Who is this guide for?
This guide is best for beginner and intermediate retail advertisers who have already set up their free product listings in Google Merchant Center and linked their account to Google Ads. If you still need to upload your products to Merchant Center, you can find more guidance here.
Amidst ongoing uncertainty and the constantly-evolving consumer journey, people’s needs and preferences have become a lot more unpredictable, making it increasingly complex to engage them. In this guide, you’ll learn how you can make your products stand out and combine your marketing expertise with Google AI-powered ads solutions to drive profitable growth and keep pace with consumers’ rapidly changing behaviors. Your knowledge of your customers and your business are key factors in guiding Google AI to success and differentiating your business from your competitors. |
Retail Announcement: tl;dr Ads News & How Tos series
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1. Enhance your product feed to help your Shopping ads stand out |
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Why: Close-up product shots with a white background make it easy for customers to see product details, helping you drive more engagement. NoteIn the U.S., you can update your assets in Manufacturer Center to include 3D images if available. You can use this attribute for shoes, glasses, and home goods. Based on internal data, people engage nearly 50 percent more with a 3D image versus a static image.1
Why: Accurate data, like price and availability, is key to ensure your ads showcase the information your customers are looking for. Upload rich product descriptions and update product prices and availability if they change often. TipHaving at least 10 product offers will improve the overall performance of your Merchant Center and Ads campaigns. Showcase your fulfillment options and dealsWhy: Shoppers are increasingly looking for great deals, fast delivery times, and easy returns. In fact, surveyed shoppers say the quality of an item (46%) and deals/promotions (45%) are the most helpful things brands can communicate as they consider items to buy.2 Use annotations to stand out to them when they're looking for convenient ways to purchase.
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Enable Local Inventory Ads to connect with in-store shoppersWhy: 50% of consumers in surveyed markets said they checked product inventory before going to the store.3 Local Inventory Ads let local shoppers know that your store has the products they’re looking for, at the moment they search on Google.
Note: In Comparison Shopping Service (CSS) program countries, you participate in Shopping ads through one or several CSSs of your choice. Some CSSs manage your product data and your campaigns on your behalf, while others provide tools allowing you to manage your setup yourself. Learn more about advertising with Comparison Shopping Services. |
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2. Reach your customers wherever they are |
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Capture shopping demand on Search by combining broad match with Smart Bidding and responsive search adsWhy: The best way to achieve better business outcomes is to customize Google AI for your business. This combination helps you reach the right customers, with the right message, at the right price, no matter how they’re searching.
TipComplement your Search campaigns with compelling visuals of your products and services using image assets. Compelling visuals of products or services that enhance the message of your Search ad can help drive performance. Case StudyTails.com is a subscription company offering tailor-made dog food. Using the combination of broad match, Smart Bidding, and responsive search ads, they increased sign-ups in Germany from its generic Search campaigns by 182%, while increasing clicks by 258%. Use Performance Max campaigns together with Search campaigns to drive online salesWhy: Together, AI-powered Search campaigns and Performance Max campaigns are the ads power pairing that will help you find more valuable customers and multiply your conversions across Google's full range of advertising channels. With Performance Max, you can access all of Google’s ad inventory—Search, YouTube, Display, Discover, Gmail, and Maps—all in one campaign. In fact, advertisers that shifted from Standard Shopping campaigns to Performance Max drove a 25% increase in conversion value, on average, at a similar ROAS.4
NoteIf your business adds new types of conversions or the value of conversions change, make sure to update this to ensure that cross-channel bidding continues to seek the conversions that will drive real business outcomes. Once you change your conversions, this may change your bidding or set your campaign to learning mode for a period of time.
TipUse new customer value mode so you can bid higher for new customers without excluding existing ones.
TipAssess the quality of your assets and identify new opportunities to improve with ad strength. However, don’t remove any assets unless you’ve reached your maximum upload limits because underperforming ones will not serve as often and they may still perform well in certain auctions and contexts.
