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Everyday, people search on Google for the best products from retailers large and small. With Product Listing Ads (PLA) on Google Shopping, people can browse a wide selection of products, finding high-quality imagery and relevant product information like brand and price.

To make it easier for you to connect with these consumers and promote your products on Google, we’re introducing Shopping campaigns, a new campaign type for PLAs. Shopping campaigns streamline how you manage and bid on your products, report on your performance, and find opportunities to grow your traffic from Google.
Key benefits

1. Retail-centric way to manage your products

Shopping campaigns allow you to browse your product inventory directly in AdWords and create product groupsfor the items you want to bid on. For example, if you’re a fashion retailer, you’ll see what types of shoes are in your data feed and how many boots you can promote. You use the product attributes derived from your data feed such as Google product category, product type, brand, condition, item id and custom labels to organize your inventory into product groups. Custom labels are a new, structured way to tag your products in your data feed with attributes that matter to you, such as ‘margin’ to separate your high- and low-margin products. To see all the items you can bid on, the Products tab will show you a full list of your approved products and their product attributes.



2. Advanced reporting to measure product performance

Regardless of how you choose to structure your product groups, Shopping campaigns offer the unprecedented ability to view your performance data by product or product attribute. Since performance metrics are associated with the item and not the product group, you can filter and segment data by your product attributes. This includes Google product category, product type, brand, condition, item id and custom labels. For example, you’ll see which Apparel & Accessories categories drive the most clicks, without having to break out your clothing category into a separate product group.

3. Competitive data to size your opportunity

To help you optimize and scale your PLAs, Shopping campaigns provide insights into your competitive landscape. In the Product Groups tab, you can add benchmark columns to see the estimated average CTR and Max CPC for other advertisers with similar products. The competitive performance data you see is aggregated and averaged, so all performance data is anonymous. Coming soon, you’ll have impression share columns to help you understand the opportunity lost due to insufficient bids and budgets, and a bid simulator will help you estimate the amount of impressions you’ll receive as you adjust your bids.



How to get started

Shopping campaigns are currently available to a limited number of advertisers. It will be rolling out gradually in the US, with full global availability by early next year. API support will come in 2014 as well.

You can learn more about Shopping campaigns at some upcoming events. Join us at our Learn With Google webinar for Shopping campaigns on November 20, 2013, and find us at Search Engine Strategies in Chicago on November 6, 2013.

We've built Shopping campaigns with retailers in mind, and if you'd like to be an early adopter to share your feedback, you can express your interest here. We'd love to hear from you!

Posted by Sameer Samat, Vice President of Product Management, Google Shopping
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People are increasingly turning to their mobile devices as shopping assistants at home, in stores, and on the go, and constant connectivity is helping shoppers find the products they want, whenever they want. Google Shopping connects people looking for products with the best places to buy both online and in local stores, and there are big opportunities for retailers to connect with mobile shoppers using mobile Product Listing Ads (PLA), particularly as we head into the holiday retail season.

Expanded Google Shopping results on mobile devices
As part of our efforts to help retailers promote their products to people across devices, we’re updating the look of the mobile PLA unit on Google.com to help shoppers more easily browse and discover products on their mobile device. Users can now swipe to quickly see more products in the mobile PLA unit without having to leave the search results page. The unit will also feature larger product images and product titles. This update gives more retailers the opportunity to appear on the mobile PLA unit, and early tests show that it drives more traffic to retailers.

Retailer success stories with mobile PLAs
Many advertisers have already positioned themselves for success by leveraging mobile PLAs ahead of the holidays. Below are just a couple of examples.

  • REVOLVEclothing.com understands that their customers are very mobile-savvy, so they increased their focus on optimizing their mobile PLA campaign. Within a few months, they grew their mobile PLA campaign clicks by 371%, their conversions climbed 537%, and their mobile return on ad spend (ROAS) increased by 77%. Learn more.
  • HalloweenCostumes.com implemented mobile PLAs for their entire product line after seeing major lifts in their online advertising efforts via desktop PLA campaigns. Mobile PLAs are now a major driver of their overall mobile growth, delivering a 31% lift in overall mobile conversions. In addition, they focused heavily on converting new mobile traffic by redesigning their mobile site to increase the speed and overall usability of product pages and navigation. Learn more.
Show your Product Listing Ads to smartphone shoppers
If your PLA campaigns aren’t already opted into mobile, there’s still time to apply mobile bid adjustments to help you capture valuable real estate on mobile shopping search results with over a month left before Thanksgiving.

