Turn your YouTube video ads into a virtual storefront when you add a product feed to your YouTube line items. With this creative add-on, you can show browsable product imagery below your video ads and inspire customers to visit your website to learn more about your business or make a purchase.
How it works
- When a user sees your YouTube ad, the panel below the ad automatically expands to showcase your products. Products appear on desktop and when the user’s mobile device is in portrait mode.
- Users can select a product image to immediately go to the product’s landing page for more information and to make a purchase.
- A minimum of 4 product images can be shown below the YouTube ad.
Before you begin
- Set up a product feed in Merchant Center.
- Include at least 4 products. For best performance with YouTube video line items, we recommend adding more than 4 products to your feed.
- Include images for each product that will be shown in the ad (aspect ratios can range from .6 to 1.4). Only the primary image will be used in the ad.
- Your products should comply with our Shopping ads and personalized advertising policies.
- Enable Shopping ads in your Merchant Center account. If you haven’t used Merchant Center before, sign up using your Google Account.
- Link your Merchant Center account to Display & Video 360.
Link a Merchant Center account to Display & Video 360
Before you create a product feed, you need to link your Display & Video 360 advertiser to the Merchant Center account that has products you want to include in ads.
To link accounts for product feeds:
- From your advertiser, expand Advertiser Settings and click Linked Accounts.
- You’ll see instructions that include a Google Ads account ID used by Display & Video 360 for Merchant Center.
- Send this ID to your Merchant Center account administrator and have them link to it from the Account Linking > Display and Video 360 section of Merchant Center. Learn more
- Contact your Display & Video 360 support representative to finalize the account linking.
After these steps are complete you’ll see the linked Merchant Center account listed in your Display & Video 360 advertiser’s Linked accounts section.
- Make sure the product specifications are accurate in your feed.
- Make sure your product feed has items available for the countries that you’re targeting. Product availability for your campaign is based on the settings in your product feed.
- Use the item_group_id attribute for large merchant feeds that have identical or similar items. This attribute allows you to group product variants in your feed, so that we don’t show duplicate product images in your ad.
- New product feeds can take up to 3 days to approve, so take this into account when planning your campaigns.
- Follow the best practices for YouTube campaigns.
Add a product feed to a new line item
- Start in an existing insertion order or create a new one.
- In your insertion order, click New line item.
- Pick YouTube & partners video.
- Enter the following information for your line item:
- Name for your line item.
- Select Website conversions, Brand awareness and reach, or Product and brand consideration as the line item type.
- Select an Ad format. Note: Product feeds are not available for the Ad sequence Ad format.
- Click Next.
- Configure your line item’s settings.
- In the Product feed section check Use a Google Merchant Center feed to show products with your ads.
This option is only available if you’ve linked your Merchant Center account to Display & Video 360.
- Select a product feed from your Merchant Center account. Make sure that you select the correct product feed, as you won’t be able to change it after you save your campaign.
- Create your ad group.
- In the Product filter section choose the products that you’ll show in the ad group. By default, we’ll show all products from your feed (unless you choose a different option). If you choose to show all products, we’ll select products from your feed based on their potential performance. To help us show more relevant products to users, consider setting up a remarketing list on your account.
- None - Use all products: All eligible products in your feed can be shown.
- Choose specific products: You choose the products that can be shown below the video ad. You can include between 4 and 50 products in the product feed.
- Create custom filters: Show products based on your custom labels in the ad.
- No products: Opt out of showing your products from the ad group (for example, if the products don’t match the video ad). This is useful if you’re running multiple ad groups from within the same campaign.
- (If applicable) Click any warning icons and resolve errors. Otherwise, your products may not show in the ad. You need at least 4 approved products for the products to show in the ad.
- (Required for YouTube video action campaigns; optional for Brand awareness and reach and Product and brand consideration line items) Enter the text for your call to action for each ad. The CTA should be a compelling action that directs users to the website specified in your final URL, and can contain up to 10 characters including spaces. A call to action is required for all ads in campaigns using a product feed. If you don’t add your own call-to-action, “Shop now” will automatically be used when product feeds are displayed.
- Finish setting up your ad group and ads.
- Click Create.
Add a product feed to an existing line item
- Navigate to the line item details page.
- In the Product feed section check Use a Google Merchant Center feed to show products with your ads.
- Select a product feed from your Merchant Center account. Make sure that you select the correct product feed, as you won’t be able to change it after you save your campaign.
- (Required for YouTube video action campaigns; optional for Brand awareness and reach and Product and brand consideration line items) Enter the text for your call to action for each ad. If you don’t add your own call-to-action, “Shop now” will automatically be used when product feeds are displayed.
- Click Save. By default, we’ll show all products from your feed. If you want to choose the products that you’ll show in your ad groups, go to your ad group settings and update the Product filter section.
Review product feed performance
To report on product feeds, generate a YouTube standard report with the Click Type dimension. The Clicks metric is compatible with the Click Type dimension. Click Type captures all clicks on the product feed and does not break it out by individual products shown on the feed.
Avoid comparing product feed performance in the campaign to all line item traffic, as the line item includes traffic not eligible for product feeds with different user behaviors and performance. If you want to compare performance of line items with product feeds to line items without product feeds, create a video experiment.
Limitations
- Ad serving isn’t limited to only showing impressions with the product. Some ads in the campaign may serve without products.
- If there are extensions attached to your campaign (for example, sitelink extensions), products from your feed will always show first (in locations where the products are eligible to show). If your goal is “Leads”, then lead form extensions will show first instead of your products.
- Product feeds are not available for YouTube ad sequence campaigns.