By Alan Coleman on 14 Jul 2014
Product Listing Ads are changing and it is good news for advertisers and shoppers alike. Wolfgang Digital have been harping on about Product Listing Ads and Google shopping now for more years than one. You might have heard us say that they will revolutionise your e-commerce business, grow your online sales and allow you to sell more products overseas. We have seen some great results with conversion rates doubling in the UK and the US. This has allowed e-commerce advertisers to grow their revenue abroad in a time when reports tell us that 75% of Irish e-commerce spend goes to overseas retailers.
For those of you unfamiliar with them they are the ads, containing images and pricing details of products, that you see on Google.co.uk, Google.com or various other Google’s apart from our own Google.ie. For example, if you are looking to buy an iPad in the UK you might be presented with the below search results:
The Product Listing Ads take up the most prominent position on the page above the organic results and also pushing the text ads down the page. The ads can also be present on the right hand side of the results page as the below demonstrates: 
And, your ads can also show within Google Shopping:
To get your ads showing here there are a number of additional steps required. First up, you need to create a Merchant Centre. The Merchant Centre hosts all the products you have available on your website. You will have to create a link between your website and the Merchant Centre, known as a data feed, which will keep the Merchant Centre up to date with all your products and stock levels. The data feed also contains information on brand, product type, product description and other details relating to the product.
There are a number of specifications outlined by Google which an advertiser has to satisfy before Google will accept the products in your Merchant Centre. Following the set-up of your Merchant Centre and the data feed, you then have to link the Merchant Centre to your Adwords account. Once linked, you can then begin creating the campaigns that will allow your products to show in the paid search results.
However, there is a big difference between traditional paid search ads and Products ads. Traditional ads are triggered based on keywords that you select. Product ads are triggered based on the information you include about that product in your data feed. This includes the product description. Filters can be placed based on Brand and product type. Though we cannot use keywords to trigger product ads, we can add negative keywords to ensure products do not show for irrelevant searches.
Wolfgang Digital have been managing a number of campaigns in the UK and US over the past 18 months using the above targeting and filtering options. As I said, we have been eagerly awaiting the moment when they arrive in Ireland. Well, our ears pricked up a short while back when we heard Google were making changes to Product Listing Ads. There was a lot of “finally” and “about time” flying about the office as we all thought that Google were finally rolling out Product Listing Ads in Ireland. And only a year later than we had predicted! Alas, the big change was to the underlying structure of the campaigns and not to the locations that they were available in. Google announced that by August all existing Product Listing Ads campaigns will be moved across to the Google Shopping structure.
On the face of it, this should not present the searcher with anything new. They should still see the same Product ads when they search. However, the change to Google Shopping campaigns will allow the advertiser greater control over the Product ads that show. This means that the user should begin to see more products that better match their search. For example, a user searching for ladies football boots is currently presented with results that include football boots for juniors and also for men. These results are shown based on the information contained within the data feed as described earlier. The advertiser below likely filtered their campaign based on product type and could not go any tighter. Consequently, a search for ladies football boots throws up ads for male and junior boots.
Now, Google Shopping campaigns will allow advertisers to easily add further filters to their campaigns giving more control over the ads that are showing. In the football boots example, the first product type could be set to football boots and a second product type could be set to ladies football boots. We could then add negative keywords for men, juniors etc to this group. This would ensure that only the most relevant add would show, giving the searcher a better experience, but also ensuring that the advertiser’s budget is better utilised.
So, we still await the arrival of product ads in Ireland00. There is not a month that goes by where we don’t lament this. In the meantime, there is nothing to stop Irish e-commerce sites from getting into the UK market. All you need is a website that has sterling prices, a Merchant Centre with a data feed and the know how to get your Google Shopping campaigns set up. Wolfgang are even getting our own little side project up and running with product ads. And we are going to blog about the step by step guide from website to product ads over the coming weeks... so watch this space!