If you need help getting started, please join our webinar on Wednesday, October 23 at 10 am Pacific Time to hear tips and best practices for creating and optimizing a mobile PLA campaign.

Posted by Jennifer Liu, Group Product Manager, Google Shopping

With the holidays right around the corner and shoppers already beginning their holiday shopping research online, advertisers are getting poised to reach those customers. Research from Think With Google shows that online sales during Black Friday increased by 26% last year.* By optimizing your Product Listing Ads you can not only increase your overall sales but also aid you in preparing early for a head start on this year’s holiday rush. To help you get ready, we want to share a few holiday optimization tips and insights from Channel Intelligence and also invite you to a webinar on October 15th at 11am PT.

Channel Intelligence is a feed management service acquired by Google in February. Channel Intelligence works with many merchants to deliver high quality product feeds across all major shopping engine services, including Product Listing Ads. Channel Intelligence manages feeds, optimizes bidding and provides data quality monitoring for clients. These services can help with increasing Return on Ad Spend while improving the performance of individual products on shopping engines.

Here are some best practices Channel Intelligence uses to help merchants prepare for a successful holiday with Product Listing Ads:

  • Make sure your data quality is accurate. A good data feed is important. Confirm that all of your products are correctly submitted to Google and approved. Review policies for such things as non-family safe items.
  • Get ready for traffic across devices. Shoppers will be on-the-go throughout the holidays. Reach where shoppers are by opting into mobile bidding as part of your overall holiday strategy.
  • Prepare for Cyber Monday. Shoppers are going to be looking for the best deals on products. If you are planning to have holiday promotions for your products, there’s a separate attribute for promotional text. More details can be found in the feed specifications at the Merchant Center Help Center.

Join Channel Intelligence for a webinar on October 15th at 11am PT

The team at Channel Intelligence will share knowledge and experience with Product Listing Ads to help you prepare for the holidays. The team is giving insight on how merchants can get more from their product campaigns this season. Topics will cover where multichannel retail is heading, how you can improve your ad content, and how to apply best practices to your campaigns.

If you are interested in the webinar, register here.

To learn more about Channel Intelligence services, visit www.channelintelligence.com. If you are new to Product Listing Ads and would like step-by-step instructions on how you can get started, check out our Get Started Guide.

Posted by TT Ramgopal, Head of Channel Intelligence

*Comscore, Inc., 2012 Holiday Season To Date vs. Corresponding Days in 2011, NonTravel (Retail) Spending, November 2012

Every business should have the help it needs to succeed on the web. Every day, agencies and web professionals work with businesses big and small to bring us closer to that reality.

Today, we’re excited to announce the launch of Google Partners. Our vision is simple – build true champions of the web and support them with the resources, training and support to help businesses succeed online.

Inspired by your feedback, we created Google Partners around three objectives. We’re here to help you:

  • Connect more closely with Google. With access to special events, training and the latest research and product updates, Partners stay ahead of the curve by working directly with Google.
  • Demonstrate credibility. The new Google Partner badge recognizes companies that excel with Google’s products. Their businesses are healthy, their customers are happy, and they use Google best practices.
  • Grow your business. Partners who’ve earned the badge are listed on Google Partner Search and get a direct connection to potential clients.

We’ve brought our existing programs together under this new platform, so you can find all the resources you need in one place: an easy path to certification via free Google exams, more access to Google experts and agency peers through the Partners community, and sales and marketing toolkits.

We’d love to have you and your agency join us for the Partners launch live stream today, Wednesday, October 2nd, at 9 am PDT. We'll take you behind the scenes of the new Google Partners program, give you a sneak peek into some new features and host thought leaders Dan Pink and Mitch Joel. See the full agenda here and watch the live stream at www.youtube.com/googlepartners   

To join Google Partners, please visit www.google.com/partners

Posted by the Google Partners Team

ADDENDUM:

Google Partners is coming soon to other markets

Today we announced the launch of Google Partners in the United States. Partners is our new and improved program for agencies and online marketing professionals.

While the full functionality of Partners is not yet available outside the US, Canada, and Poland, today users worldwide can get early access to the all-new (and free) AdWords certification experience on Partners. For the first time ever, getting certified in AdWords is free of charge (formerly $50 USD per exam) and mobile-friendly. The new certification experience on Partners will completely replace the Google Certification Program on Nov. 13.

To get a sneak preview of the new program before the worldwide launch of Partners, sign up at google.com/partners.
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