Google will roll out vehicle ads to all U.S. advertisers beginning this month, the company announced Friday.

Vehicle ads will roll out to advertisers in more countries at an undisclosed “later date,” Google said in the announcement.

How vehicle ads work. Vehicle ads are designed to allow auto advertisers to promote their entire vehicle inventory to potential customers on Google.com. This format includes an image of the vehicle, make, model, price, miles and the advertiser’s name (shown in the example above). 

Google matches users with vehicle ads by using the details included in the advertiser’s vehicle inventory data feed (more on that below).

When a user clicks on a vehicle ad, they’re taken to the vehicle description page on the advertiser’s site. There, they can learn more and fill out a lead form. Advertisers can select which actions to measure, such as leads or store visits, and assign them a value.

Advertisers cannot use vehicle ads to promote vehicle parts, accessories, tires or services.

How to get started. To use vehicle ads, advertisers must create a vehicle inventory data feed and connect it to Google Merchant Center. This feed includes data on makes, models, prices, mileage and condition.

Since this is done through Google Merchant Center, advertisers can track metrics like clicks over a given time period.

Why we care. Car prices have remained high as a result of supply shortages associated with the pandemic and increased consumer demand. And, last year, 16% of new car buyers purchased their car online, up from just 1% three years prior, according to Google.

Vehicle ads may help advertisers get in front of high-intent audiences. “Advertisers who complemented their existing Search campaigns with the vehicle ads beta saw a +25% average increase in conversions,” Google said in the announcement.

Google’s not the only one with vehicle ads. Advertisers in this vertical may also be interested in Microsoft Advertising’s Automotive Ads, which also use data feeds to match ads to users’ searches and shows similar information.

The post Google launches automated vehicle ads appeared first on Search Engine Land.

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).

The post How marketers can best optimize their Google Shopping ads appeared first on Search Engine Land.

Google Merchant Center is now automatically showing retailers when their products are eligible for badges, a Google spokesperson has confirmed to Search Engine Land. Available badges include, but are not limited to, the “sale price,” “price drop,” “amount off,” “percent off,” and “buy quantity, get percent off” badges.  

Tip of the hat to Kirk Williams, who first posted about this new feature.

Why we care

Badging isn’t new. However, the column showing which badge your products are appearing with is new and it can help merchants understand how potential customers are seeing their ads, without needing to manually figure it out for themselves. This can help retailers identify the types of promotions that are (or aren’t) working out for their business.

The latest shopping search news

• Google introduces new ‘Deals’ features for the Shopping tab and Merchant Center
• Google to enforce unique product identifiers on free merchant listings
• Microsoft Bing expands Shopping options for users, gives retailers more options to reach shoppers

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Google is rolling out product feed support for awareness and consideration Video campaign subtypes, the company announced Friday. The update, which rolls out over the coming weeks, enables brands to show browsable product images below their video ads for campaigns that have “Product and brand consideration” or “Brand awareness and reach” set as the goal.

Previously, Video action campaigns were the only campaign type that could be linked to product feeds from Google Merchant Center.

How it works. When a user is shown your video ad, the panel below the ad automatically expands to show your products. At this time, products only appear when the user’s mobile device is in portrait mode. Selecting an image takes the user to the product landing page, where they can continue the transaction. 

Advertisers must include at least four products in their Merchant Center product feed, with a 1:1 ratio image for each product to be shown (only the primary product image will be used). The Google Ads Help center has more detailed instructions on adding a product feed to your Video campaigns.

Why we care. Advertisers can now make any Video campaign more shoppable without having to create a separate TrueView for shopping campaign. “On average, advertisers that add product feeds to their Video action campaigns achieve over 60% more conversions at a lower cost,” Google said, citing its own internal data in which it compared 941 campaigns with product feeds to campaigns without them. While this new feature may help you achieve greater efficiency, it’s always important to test it out for yourself to assess how it may or may not benefit your overall strategy.

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Google is introducing a new “Deals” feed in the Shopping tab along with additional Merchant Center features to support retailers running promotions, sales and price drops, the company announced Thursday. It is also expanding its integrations with Shopify and WooCommerce to enable merchants to showcase their deals across Google surfaces.

The new “Deals” feed. All products with a deals badge are now automatically eligible to show in a new feed within the Shopping tab of the search results. This new feed is shown when a user searches for generic deal-related or shopping event-related queries, like “deals” or “black friday,” (shown above) or when “Deals” is selected from the drop-down menu in the Shopping tab (shown below).

New ways to track your deals in Merchant Center. Merchants can now see which of their products is eligible for a deals badge from the products tab in Google Merchant Center. Eligibility is based on promotions, sales prices and/or price drops.

In addition, a new dashboard (shown above) breaks out data on impressions, clicks and click-through rate for Shopping ads for products with a deals badge. The data can be segmented by promotion type, product, brand and category.

Deeper integration with Shopify and WooCommerce. Building on Shopify and WooCommerce integrations announced earlier this year, retailers on these platforms are now able to show their existing deals across Google surfaces (Search, the Shopping tab, Images and Lens).

And, starting next month, retailers that use Shopify’s Google channel app or WooCommerce’s Google Listings and Ads extension will be able to show their promotions in Search and the Shopping tab.  Retailers can sync both existing and new promotions to their products listed on Google directly from their store dashboard.

Why we care. As we approach the peak of the holiday shopping season, retailers now have multiple places in Google where their deals can appear — the newly announced Deals feed, the “Deals related to your search” section of the Shopping tab and the deals carousel (which appears when users search for deals during major sales events). Retailers that are offering promotions, sales or price drops should keep their product feeds up to date to ensure they’re eligible for these organic opportunities to get in front of shoppers. To that end, being able to see which of your products are eligible for a deals badge can be very useful, and now Google is showing that information in the products tab of Merchant Center.

Breaking out the performance of Shopping ads based on products with a deals badge can help merchants understand the types of deals that are driving conversions and the product categories that perform the best when on-sale.

And, the proliferation of e-commerce integrations offered by Google (and also Bing) lowers the barrier to entry for discovery and promotion in search. This leveling of the playing field works in favor of smaller retailers that may not have the resources or technical savvy that it used to take to establish a presence on these platforms. For Google, this not only strengthens it as a shopping destination but also makes it a no-brainer for retailers since, unlike marketplaces such as Amazon or eBay, Google doesn’t take a cut of the sale.

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