’ attention.

Visual appeal is important to optimize Google Shopping campaigns because it attracts customers, and makes them more likely to click-through ads.

# Greater ROI – You can improve your CTR and decrease your CPC by using Google shopping ads that will ultimately improve your ROI.

Google Shopping campaign help to increase the quantity and quality of leads on the products. A well-informed ad campaign with quality images of the products helps to improve click-through-rates (CTR) with low CPC.

It’ll give you the best value for the investment that means the increased return on investment (ROI). You could spend lesser money on ad campaigns and generate twice the sale from investment.

A higher ROI means you can enjoy greater success and financial returns on your business and you can generate more sales with less spending.

Google shopping campaigns contribute to better traffic, reduce general ad spend, and in the long run boost your ROI.

# Better Reporting System – Google shopping ads give you a better and improved reporting system with accurate results.

You can check and generate a report based on different metrics to ascertain the performance of shopping ads campaigns.

You can easily filter and segment the data in categories as per the attributes of the product such as brand ID, product type, item ID, and custom label, etc.

Types of Google Shopping Ads –

Google shopping campaigns are the best solutions for e-commerce businesses looking to increase their visibility to interested buyers.

Google shopping campaigns offer a major sales opportunity for e-commerce websites such as driving traffic, or promoting specials, and discounts.

Google Shopping Ads are the retail-centric solution, and presently the most effective paid marketing system for e-commerce.

These shopping ads are showcased on relevant product searches in Google Search, Google Images, and YouTube, etc.

# Product Shopping Ads – These ads are based on the product data that you upload in your Merchant Center account.

It’ll allow you to add-on title, price, images, and the business name, or local store into specific ads. Your product’s specification comes from the product data in your Google Merchant Center.

You can opt-out other Google services such as Trusted Stores, and Merchant Promotions to highlight your ads in other ways.

# Showcase Shopping Ads – These are two-steps ads that display multiple products for your brand by lining up related products together.

Your shoppers can compare your products at the same time and can choose the right one for them. It’ll allow you to group all the related products, and display them to spread the attention to your brand or business.

It’ll help people to decide where to buy the product, and can control the product appears in the selected ad and can track engagements and conversions.

In the search results, instead of displaying pricing, and reviews, users can click the ad to expand the ad to disclose the brand content, and products.

# Local Catalog Ads – These are visual and simple to examine promotion design that utilizes feeds information from nearby stock promotions.

These ads can enable you to drive walker activity to your nearby stores by featuring store-explicit items, costs, and store data.

You can use the product feed data provided from local inventory ads to attract users on the Google Display Network (GDN) for online stores with physical stores.

You can showcase your products, and store information to nearby shoppers searching with Google, and then display all the product details.

Best Practices for Google Shopping Campaigns –

# The quality of your product feed is important, and it should be free of errors. If your data doesn’t match your website, then Google will not show your product ads.

# You can become a Google Trusted Store to rank higher and increase click-through-rates (CTR).

# You should use unique product images, and make sure that your images are of high-quality, and free of watermarks.

# You should upload all of your products in your product feed because you never know what people may be searching for.

# Showcase shopping ads allow you to actually demonstrating what your brand is all about.

# You should pay attention to your ads to check what elements are working, and drawing those clicks.

# You should identify low-performing ads, and give them a new description or headline to try, and boost the sales.

# You need to listen to your data, and what it’s telling about your customers, campaigns, and products.

# Google Merchant Center and Google AdWords account are required. A standard Google AdWords text-ad campaign is not required to use Google Shopping Ads.

Conclusion – Google Shopping Ads has been a robust and effective tool over the years. It offers multiple options to target audiences more effectively and increases ROI. The performance of product ads helps you to analyze which products are selling and provide important insights into product development. Google Shopping campaign is excellent for advertisers that allow them to do quality product performance analysis. Google Shopping Ads have more credibility and value points that generate awareness leads to help the buyer to make the final decision to buy the product.