Google Shopping Ads show as one large ad unit with multiple product pictures and products. Clicking on a specific Product Listing Ad unit will take you directly to the page where you can pur-chase the product. While product-level specific SEM campaigns run by Google have gone through many transitions and overhauls, this is how they look in their present day format.

Many users online are searching for specific products or product-level categories when enter-ing queries. Online brands and advertisers are looking to sell specific products from their online stores. Google Shopping Ads provide a seamless experience that connects e-commerce advertisers

looking to sell specific products with the people looking for those products through pictures and the Product Listing Ad units on the search engine results page.

Part one of this two-part Elite SEM Google Shopping Whitepaper will introduce you to all of the basic principles and background information needed to fully understand Google Shopping cam-paigns.

GOOGLE SHOPPING 2014 WHITEPAPER PART 1:

GOOGLE SHOPPING CAMPAIGNSAN OVERVIEW AND INTRODUCTIONBY NOW MOST OF the online marketing community is very familiar with what Google Product Listing Ads (also known as Google Shopping Ads) are and what they look like. Plainly stated, Google Shopping Ads are online ad units for specific products that include a picture, price, seller, and title for that featured object or merchandise.

The Google Shopping experience on desktop and mobile devices.

The Google Merchant CenterThe foundation of Google Shopping ads includes a company’s prod-uct feed that lists their products, and accompanying key details and information about said products. This all lives in the Google Merchant Center.

In merchant center accounts, advertisers upload their store infor-mation and product data so that Google can index and access it. It is only after the advertiser has set up a product feed, loaded that data into a Google Merchant center, and then linked their Merchant Center with their Adwords account that users can advertise their product ads in product listing ads or shopping ad unit spaces.

https://support.google.com/merchants/?hl=en#topic=3404777

For those without an

account, you can sign up at

google.com/merchants

A Product Listing Ad (PLA) from a Google Shopping ad unit. PLA displays product image, title, price, and seller.

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GOOGLE SHOPPINGADS ON SEARCH RESULTS PAGE

The Basic Product Information • ID: A unique identifier of each item.

• Title: The title of each item. Include both brand and color in your titles to differentiate similar products.

• Description: An area to include visual and additional attributes of each specific product. Sizing, technical aspects, material, age, and/or gender are recommended attributes to be listed here.

• Google Product Category: This field pertains to the specific cate-gory of product as per Google’s product taxonomy. Google has predefined all the different types of products, thus you will have to classify your products and items by their specific categories and subcategories.

• Product Type: Provide your own category of your items submitted if you have specific categorization of your products that is different from the Google taxonomy.

EXPERT TIPTitle is one of the most

important columns within

your feed! It needs to include

more specific information

than just the name of the

product. Consider adding the

following:

• Brand name

• Product Type

• Color

• Other informative

general characteristics

about the product

The Product FeedThe heart and soul of any Google Shopping campaign is the product feed. Your product feed is a text spreadsheet (tab delimited) or XML file that contains the necessary and specific product information required by Google.

Certain pieces of information in your feed are required for all types of items. Additional elements may be needed for specific items, depending on what products you sell. Visit-ing the merchant center for the most up to date recommendations and requirements is highly encouraged but a brief summary of the most common can be found here:

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DECEMBER 2002

“FROOGLE” LAUNCHES• Google uses web crawlers to catalog

and list product data from vendors. • Froogle clicks are free!

APRIL 2007

“FROOGLE” CHANGES TO “GOOGLE PRODUCT SEARCH” • Mostly interface changes as well as a name change.• Still free, product search ads were not served on Google.com but located in “more” options in the search page along with

video, maps, news, etc. • Fun fact: Marissa Meyer was the VP of Search Products and User Experience at Google at the time.

OCTOBER 2012

PRODUCT LISTING ADS LAUNCH • Google Shopping ads completely transition to a paid ad format.• Google offers “a new way to optimize campaigns” at a more granular level:

optimizing bids for individual products (while it was possible to create specific groupings for more granular products or product categories, tracking cost and revenue to specific products was not available in the Google Adwords interface)

• Link: A link that sends a user specifically to the product.

• Mobile Link: A mobile link specified for mo-bile-friendly landing pages for your products if different from your desktop experience.

• Image Links: A link that points to the main im-age for a specific product. If you have multiple product images you can add in a column for ad-ditional image links. All items require an image link and there are many best practices and rec-ommendations listed on the Google Merchant Center support page.

• Condition: Identify whether your product is new, refurbished, or used.

Inventory Status, Pricing, Tax, and Shipping• Availability: Identify whether the product is “in

stock,” “out of stock,” or available for “preorder.”

• Price: The price of the item.

• Tax: Adding the country, region, rate, or tax on shipping is required when necessary.

• Shipping: Price of shipping, as well as additional optional charges for area of delivery or delivery speed/service.

Unique Product Identifiers• Brand: The brand that manufactured the prod-

uct.

• GTIN or MPN: The Global Trade Item Number or Manufacturer Part Number where applicable.

EXPERT TIPYou can use specific tracking

on your links, or implement a

redirect in order to measure

users coming to your site from

shopping campaigns.

It’s worth the extra leg-

work— some advantages

include product-specific mea-

surement and cross campaign

attribution.

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MAY 2013

“GOOGLE PRODUCT SEARCH” TRANSITIONS TO “PRODUCT LISTING ADS”

• Announcement that Google Shopping will change from a free offering to a pay-per-click commercial model.

• Google offers all merchants who create Product Listing Ad campaigns by August 15, 2012 10% of their total Product List-ing Ad spend through the end of 2012.

• Google touts making Product Listing Ads paid will lead to better customer service on the product end and a better experience.

