Shopping Blog

(Cross-posted from the Inside AdWords Blog)

This is the final stretch. At the end of August, regular Product Listing Ad (PLA) campaigns will retire and be replaced by Shopping campaigns. A majority of you have started upgrading to Shopping campaigns, but if you’re one of the few who haven’t yet, we’re introducing a new upgrade tool that’ll help you upgrade in a matter of clicks.

This tool creates a Shopping campaign from your regular PLA campaign, with a campaign structure and bids based on your regular PLA campaign and historical performance data.
If you haven’t started your upgrade, we encourage you to use this tool as a jumping off point for your Shopping campaigns. Be sure to check your campaign budgets, settings and bids so they’re customized to your business needs.

Note that not all campaigns are compatible with this upgrade tool. If, for example, you use AdWords labels or groupings in your product targeting or inventory filters, you must update your data feed with custom labels before you use the upgrade tool, unless you’re happy to use another attribute to subdivide your inventory in AdWords directly.

You can access the upgrade tool, and check which of your campaigns are eligible, in the Settings tab of your existing Product Listing Ads campaigns. Learn more in the help center.

We’re here to help
We want to make sure you’ve thoughtfully upgraded and are ready for the holidays. Join us for a Learn With Google Hangout on Air on August 12 at 10:00am PST to walk through the new upgrade tool. If you have any questions, reach out to the AdWords Community Forum or contact us.

Posted by Eric Tholomé, Director of Product Management, Google Shopping

(Cross-posted from the Inside AdWords Blog)

With less than eight weeks left until regular Product Listing Ad (PLA) campaigns retire, we're excited that the majority of PLA advertisers have already started taking advantage of Shopping campaigns, and 85% of these have already fully upgraded. Advertisers who’ve upgraded like Farfetch, US Mattress, LiBoutique and ValuePetSupplies are seeing great success thanks to the retail-centric interface, item-level reporting and competitive benchmark data.

For those of you who’ve upgraded, we’re excited to introduce two new tools to make campaign management, specifically bid optimization, easier.

• Bulk Uploads: You now have the ability to download a product group report, edit your bids and destination URLs, and import your changes using bulk uploads. 
• AdWords Editor: We’ve heard your feedback, and with the latest version of AdWords Editor, you can edit your bids and destination URLs for individual product groups at scale. At this time, AdWords Editor doesn’t support the creation of Shopping campaigns or product groups, so please plan time to create your campaigns and subdivide your product groups directly in AdWords.

If you haven’t upgraded to Shopping campaigns, we strongly encourage you to start as all regular Product Listing Ad campaigns will retire at the end of August.

Many third-party agencies and platforms are upgrading advertisers to Shopping campaigns, so if you work with one, reach out and see how they can help. Here are a few resources to answer questions and get you started:

• Shopping Campaign Tutorial Videos
• How to create a campaign
• How to prep my data feed
• How to optimize my product groups
• Upgrade Hangouts on Air
• Shopping Campaigns Upgrade 101: Where and how to start (beginner)
• Shopping Campaigns Upgrade 201: What to do now (advanced)
• Help Centers
• AdWords Help Center
• Merchant Center Help Center
• AdWords Community

Posted by Eric Tholomé, Director of Product Management, Google Shopping

Cross-posted from the Google Inside AdWords Blog

The holiday season is a time of the year when many of us spend hours finding the perfect gifts. It’s also a time when knowing that an online retailer is trustworthy is more important than ever. That’s where Google Trusted Stores comes in - we’re spreading holiday cheer by helping people find the best online stores and shop with confidence.

Google Trusted Stores is a free certification program to highlight retailers that offer a consistently great shopping experience. Qualifying merchants display a badge on their website, and Google stands behind these stores by offering $1,000 of free purchase protection. Since we introduced the program last year, we’ve been working hard to expand it, including launching a new integration with seller ratings on AdWords, updating the badge with more helpful information for shoppers, and broadening store participation around the world.

Shopper feedback powering seller ratings

Google Trusted Stores now helps to power seller ratings, which show on AdWords text ads as well as Product Listing Ads on Google Shopping. This integration provides shoppers with valuable information, while giving participating retailers a free and easy way to earn the ratings they deserve. Advertisers who display seller ratings on their ads typically see a boost in AdWords click-through rates, with higher ratings generally resulting in higher click-through rates.

Providing helpful information at shoppers’ fingertips


In the US, Google Trusted Stores now provides shoppers with an upgraded store performance summary that appears when they hover over the badge on a merchant’s website. The summary includes helpful returns, delivery, and customer support responsiveness metrics provided by StellaService, a company that objectively measures the customer service experience by shopping anonymously at online stores.

More confident shoppers fueling global expansion
Millions of people now see the Google Trusted Stores badge on retailer sites and in Google ads every day. In fact, we’ve more than tripled US store participation in the last year. Because shoppers value the badge, many of these stores are seeing sales growth. For instance, OnlineShoes measured a 4.2% sales increase from the Google Trusted Stores badge, and AutoAnything saw an increase of 5.2%.

Given the great shopper and retailer response in the US, we’ve started to expand Google Trusted Stores around the world. We recently introduced pilot programs in the UK, France, Germany, and Australia, each with a collection of excellent merchants such as Schuh (UK), Spartoo.com (France), PEARL (Germany), and Kogan (Australia). (Note - only shoppers located in a particular country will see the badge for that country.)

Learn more 
To learn more about the program, please visit our website. If you’re a US retailer, you can apply to become a Google Trusted Store. If you are a retailer outside the US, please let us know you’re interested here: UK, France, Germany, Australia.

