Microsoft Bing’s Ethical Shopping hub is now available in the U.S. and Canada. It launched in December, but only in the UK.

In addition, the hub has a new design and the experience can be triggered when people search for relevant queries in English.

What is the Ethical Shopping hub? It allows people to search for fashion products in categories such as eco-friendly, fairtrade, recycled, vegan and more. Every brand included in the experience receives a rating (powered by Good on You) based on three sustainability areas: people, planet and animals. 

New design. Microsoft Bing is giving searchers more visibility into sustainability. Now, when you hover over the Ethical Choice label on a product listing you will see the overall brand rating (e.g., It’s a Start, Good, Great) and which criteria it is rated well on (e.g., Eco-Friendly, Organic, Vegan). Here’s an example screenshot from the hub:

So, if it’s important for a shopper that a brand is rated as Eco-Friendly, this notation could help lead to a sale.

Integrated into Microsoft Bing search. It’s more than a hub now. Microsoft said in their blog post they have also expanded the experience so that it will show up when searching relevant queries on Bing. This should lead more searchers to discover the Ethical Shopping hub.  

Why we care. This is good news for fashion brands that offer sustainable products. Microsoft Bing is rewarding environmentally-friendly brands with greater visibility on relevant search queries. Opening up beyond the UK means more chances to earn sales in the U.S. and Canada. 

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Instagram will open product tagging to every user in the U.S. The ability to tag products is starting to roll out now and will become available to everyone within the next few months. 

Product tagging debuted on the platform in 2016 as its initial foray into e-commerce. Until now, only businesses and creators could tag products in video posts, stories and reels.

Of its 2 billion monthly active users, Instagram has an estimated 159 million users in the U.S., according to Statistia. 

Why we care. Instagram said that 1.6 million people are already tagging at least one product per week. By making product tagging available to everyone in the U.S., this number will likely skyrocket as users learn of and use this feature. This is yet another way for brands and businesses to be discovered organically on Instagram. So if your brand isn’t set up for Instagram Shopping, there’s no better time than now to test it.

How to tag products. After creating a post, users would tap the “Tag Products,” tap the product in the video or image, then search for the product from the shop to add a tag. Instagram users who see a product tag can tap it to buy the product within the app.

Control for brands and businesses. Whenever one of your products is tagged, Instagram will notify you on your profile. Want to turn off product tags? You can in your account settings. By default, it is set to Allow all.

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Twitter has introduced a new experimental ecommerce feature it calls Twitter Shops. Brands who want to create a shop can curate up to 50 items to include, which Twitter uses can then buy via an in-app browser from the merchant’s website. 

After a brand or business enables a Twitter Shop, a new “View shop” button will appear on its profile page, directly above its tweets. It looks like this:

For now, only iPhone users can view and interact with the shops. This is much the same way the Twitter Shop Module was rolled out last year. That feature was more limited, allowing brands to show up to five products on their profile, in the same location as the Twitter Shops “View shop” button.

Availability. Twitter only mentioned five brands that have enabled their shops. Those are:

• @Verizon (showcasing 11 products, as of publishing)
• @ArdenCove (9 products)
• @LatinxInPower (50 products)
• @GayPrideApp (13 products)
• @AllIDoIsCookUS (14 products)

Twitter Shops is only available to select merchants and managed partners in the U.S., according to Twitter’s blog post. Twitter isn’t charging brands to open a Shop.

What it looks like. A Twitter Shop contains a product image, product name, product type, and price. 

What Twitter says about Shops. “People are already talking about products on Twitter. We want Twitter Shops to be the home for merchants on Twitter where they can intentionally curate a catalog of products for their Twitter audience and build upon the product discussions already happening on our service by giving shoppers a point of action where a conversation can become a purchase.”

Why we care. Social commerce is one of those areas that brands would love to crack. Facebook, Instagram, and other social networks have rolled out similar shops. While Twitter has fewer users than those networks, it’s all about getting your product in front of potential customers, wherever they are. So if your target customers use Twitter, it may be worth testing out Shops to see if it can help drive any sales.

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Google has updated its Buy on Google Retailer Standards policies. The changes include removing: order caps, automatic suspension via the Retailer Standards program and the “Defects” tab within the Merchant Center dashboard.

Tip of the hat to Lawrence Chasse for bringing this to our attention.

Why we care. Order caps were previously imposed on merchants that were performing poorly (according to Google’s Retailer Standards score); the same was true for automatic suspensions. Order capping could also slow down sales for new merchants until they complete onboarding by requesting a review of their store. 

Now that these two penalties are gone, merchants have fewer potential bottlenecks when it comes to selling via Buy on Google.