• Google also mentions consolidating where product ads show up on the Google.com SERP from multiple spots to one format clearly labeled “sponsored.”

OCTOBER 2013

GOOGLE INTRODUCES “GOOGLE SHOPPING CAMPAIGNS”

• Google announces a new campaign type for Product Listing Ads to streamline the manage-ment and reporting of product specific shopping campaigns.

• Only available to a limited group of advertisers.

APRIL 2, 2014

RETIREMENT OF PLAs, FULL TRANSITION TO “GOOGLE SHOPPING” ANNOUNCED

• Google gives advertisers a specific date when PLA campaigns will be discontinued and all advertisers must transition to Google Shopping campaigns.

AUGUST 2014

GOOGLE FULLY RETIRES PLAs AND SWITCHES TO GOOGLE SHOPPING CAMPAIGNS

• New Shopping campaigns allow advertisers to browse product inventory directly in Adwords, as well as monitor the specific product level cost, revenue, and other metrics that were unavailable for Product Listing Ads.

• Up to five custom labels are now available in the product feed for customized bidding and grouping (as compared to two previously: “Adword labels” and “Adwords groupings”).

• Benchmarking your shopping campaign performance against similar products for CPCs and CTR becomes available.

• Creating multiple ad groups within shopping campaigns are now supported.

Adwords Attributes and Other Variables on the Product FeedThere are five custom label columns available to further group your products and promote, budget, and bid on your e-commerce products more specifically and intelligently. These cus-tom labels can be used how you see fit to di-vide a product catalog based on performance.

The most advanced advertisers use custom labels to their advantage to separate out their product feed into more manageable segments for budgeting, bidding, reporting, and monitor-ing. Some common examples include orga-nizing product feeds by the ones that are the top-performing, best-selling, or have the high-est profit margin. Keep in mind these are not

the only business specific attributes you can use. Additionally, you are limited to 1,000 val-ues per unique label.

There are plenty of additional variables spe-cific to certain product types, especially for ap-parel. Consult the Google Merchant Center to be 100% clear on the most up to date required and optional feeds for your specific product of-fering.

This is the biggest area of opportunity for advertisers to test different classifications and categorization to not only improves on their placement, but their ROI.

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Product Listing Ads show on the same search engine results page as SEM keyword campaigns, but there are many differences between search ads and shopping ads.

Targeting criteria for ads showing• While both SEM ads and shopping ads are

triggered by keywords, you don’t actively se-lect the keyword that triggers shopping ads like you do for search ads. Because of this there are no positive keywords and/or match types to be selected for Product Listing Ads.

• Product Listing Ads are targeted by the prod-uct details, title, and description of your prod-ucts in your product feed that lives in your Google Merchant Center account.

Landing pages and destination URLs• For shopping campaigns your product-level

ads need to go directly to your product pages.

• For search campaigns you have full control over where you direct the users on your site. Want to send them to the product page, the home page, a different product to be purchased, or an email sign up page? The choice is yours!

The look of your ads and extensions• For shopping campaigns you can change:

○ Images ○ Title of your product

• For search campaigns you can change: ○ Headline, description, display urls ○ Any of the numerous extensions available on search

Remarketing list for search ads works for search but not yet for Shopping campaigns

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The Differences Between Search Ads and Shopping Ads

Google Shopping ads unit (PLAs)

SEM paid search ad

SEO search results

GOOGLE SHOPPINGMOBILE DEVICE VIEW

While there are many differences between search and shopping campaigns, there are a few key synergies.

Search Query Reporting and Negative Keywords• While you cannot choose what keywords trig-

ger your Shopping Campaigns ads, you can still review search query reports for terms that have triggered your ads. From that point you can:

○ Include negative keywords for both search and shopping campaigns that are too gener-al— or irrelevant to your products— but trig-gered your ads nonetheless. ○ Monitor keywords that trigger your ads with high spend and impressions, but poor to no ROI.

• You can additionally see what specific queries triggered your ads and converted. This can give you good insight on specific keywords and themes to focus your product titles and descrip-tions around.

Double vision• People searching for products you carry

have the same intention, so showing on the same SERP for both shopping campaigns and search campaigns is a sound strategy to maximize placement and visibility for your top products and product categories.

Lay out a strategy, test, modify, measure, repeat• Search and shopping campaigns both require

a similar due diligence. Always test to get the maximum ROI for your program.

Bid modifiers• Search and shopping campaigns can be ad-

justed for mobile traffic and other bid modifiers.

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The Similarities Between Search Ads and Shopping Ads

Google Shopping ads unit (PLAs)

SEM paid search ad

SEO search results

GOOGLE SHOPPINGDESKTOP DEVICE VIEW

Let’s RecapSo now at this point you know a lot about Google Shopping campaigns. We know:

• What Google Shopping Campaigns look like across different devices

• How the key elements of Shopping Campaigns are set and how they operate and function

• Google Merchant Center

• Product Feed

• The history of Google Shopping Campaigns

• Things have changed a lot since 2002!

• Key differences, similarities, and synergies between search and shopping campaigns

Now that we know all of these things, what else can we learn?

• What is the current growth trajectory of Google Shopping Campaigns?

• How has 2014 compared to the trends we saw with Shopping clicks and spend in 2013?

• Has Google Shopping competition gotten fiercer, less competitive, or stayed the same in 2014?

• What portion of Google Shopping traffic comes from mobile com-pared to desktop and tablet use?

We’re so glad you asked and are interested!To get the answers to these questions and more, please download part two of this Elite SEM Google Shopping Whitepaper series: Google Shopping Campaign Trends (2014) and the Future of Google Shopping.

Marc WeisingerDirector of Marketing

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