Shopping Blog

Marketers are increasingly turning to search advertising as a way to learn more about their brands and how they can better connect with consumers. L'Oréal Paris, for example, used search to reach a wide audience looking for information about the popular “ombre” hairstyle in 2012. At the time, this hair treatment was only done in salons, but L'Oréal Paris saw the potential in a home market product and it developed one in just a few months. The brand then created YouTube content devoted to the topic, got widespread press coverage, and owned the search for the term—all of which established brand awareness. In the end, the people who had alerted L'Oréal Paris to the trend saw search ads that linked to helpful information, at the moment when they needed it.


While search ads haven’t typically been part of the brand marketer’s toolkit, some like L’Oreal Paris are catching on to their value in building brand awareness. A recent Google/Ipsos MediaCT meta-study showed that search ads drove an average increase of 6.6 percentage points in top-of-mind awareness, from 8.2% to 14.8%—a lift of 80%.

 A new article on Think with Google looks at how brand marketers are understanding and and connecting with audiences using search. Check out the full collection for more details on the research, case studies and a guide for marketers on how to use search for brand marketing.

The Google+ platform provides a fresh canvas for building and strengthening your digital brand, tying into all the marketing you already do with Google. From launching a new product using Google+ pages to engaging with your community of enthusiasts over Hangouts, join our Learn with Google webinar this Thursday for a look at ways your company can build its brand using social. Sign up on our webinar page to attend: Building a Digital Brand with Google+ (Thurs, Dec 6, 10am PT / 1pm ET).

After the Hangout, we’ll host a live Q&A with members of the Google+ team to answer questions about building a brand with Google+. RSVP on the Google+ Event page and add your questions as comments on that page.

With more than 100 monthly million active Google+ users, the time is right to focus on building your digital brand presence via the platform. Google+ has seen a wealth of brands engaging with users in creative, interactive ways. In fact, brands created more than 1 million Google+ pages in just a few months. For instance:

• H&M: The retail clothing company, with more than 2 million Google+ followers, uses tailored content, images and video to bring its fashions and lifestyle to life on the platform. They’ve also utilized Ripples to identify their trendsetters and saw a 22% clickthrough rate boost after implementing social extensions in AdWords.

• Cadbury: The chocolate maker has reached a following of nearly 3 million users with a combination of creative posts, Hangouts on Air and even the launch of their Dairy Milk Bubbly bar. They’ve also installed the Google+ badge on the company’s web homepage, making it easy as chocolate to follow the brand.

Like the ideas here? Log on Thursday to learn more about how to create, capture and sustain demand for your brand using Google+. And if you’re going to miss this while you’re at SMX Social in Las Vegas next week, check back at the webinars page later for a recording of the webinar.

Posted by Becky Bowman, Google+ Marketing Team

With search being central to the consumer shopping cycle, search should be part of your strategy to not only drives sales, but also build your brand awareness as consumers are considering what gifts to buy for the holidays.

In a joint test with Levi's, Google found that paid search ads, whether or not clicked, raised consumer awareness of the Levi's brand.

When in-market consumers were asked which brand of jeans came to mind, 53% of consumers named Levi's when a Levi's search ad was in the top sponsored position, compared to 30% who named Levi's when there was no Levi's search ad on the page. (a statistically significant lift)

Better yet, when Levi's "non-customers" (people who hadn't bought Levi's jeans in the past 6 months) were asked the same question, 45% named Levi's when the ad was in the top sponsored position, versus 23% who named Levi's when there was no ad in the search results. (also statistically significant)


Placing your ad in top paid position can increase top of mind awareness for both current customers and non-customers, a desirable outcome at the time when consumers are making their holiday gift lists.

Source: Google/OTX Brand Lift of Search study, April 2009. Research was sponsored by Google, conducted by OTX, an independent marketing research company, in a controlled "laboratory" format that mimicked an actual online search query. Question asked: "Thinking about specific brands of jeans, which one brand comes to mind? Please only write in the first brand that comes to mind." Results are a significant increase from control (no exposure) at 95% confidence. n=2,000 online consumers who had recently purchased jeans or intended to soon.

Posted by Sara Kleinberg, the Google Retail Team

By running on keywords that relate to a target consumers' interests and lifestyles, advertisers can connect with consumers at the top of the funnel. By running on generic product keywords, the connection is made at the recognition phase. By running on branded keywords, the connection is made at the preference and action stage. There is no guarantee where a consumer will be at in the purchase cycle, so its important to be there, building your brand, at each moment of relevancy.

Google has also done some custom research in the area of "the brand value of search" and we will share findings from one of our very own studies in the near future...stay tuned!

Posted by Jocelyn Liu, the Google Retail Team

"Searching" for answers on brand value

How does branding affect purchase behavior? What is branding worth? What can I do to build my brand?

These are all timely and hotly contested questions. While there may never be definitive answers, new research on the brand value of search advertising can shed some precious light on the subject.

Working with Media-Screen, a group of our Google CPG folks conducted a study titled Brand Value of Search. They set out to measure the impact of paid search ads on generic search terms. Using four product categories (beverage, cosmetics, food/snack, household cleaning/laundry) they measured the following:

- unaided brand awareness (What brands come to mind when I say "beverage"?)

- aided brand awareness (Have you heard of Snapple?)

- purchase consideration

- purchase intent

The most significant impact was on unaided brand awareness, with an average lift of 24 percentage points, depending on the category and the brand measures. Purchase intent and purchase consideration were also significantly affected, with an average lift of 6 and 7 percentage points, respectively.

Click through rates (CTR) and conversions have traditionally been the most visible measurements for search campaigns, but advertisers can rest at ease knowing that even just having eyeballs hit ads is a very good thing. In fact, your ROI calculations could be much more accurate if you account for the brand value of search advertising.

Let's look at an example. Say you have a campaign set at $1 per click with a two percent CTR. So for $2 you would get two clicks…but you would also get 100 impressions. Those impressions are a key factor in driving top-of-mind awareness and are another crucial element in customer engagement with your brand. In fact, in the study, researchers found that a lack of search presence negatively impacts awareness. In other words, not showing up in paid search can result in customers forgetting about your brand!

A similar study conducted last year with Enquiro Search Solutions, Inc. found that even for branded queries, presence in both top sponsored and top organic results boosts purchase intent. In the study, Honda showed a 7 percent lift in purchase intent. The key finding was that both unbranded and branded keywords are effective in building brand value.

Every company and brand is different, and so advertisers should think about the impact impressions has on their brand and how they can include it in their ROI calculations. Although humanity will probably continue to struggle with branding questions, at least we are headed down the path to enlightenment.

Posted by the Google Retail Team