Happy Holidays and Happy Shopping!

Posted by Brian Marquardt, Group Product Manager, Google Shopping 

(Cross-posted on the Inside AdWords Blog)

Along with a user's query, context signals like location, time of day, and device have become increasingly important in showing people the right ads with their search results. With enhanced campaigns, it's now easier to reach people in the moments that matter across all screens, with ads that are more relevant to a user's intent and context. Now we're incorporating another powerful capability to tailor your search campaigns for different audiences – remarketing lists for search ads (RLSA). With this feature, you can modify your search ads, bids, and keywords based on your visitors' past activity on your website. As we transition out of the beta test of RLSA, announced in July 2012, we'll be making the feature available to all advertisers using enhanced campaigns over the next few days.

Combining intent, context, and audience for better search ads 
Search ads work great because they're relevant to the user's intent and context. And users who have recently visited your website often find your ads to be even more relevant. RLSA brings intent, context, and audience together to let you tailor your search campaign when past site visitors are searching on Google for your brand, products, and services. Here are some ways to improve your campaign performance using RLSA.

1. Increase ad visibility for high value customers by adjusting your bids. For example, you could increase your bids by 20% for visitors who have previously researched high-end cameras while on your site when they subsequently search for ‘cameras’ on Google. And you could increase your bids by 40% for past site visitors who have previously purchased high-end equipment from your site. It's easy to set up RLSA bid adjustments and they combine with other enhanced campaigns bid adjustments for location, device, and time.


2. Expand your reach and results with broader keywords. For example, bidding on broad keywords such as ‘gifts’ or ‘presents’ during a holiday season might not convert well enough to meet your ROI goals. But if you use RLSA to run those keywords just for repeat customers, they may convert better and allow you to grow your total sales with a profitable ROI. 

Advertiser success with RLSA
Advertisers in the beta have seen strong results with RLSA. Here are some examples:

• Tirendo, a European online tire retailer, saw a 161% conversion rate increase with RLSA, leading to a 22% overall sales increase. And the incremental conversions were efficient, with a 43% lower average cost per order than previous campaigns. Read more.
• WorldStores, a leading UK home furnishings and garden store, increased total orders 8% by using RLSA to increase bids for past site visitors. Conversion rates for this segment were 130% higher and average cost per conversion was 43% lower, even with the higher bids.

Tags and list management
RLSA shares the same site-wide Google Remarketing Tag and list management tools as remarketing on the Google Display Network (GDN). So you can start using RLSA immediately if your website is already tagged for remarketing on the GDN.

Transparency and control for users
We believe users should have transparency and be in control their ad experience. That's why we provide adjustable Ads Settings and inform users when an ad has been influenced by a past visit to a particular advertiser's website.

Learn more
For help getting started with RLSA, check out this article in the Help Center. You can also join us at tomorrow's Learn with Google Webinar: Reaching the Right Audience with Remarketing on Wednesday, June 26, 2013 at 1pm ET.

Posted by Rahul Lahiri, AdWords Product Manager

As we continue to expand our advertising solutions, our goal is to provide a great user experience for both advertisers and consumers. We know that advertisers are always looking for new ways to reach their customers with compelling ads that drive engagement and conversions. Today, we are excited to announce the launch of dynamic remarketing to all clients with a Google Merchant Center account. We are also currently piloting this new feature in the travel and education sectors and plan to expand availability to more sectors later this year.

Beautiful, tailored ads to reconnect with customers
Dynamic remarketing lets you automatically create beautiful, customized ads that connect with shoppers across the web, by reminding them of items they've seen on your site. You can build ads quickly with dozens of templates to choose from that you can customize to reflect the design elements of your brand. We have also made it easy to get started by automatically creating dynamic text and display ads for you.

Sample dynamic ads (see more here):


Advertisers have seen great results compared to their traditional remarketing campaigns:

• Sierra Trading Post, a U.S. retailer of outdoor gear and clothing, saw a 2x higher clickthrough rate and a 5x higher conversion rate
• As Europe’s premiere “heavy metal online shop,” EMP Merchandising grew conversion rates by 230% and decreased their cost of sale by 30%.

You can read more about other client successes on Think Insights.

Optimizing dynamic ads to drive performance
Dynamic remarketing delivers tailored ads across the web that combine the layouts, products, messages and offers that your customers are most likely interested in, based on what they viewed on your website. You can benefit from our:

• Auto-optimized layouts which predicts the best performing layout for each impression
• Product recommendation engine which optimizes the combination of related and popular products that show in your ads [Learn more]
• Real-time bidding algorithm which helps boost performance by calculating the optimal bid for each impression

For help on getting started reference this Help Center article.

Making it easy for advertisers
Managing campaigns more efficiently is just one of the many benefits of remarketing with Google. Last year, we introduced a site-wide remarketing tag and remarketing with Google Analytics that both made it easy to get started with your campaigns. You can also use the tag to discover new customers similar to your site visitors with Similar Audiences, which has been recently made available to all clients in AdWords.

Remarketing drives great ROI for advertisers, it can also bring publishers significant revenue lift, as studies have shown, and compelling ads for consumers. We’ve also given consumers options to exercise control over their ad experience with features like the Ads Settings and Mute this Ad.

To learn more about what remarketing with Google can do for your business, register for our upcoming Learn with Google Webinar: Reaching the Right Audience with Remarketing on Wednesday, June 26, 2013 at 1pm ET.

Posted by Aitan Weinberg, Group Product Manager