What are Product Listing Ads (aka Shopping Ads) and How Should You Use Them?

Shopping Ads are a solid way to get your products in front of motivated prospects. This ad feature provides detailed information about specific products that you sell. To create Shopping ads, one needs to set up the product information in Google Merchant Center and create Shopping campaigns in Google Ads. Shopping ads originated in the year 2002, it was initially called Froogle.

Things you require to set up a shopping ad:

If you have business prospects that prefer to make a call to your company, then you MUST use call tracking to measure the success of your inbound marketing efforts. If you want answers to questions like:

1. Your store platform
2. Product feed: to send all your product info to Google Merchant Center
3. Google Merchant Center account
4. Google Ads account

Steps to set up a shopping ad:

1. Set up a Google Merchant Center account
2. Optimize your product imagery
3. Collect and input your product feed data
4. Link your Google AdWords account
5. Create a Google Shopping campaign
6. Place bids on your Shopping campaign
7. Target and schedule your Shopping campaign
8. Build ad groups

Why to use shopping ads?

To keep it short, it works!

For instance, if you search for “Running Shoes”, it pulls up lots of websites along with the sponsored Google Shopping results. Bingo. You get to see different brands that offer running shoes along with their detailed images, price, description and other perks like free delivery/discount codes and more.​

Here are a few other reasons to use Google Shopping:

• Google Shopping adds a visual treat to an otherwise text-heavy searching and shopping experience.
• Google Shopping allows you to show up multiple times in Google SERPs (Search Engine Result Pages) — as a website result, a text-only PPC result, and a Shopping result.
• In comparison to text ads, Google Shopping has seen a proven 30% higher conversion rate.

How are Shopping ads different from text ads? What are the benefits

a. Shopping Ads

Shopping campaigns have significantly grown to be a major source of traffic and sales. As a result, more than 50% of all Google Ads spend has shifted from conventional text adverts to Shopping ads. That is a tremendous shift, which shows how powerful shopping campaigns can be. Some other benefits are:

1. Better Click-Through-Rate (CTR)
2. Reduced Cost Per Click
3. Better Return On Investment (ROI)
4. Good Visibility even on Mobile
5. Visually appealing pictures
6. Works great if you have a massive inventory
7. Automatically updated
8. Custom Labels
9. Better reporting
10. Competitive Metrics

b. Text Ads

Text ads, on the other hand, are remarkably customisable depending on the objective of the campaign. It allows different ad variations to be tested, with ease, that helps to improve ad performance and preserve spend levels. For example, if the goal is to drive more phone calls, the marketer can exhibit a number more notably with a ‘click to call’ button.

Text ads are also more versatile and can be used to target a broader range of audiences – not just people hunting for product-related terms – with very relevant content. The digital evangelist therefore has more options for promoting products or services at various stages in the user journey, from research to sale or enquiry.

Should businesses, who are already investing in paid search advertising, focus on Shopping Ads?

While both text and shopping ads have their own flaws and benefits, it totally depends on the business objective when it comes to choosing either. As with any digital marketing strategy, the chosen approach should reflect the circumstances and objective(s) of the business concerned. If the core motive is to drive more leads from a website, or there’s a need to target a wider audience, then text ads will no doubt prove the most effective type of campaign. With that being said, the uplift in Shopping ad usage is undeniable, hence, for e-commerce brands, Shopping campaigns will undoubtedly deliver a better ROI for the spend.

Of course, the money could be split across both, if budget permits. But with such little space on that crucial first page and also since revenue is often an issue – it may be more intelligent to adopt a quality over quantity mindset.

Conclusion

Google Shopping Ads is definitely a welcome change from the traditional text-heavy online shopping experience. It’s more like a digital mall where shoppers can enter, search for what they want, and see many different brands and types of products on one screen. Solely for this very reason, many people prefer marketplaces over shopping for products on a standalone ecommerce site as there’s a large variety and comparison of brands/prices all under one roof.

If your physical products aren’t being advertised in the Google Shopping results, then you are majorly missing out on prospective sales. Immediately consider adding this tool to your marketing repository. Not only will it scale up your website traffic, but it will also give you leads and sales you might not have collected otherwise.

If you need any assistance in setting up shopping ads campaign for your products, reach out to us.