TipInclude a video asset that’s at least ten seconds long to show your business in action. If you don’t have a video, Performance Max will automatically generate a high-quality one for you using your other assets. Based on internal data, advertisers that included at least 1 video of each orientation (horizontal, vertical, and square) to their Performance Max Campaigns delivered 20% more conversions in YouTube compared to horizontal videos alone.6
Case StudyBombas is an online apparel retailer focused on making the most comfortable socks, underwear and t-shirts. After experiencing success with Smart Shopping campaigns, they decided to test several of their core product categories on Performance Max campaigns. As a result, Bombas saw a 33% increase in conversion rate, 22% higher return on ad spend and 19% Improvement in cost per acquisition. Note: In CSS Program Countries, Performance Max campaigns can be used with any Comparison Shopping Service (CSS) you work with. The ads will show on general search results pages and on any other surfaces the CSS has opted in to. Learn more about how to optimize your Performance Max campaigns Drive customer loyalty and business performance through your app with Web to App Connect and App campaigns
Why: Web to App Connect helps you establish deep linking, in-app conversion measurement and bidding to improve the customer experience and optimize your campaign performance. For customers who already have your app installed, Web to App Connect directs them from your web campaign to the relevant in-app page where they can easily complete their desired action.
Why: App campaigns tap into the full power of Google AI to promote your app across Google’s largest properties, all from a single campaign. Set up your campaign based on your business goals, such as driving app installs or re-engaging existing customers. By doing this, you can market your app to different types of users as your app’s business priorities change. Learn more about how to drive customer loyalty with your app Capture demand offline by using Performance Max campaigns with omnichannel goals & Performance Max campaigns with store goalsWhy: By adding store and/or omnichannel goals, Performance Max campaigns help you promote your physical locations across Google and maximize your in-store value (using store visits or sales, and/or local actions).
Note: In CSS Program Countries, Performance Max campaigns can be used with any Comparison Shopping Service (CSS) you work with. The ads will show on general search results pages and on any other surfaces the CSS has opted in to. Learn more about connecting with local and omnichannel customers. |
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3. Optimize your campaigns to drive more performance |
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Why: Performance Planner lets you create plans for your advertising spend and assess how changes to campaigns might affect key metrics and overall performance.
Why: Featuring just-in-time trends and forward-looking insights, the Insights page in Google Ads gives you visibility into what’s driving your performance, while surfacing relevant trends in your market. By checking the Insights page often, you’ll be able to better understand how your customer interests and preferences are shifting.
Why: Recommendations can help you improve performance by surfacing the most impactful optimization opportunities based on your account's performance history, your campaign settings, trends across Google and more. Review your recommendations regularly to continuously identify new opportunities and apply recommendations that support your business goals
Why: Each recommendation shows how much your optimization score, an estimate of how well your Google Ads account is set to perform, will be impacted when you apply it. Use optimization score to prioritize the recommendations that will have the biggest impact on performance. The score and recommendations are dynamic and tailored to your business, so it will reflect new recommendations as they arise, based on shifting demand and changes in the market.
Why: The Product Issues column in the Products tab in Google Ads helps you understand the performance of individual products in your campaign and resolve potential issues that may be impacting your reach. From there, you can access insights to easily spot underperforming offers, identify products with missing feed attributes, and see how competitive your products' bids are.
Why: Make inventory decisions and prioritize which products to show in your advertising campaigns with the best sellers report. With this information, you can improve your pricing and bidding strategies on top products using insights from the price competitiveness report. Use the Reporting API to ingest and analyze the data from these and other Merchant Center reports at scale. |
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Check out the 2023 Global Google Retail Guide to explore a collection of useful tools, product recommendations, and consumer insights that will help you achieve your business and marketing objectives.
To hear from product specialists on driving consistent online sales amid changing consumer behavior, tune in to Google Ads Academy: Grow Profitable Online Sales.
1. Google Internal Data
2. Google-commissioned Ipsos Consumer Continuous study, AU, BR, CA, CN, FR, DE, IN, IT, JP, KR, MX, ES, ZA, U.K., U.S., ~n=500–1,000 online consumers 18+ per market, July 7, 2022–July 10, 2022
3. Google-commissioned Ipsos Consumer Continuous study, AU, BR, CA, CN, FR, DE, IN, IT, JP, KR, MX, ZA, ES, U.K., U.S., ~n=500–1,000 online consumers 18+ per market, Nov. 10, 2022–Nov. 13, 2022.
4. Google Data, Global, Ads, October 2022 - March 2023.
5. Google data, Global, November 2022
6. Google data, Global, November 2022
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