However, these policies were designed to protect customers (as well as Google’s reputation as a shopping platform) from disreputable merchants. Google has yet to reveal what new safeguards it’ll put in place (if any) to ensure a consistent, positive Buy on Google experience.

What’s changing. In the email notification sent to merchants, Google said it will:

• Stop order capping and automatic suspensions via the Retailer Standards program.
• Remove the ‘Defects’ tab from the Retailer Standards tab in your Merchant Center account.
• Stop sending Retailer Standards monthly emails.
• Roll out a new page to display order performance at some point in the future.

Why Google made these changes. “We’re making these changes to help you succeed on Google while ensuring our policies keep up with Buy on Google’s evolution,” Google said in the email.

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Online retailers can now add an optional short title to identify their products in Google Merchant Center.

The new [short_title] attribute differs from the existing [title] attribute in that the short title should be concise and is intended to show in “browsy experiences,” like Discovery campaigns and Shopping ads on Gmail.

Why we care. Full product titles often get truncated in the “browsy” contexts Google has mentioned, which means that users may not be seeing all the relevant information from your ad. Short titles provide merchants with an alternate, concise way to identify their products, which could help to improve clickthrough rates.

Short title requirements. While Google allows 1–150 characters for this field, it recommends using between 5 and 65 characters. Google also advises that merchants:

• Use a relevant, concise short title that clearly describes their product.
• Ensure that the short title describes the product on the landing page.
• Use professional and grammatically correct language.
• Avoid foreign languages unless they’re well understood (e.g., “sushi”).
• Avoid using capital letters for emphasis.
• Avoid including promotional text (i.e., prices, sales dates, your business’ name, etc).
• Don’t add extra white spaces.

Best practices for short titles. As mentioned above, Google recommends limiting your short titles to 65 characters or less — this is because users typically only see the first 65 characters of a short title (depending on their screen size). 

You should also highlight the most important details by placing them towards the front, since users don’t always read the entire title. And, adding a brand name is a good idea if it helps differentiate the product — this can be important when you sell similar products across brands.

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The digital commerce space is growing at a rapid pace and marketers across all industries are looking for the most effective ways to enhance their shopping campaigns. Many naturally turn to Google Shopping, one of the largest online shopping platforms available to searchers.

However, moving your shopping campaigns to Google isn’t enough to be successful; marketers need to ensure their shopping feeds are optimized for search.

“We can’t avoid this topic of feed optimizations when we’re talking about shopping campaigns,” said Anastasia Sorokina, director of SEM at performance branding company WITHIN, in her presentation at SMX Next. “Before starting your shopping campaigns, you want to make sure that you follow all the best practices and requirements from Google to ensure that your feed is in good standing.”

Much like organic or paid search campaigns, marketers will be more successful if they adhere to Google’s guidelines and, more importantly, create ads that fulfill searchers’ needs. Here are five ways brands can optimize their Google Shopping ads.

Use highly relevant phrases in shopping ad titles and descriptions

“One of the first things that we always look at in our product feeds are titles and descriptions,” Sorokina said. “You need to have well optimized, well-written titles and descriptions. Not only does Google use them to match your shopping ads to relevant search queries, but it’s also your opportunity to introduce your brand and communicate your value proposition.”

“Put the most valuable attributes of your products in there and pack the details in the beginning,” she added.

Creating relevant shopping ad titles — featuring the most pertinent keywords at the beginning — is a helpful way to show searchers your offering fits their needs from the get-go. It’s also a critical piece of Google’s matching algorithm.

With shopping listing descriptions, marketers can feature even more specific product attributes. Aside from including relevant keywords, brands should highlight particular product qualities to further entice consumers.

Choose high-quality, optimized images for your feeds

“Shopping ads offer a rich and visual experience, and it’s crucial to utilize the best quality images that present your product in the best way possible,” said Sorokina. “You should use high-quality images, following Google’s best practices and guidelines in terms of format sizes.”

Visual elements are some of the most important features of shopping ads; they have the potential to make or break campaigns based on their level of quality. To ensure ad images meet Google’s and consumers’ standards, here are some of the Google Merchant Center (GMC) image minimum requirements:

• Image files must be smaller than 16MB.
• Images must accurately display the entire product.
• Images must show all products in the bundle.

GMC also provides marketers with recommended best practices to help improve their ads:

• Images should represent the distinguishing details of each product variant.
• Images should use the highest resolution available.
• Products should take up no less than 75%, but no more than 90%, of the full image.

Sorokina also noted that marketers can add up to 10 images to their shopping ads. This lets brands showcase different views of products to give customers a more robust experience.

“This is a recent addition and not a lot of marketers take advantage of it,” she said. “It’s a great way to catch potential customers’ attention and showcase your product in different settings and angles. It’s going to help your click-through rate and potentially your conversion rate.”

Ensure required attributes are in place

“There are a few attributes that Google requires for you to include in your shopping feed, otherwise you won’t be able to submit the feed in the first place,” Sorokina said. “These include item ID, brand titles, descriptions, and availability.”

Marketers must fill out these attributes with the most accurate information possible to be eligible for Shopping, but there are several optional values to consider using as well. The product category attribute, in particular, allows brands to provide more granular categorization signals to both Google and users.

Here are the other optional feed attributes marketers should consider optimizing:

• Additional image link.
• Mobile link.
• Availability date.
• Cost of goods sold.
• Expiration date.
• Sale price.
• Sale price effective date.

Add additional attributes to stand out from competitors

“Even though your ads have well-written, optimized, relevant titles and descriptions and high-quality eye-catching images, it’s hard to stand out — there’s a lot of competition,” said Sorokina.

Google’s Merchant Promotions offers a lot of attributes to help brands reach the next level of shopping advertising. Marketers can feature discounts, free or discounted shipping, gifts with purchase and other unique selling points to distinguish their brand from competitors.

“Merchant Promotions are a great way to showcase your offers, potentially boosting your click-through rate when a customer sees them,” Sorokina said. “They’re not too hard to set up, but there are certain requirements, especially when it comes to how you show the discounts on your site, and your checkout process also matters.”

Sorokina also suggests leveraging Google Shopping annotations, the auto-generated tags that give searchers more context regarding your products: “Things like price drops, free and fast shipping tags — these are different from Merchant Promotions because they’re automated. Google automatically generates these price tags, which allows you to call out some of the products that are on sale.”

She recommends that marketers enable local inventory ads if applicable. They can use them to promote in-store inventory or deals for items picked up in-store.

Brands can also leverage online reviews by showing product ratings on shopping ads. These can help highlight your most highly-rated products.

Prepare for future digital commerce trends

The advent of new technologies and consumer privacy regulations are driving changes in digital commerce. To stay competitive, marketers must not only be aware of these emerging trends but continually experiment with shopping ads to find the best solutions going forward.

“We have some interesting challenges that are presented within the [shopping] ecosystem,” said Basheer Bergus of Growphoria in the same presentation. “We’re seeing less control for advertisers in terms of the data and information they can report on. We’re seeing some data privacy limitations and more automation.”

“It’s incumbent on us as advertisers to continue to test and iterate, but to also be aware of the various regulations that might be local, national or international. We need to make sure that we can get as much data as we can but also abide by the law,” he added.

E-commerce revenue is growing with the expansion of digital marketing channels, so brands that haven’t optimized their shopping ads could be missing out. Free product listings and other new features on platforms like Google Shopping have made it easier for brands to enter the digital commerce ecosystem than ever before.

“When we look at the future of shopping ads, what we’re seeing is that it’s becoming less and less convoluted in terms of getting up and running,” Bergus said. “That barrier to entry for the advertising ecosystem has gotten more simplified.”

“The future of shopping ads is looking pretty robust,” he added.

Watch the full SMX Next presentation here (free registration required).

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Pinterest has launched an augmented reality (AR) feature that enables users to see what furniture looks like in their homes before they buy, the company announced Monday. Called “Try On for Home Decor,” the feature is already available for retailers such as Crate & Barrel, CB2, Walmart, West Elm and Wayfair.

Why we care. This is hardly the first time augmented reality has been used to bring more of the offline shopping experience online (see below), but it does increase Pinterest’s shoppable pins with “Try on” enabled from 14,000 beauty pins to 80,000 home decor pins, according to Engadget.

In addition, this capability is rolling out to a new product category with support from well-known retailers, which could be significant for Pinterest’s 444 million monthly active users (worldwide) as well as the brands looking to sell to them. If this feature strengthens Pinterest as a shopping platform, it’ll also strengthen it as an advertising channel as well. 

AR-powered Try On expands product categories. Pinterest first introduced its Try On feature in January 2021 for beauty products, specifically eyeshadow and lipstick.

A month before that (December 2020), Google launched a similar feature in the mobile search results. Amazon also has a “View in your room” feature available on its mobile app for certain products as well.

How it works. Users browsing home decor products on Pinterest’s Android or iOS apps will see three dots in the top-right corner of “Try On enabled” Pins. Select the Pin and “Try in your space” to view the product using the camera lens.

Users can adjust and place the product to better help them visualize how it’ll look in-person. Users can also click the Pin to be taken to the checkout page of the retailer’s site.

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